For my sins, I find myself sitting in a hotel in Toronto, watching the rain steam down the windows. To be fair, I could have done this at home in London, a city in which clement weather is but a month. Instead I’ve been shipped 8 hours west, across the Atlantic and dangerously close to the US in order to attend Agile 2008, an agile software development conference who this year has ventured beyond the borders of the land of the free and into the dangerous northern wastes.
The northern wastes, mind, I take on hearsay. Since arriving yesterday afternoon I’ve ventured from the hotel only to get dinner, and even then – thanks to the rain – returned via the safety of the subterranean PATH network. Rumour has it that beyond these confines lies a city, perhaps even a country, yet until some sunshine and a gap in the conference schedule illuminates these it would be imprudent to assume their existence.
And so here I am at Agile 2008. Four days of talks, tutorials, workshops and buffets on the subject of agile software development – and any tangents the presenters can draw from such. One day down at this point and I appear to have had the best of the three of us here – Ivan found the crass commercialism of the keynote a terrible start to the day, and Gojko has sworn to avoid all tutorials and workshops for the remainder of the conference. So soon this will be followed with some details on the material I have seen; tonight, however, my jet-lag forestalls such exertions, not to mention the lack of WiFi in what passes for hotel rooms in these parts.
So, intrepid reader, stay tuned and – assuming I am not distracted by Serbians bearing drinks – I shall get some write-ups up here as soon as practical. And should the worst come to worst, it’s something to do on the flight home.
