A fun event, as usual.
I started ranting on about “Systems Thinking”, about how it is slightly at odds with Agile (“Minimise waste [effort]“(L) vs “Do the simplest thing that could possibly work [at the moment]“(A)) and how people actively advocate and embrace a myriad of tiny point solutions when we have good system-wide stuff (think properties files, csv, YAML, etc. vs. XML).
The discussion got going and I’ll summarize the eventual mood as: “So what! I’m having fun.”
I tried making the point that perhaps you wouldn’t be happy with your dentist coming to you saying: “I’ve just had this great idea that I’m going to try out…seems really fun…now open wide…”
I recall at one point (as I was trying to talk about waste/efficiency) one guy saying “I went to a place once where they used all the Oracle stuff: db, app server, Java, JSF, etc. They seemed happy and were really productive. I’d hate to work like that, though.”
???
So much for systems thinking!
Was a fun discussion, though.
A particular Good Thing for this barcamp was that DJ Paine from Studio Promise was there offering to do high-quality head-shots of the participants. These are always good to have and so I thank DJ for his most generous offer. You can take a squiz at the contact-sheets. I was first in line, so I assumed the role of guinea-pig. It was quite fun moving the ‘set’ around to get the correct lighting and ‘feel.’ DJ gave it the good ‘ol college try but no matter what he did, he couldn’t make me look any more beautiful…such is life.
