Luke Hohmann’s Blog

• Appreciations to the conference organizers. They work hard.
• I was very impressed with the breadth and quality of the experience reports. I attended several and found interesting observations and learning’s from all of the speakers. We need more of this.
• www.ript.com looks promising. Not really sure how I’d use it, since I’m not the target market, and the product team seems to have done their homework. But, I’m playing around with it a bit to see how we might be able to work.
• I saw a demo of Thoughtwork’s mingle. I was really saddened by the poor use of screen real estate. My non-scientific analysis of the screens suggested that more than 50% of most of the screens was devoted to labels or whitespace. We know more about usability than this. Which brings me to a really crucial tools rant: I find current approaches for representing complex project structures (multi-project status, multi-release/fielded product status, inter-dependencies) inadequate, at best. Who will create the really killer status app?
• Coolest shirt? Viva Agilista! From the Yahoo! team. And yeah, I got one.
• Coolest Chotchki? My vote still goes to the Rally mini-coopers.
• Best badge bling? Enthiosys, of course!
• Super snack? Dried fruits and nuts. So much better than the standard stale greasy cookie.
• Lots of energy (thankfully!) about portfolio management. I’m guessing that the PMO panel (myself, David Anderson, Liz Barnett, and Neil; moderated by Todd Little) drew at least people 200 people, with a lively discussion of prioritization schemes and funding options.
• I’m proud that our experience report (with Peter Hodgkins from VeriSign, located here) was so well received. Pete did a great job of framing quality levels, which we thought would create some interesting discussion, but seemed to be mostly received as good common sense. Which it is.
  I can tell I’m getting older because it took me longer to recover from the late night meetings. Where we talked about agile things, of course. (This last comment in case someone from work is reading).
• The conference was too long. Too many tracks and the mechanism for finding what you really wanted was atrocious. I’d prefer a shorter, more focused conference.
• The Conference Within a Conference (CWAC) had the most interesting discussions. I should have hung more with that crew. I will next year.

OOP 2007 Conference Feedback - I gave a tutorial and a keynote at the SIGS-DATACOMM OOP Conference in January. I was really honored to be asked to speak at this conference, as it was my first ever invitation to speak in Europe. The trip was a bit challenging because of the terrible weather, but the German people were so warm and inviting that I felt right at home. Perhaps my favorite story was that on Wed Jan 24th I needed to take the train from Munich to Heidelberg so that I could teach some Innovation Games(R) classes to staff members and friends of the SAP Design Services Team. Unfortunately, the original train was cancelled. I was lucky to find myself befriended by a German woman (from Brazil, no less!) who was also traveling to Heidelberg. Seven hours and three trains later — I was in Heidelberg.

Another great memory of the OOP conference was that I was invited by the conference organizers to attend a special reception dinner on Monday evening Jan 22nd. At the dinner we had a lively discussion about the pros/cons of changing the name of the conference. Like so many other conferences, the OOP conference has evolved substantially over the years. Yes, objects are still important, but so are many other facets of software development, all of which are covered at the OOP conference.

Should the OOP conference change its name? This is a tough branding question. Delegates from prior years know that the conference covers many topics. The concern, though, centers around new delegates: Will they be put off by a conference with “OOP” in the title if they’re looking for something about agile or product management? In the end, I told the conference organizers that I think they had already made up their mind to change the name of the conference and that we were really discussing “when” they should change the name and not “if” they should change the name. They smiled when I said this. I then told them that I agreed with their decision, and that in this case changing the name seemed like a sensible thing to do.

Here is my conference feedback, received today from Wolfgang Reuter, the very helpful and thoroughly organized Conference Organizer. Click here for the Excel feedback form.

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Luke,we would like to thank you on behalf of SIGS-DATACOM for your participation at OOP 2007 in Munich.

The initial feedback we received from our delegates was very positive.

Enclosed you will find the evaluated feedback forms of your session.

Many thanks again from the whole SIGS-DATACOM team

Wolfgang

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Wolfgang Reuter

Konferenzmanager

Conference Manager

Tel. +49 (0)2241/2341-211

Fax: +49 (0)2241/2341-199

wolfgang.reuter@sigs-datacom.de

www.sigs-datacom.de

Aktuelle Veranstaltungen / Upcoming EventsSIGS-DATACOM GmbH - Geschäftsführer: Günter Fuhrmeister Sitz des Unternehmens: Lindlaustr. 2c, 53842 Troisdorf

Registergericht: Amtsgericht Siegburg, HRB 6552

Here is the feedback I received from the Agile 2006 Conference. This is the entire email I received.

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Dear Luke,

Please find below the feedback on your tutorial at Agile2006. We hope you consider proposing a session for Agile2007 in Washington DC.

Our call for participation can be found here:
http://www.agile2007.org/index.php?page=submissions/tutorial/tutorial
and the deadline for submissions is January 26th.

Best regards,
Rachel Davies

Agile2006 Session Feedback

A few posts ago I advocated open evaluation of conference speakers. Since then, I’ve received more evaluation forms from conferences where I’ve been a speaker. Here is the first, from the QRCA Conference. I had a great time at this conference, and really do hope that I can attend and speak again in 2007.

I received the evaluation in the mail and scanned the entire document here.

I speak at a lot of conferences. Part of my job. For quite some time I’ve been promoting the idea that conferences should provide open rating systems of the speakers. This way you could have the prior feedback of other conference participants to help you decide if you should listen to someone speak. Of course, the idea isn’t perfect or foolproof. It is more an attempt to share information.

In this spirit of sharing, I offer the complete text of the email I just received from the organizers of the Software Development Best Practices conference, which contains my evaluation. I’m pleased to learn that my session beat the conference average but that not all of the people who attended my session completed feedback forms (I had more than 14 people). I think that this is because my presentations rely a lot on “learning by doing”.

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Dear Luke Hohmann,

I’d like to extend my sincerest appreciation for all of your hard work in preparing and presenting for SD Best Practices 2006. I hope you enjoyed your experience.

Below is a link that will allow you to access your session evaluation results and the compiled comments that were collected. We rely heavily on attendee feedback to help us determine which topics best met the needs of the attendees and where we can make modifications to better meet expectations for next year.

https://www.cmpevents.com/?M=7I3QW2VGMEjoZwelCQJDMpKPWm532XRGCE1eewP2pA==

Please note: Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions will not have evaluation results.

We’ve received some really positive feedback regarding the conference.

On behalf of the Dr. Dobb’s SD Events Group I want to thank you for your part in that success. Without your commitment, we could not have done it.

We’ve transcribed the notes as they were written–complete with spelling and grammatical errors, along with the occasionally profound and or profane comment. Also, take note that comments do not always accurately reflect the overall rating of your course. Unfortunately, many attendees who rate courses highly do not make any comments, sometimes making the tenor of the comments seem overly critical. In any case, I hope you find the feedback valuable.

Below is some information that you might find helpful in order to compare your results with the conference average.

1.) Average Overall Rating: 7.94

This would be an average of question #6 on the evaluation form “Overall rating of the presentation” This rating was determined by the attendees.

2.) Average Rating: 8.10

This is an average rating of questions 1-6. This rating is located at the top of the evaluation summary, next to the headcount.

3.) Average Headcount: 65

Thanks again for all of your hard work and dedication to the event. I enjoyed working with you and hope to do so, on future events.

Save the date: SD West 2007 will be held March 19-23, 2007 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Sincerely,

Michelle Ruettinger

Conference Specialist

Dr. Dobb’s SD Events Group

CMP Media

600 Harrison St., 5th Floor

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.sdexpo.com