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 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!