Emotionally powerful, sometimes disturbing, often exhilarating, the 3 days of ALE bring me home drained, imaginative and full of ideas and knowledge (well… give me that impression). My first hot take: my “big impressions”, I will detail the sessions/keynotes and the learnings I was able to draw from them in future posts.

E viva ALE 2012 !

Let’s put some words on paper

Disturbing: in a magnificent church, with one of the keynotes very “Chaplinesque”(the dictator), people singing together, who want to change the world, in short… all of a cult, or close to it in appearance. Careful! Careful! not too much evangelism. (But we are all “freaks” some whisper to me…).

Complex and contradictory: 3 keynotes, each of them triggers very marked and very contradictory opinions. Until the last minute. A keynote by Jim McCarthy (father of the core protocols) very fiery but potentially dangerous (Chaplin, The Dictator), a keynote by Siraj Sirajuddin very very high up in the clouds of conceptualization, too pretentious? (and especially a speaker who arrives in the morning, and leaves after the keynote -I can’t stand that-), and finally on the contrary a keynote by Henrik Kniberg down to earth: no risk, no novelty, no awareness of the audience he’s addressing (that’s my opinion!). Despite all this these keynotes were interesting: proof Duarte Vasco, Alexis Monvilleand myself talk about it during the departure drinks: no one gives the same ranking, no one places their favorite without seeing flaws, no one excludes the least good without finding it qualities.

Emotion: I don’t know what happens, but emotion flows, takes hold and drains our strength. The power of the event grows crescendo. a kind of maelstrom that sucks you in.

Disappointment: Some presentations not up to the event’s standards. Topics too obvious treated in too formal a way (slides presented carelessly, it’s final). Especially on the first day.

Absence: that of Olaf Lewitz. The spirit of ALE.

Enthusiasm: Striking presentations: those of Sergei and Jurgen, Marc’s particularly but also somewhat below those of Stephen, Erin or Ariadna. I’ll come back to this.

Strength: From the openspace -as always-.

Energy and kindness: organizers in an incredible venue, a responsive organization, very pleasant meals and lunches (and how that matters!!). In short, a top-notch organization and organizers.

Barcelona: beautiful and rich (Gaudi, Picasso) but I don’t see the crisis there!

Doubt: a stated desire to want to go further with the ALE concept. The idea is naturally exciting, but wanting to go there by forced march -as I feel it- doesn’t seem appropriate to me. We don’t change the world by wanting to change it, we change it inadvertently (in my opinion).

English: perfect it to continue the dialogue, write in it: duplicate this blog’s articles.

French: I meet Alexis and his family there, Jean-François, Franck,Oana, Emmanuel, a Julien (?), and naturally our code warrior/agile coach/scrummaster whatever you want: Jérôme. (incidentally Jason the coordinator of the dev studio of ALE 2012, discovers that I’m the “boss” -the one who pays at the end of the month- and slips to me about Jérôme: “damn he’s good!”).

Code: damn, a dedicated room for hardcore coders. Where are we going!

Smile: from many people.

Dream: many dreamers, am I an old fart?

Family: I was able to come with my wife and my two children. They participated in dedicated workshops, enjoyed the meals and breakfasts, they went out in Barcelona with others (about fifteen children). Their feedback is very positive (even if I lost in their eyes the last shreds of credibility I still had).

Thanks to the organizers!

Articles about ALE by other frenchies

Photos