ACE! Conference 2015 is (unfortunately) over. Great time, great people, great event!

It was the first time I attended an agile conference, and I have to admit, I enjoyed it. I listened to few really interesting talks, and I had some interesting conversations with other attendees. There were also some very interesting discussions during the Open Space Market.

Some comments and things to remember:

• Talk with people during breaks. Choose random victim and start the conversation. 🙂
• Badges / achievements seems to be a cool idea (not sure if the link is right: http://signup.badgerbadger.io/)
• Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow was probably the most often mentioned book during this conference. All kind of biases were also mentioned many times.
• Some conferences do WiFi right – ACE! did.
• 250 people is a very reasonable number. The rooms and corridors were full but not overcrowded.
• It seems there are at least few (small) companies in Cracow getting quite well with flexible working time, flat hierarchy, netflix-like culture, and some ideas taken straight from Jurgen Appelo’s books. Good!
• You are very lucky if your team is collocated.
• Some people like to work with stars programmer, while others would happily get rid of them (cause they harm company’s culture).
• Many teams start with http://hipchat.com and then move to http://slack.com Never heard of any team moving in the opposite direction.
• Do not build cool products but rather solve problems of your customers.
• Feedback – important thing! https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychology-writers/201206/giving-good-constructive-feedback
• I loved the fact, that the organisers were able to improve some things the 2nd day, after reading feedback from the 1st day. Kudos!

My ugly slides are available at Slideshare:

It was good to see you there! Thank you all!