Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : workshop

Where to find useful stuff from the Agile conference?

gmelnik — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:31:55 GMT

Agile conference traditionally publishes proceedings (that’s where you find all research papers and experience reports).

Attendees also receive a CD or a memory stick with tutorial materials (decks, handouts, demos etc.).

Several main stage talks are available as webcasts.

What about workshops? A workshop is really an opportunity for attendees to learn more from each other as opposed to from a lecturer/facilitator/presenter. Thus, typically, there is not much material produced ahead of time, when the proceedings and conference cds are being assembled. However, a good wealth of knowledge has been captured in workshop summaries that we encouraged workshop facilitators to publish on the conference public wiki after the conference: http://agile2008toronto.pbwiki.com/Agile2008+Sessions

Take a look!

Upcoming conferences - where I'll be (May - Oct 2008)

gmelnik — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:45:00 GMT

Tech-Ed 2008 Developers, June 2-6, Orlando, FL. I’ll be giving a talk on the Enterprise Library (DVP02-TLC). I’ll be also hanging out in the exhibition areas (mainly, Process & Project Management (DVP- VSTS 2008)).
CAST 2008 , July 14-17, Toronto, ON. I look forward to good interaction with testing experts and thought leaders from around the world.
Microsoft Product Fair, July 22-23, Redmond, WA.
TechReady7, July 28-Aug 1, Seattle, WA. I’ll do a couple of talks on the Enterprise Library and agility.
Agile 2008, Aug 4-8, Toronto, ON – the major world conference on agile software engineering. Mary Poppendieck and I are program-charing the conference.
STARWest 2008, Sep 29- Oct 3, Anaheim, CA. Jon Bach and I will give a talk on Acceptable Acceptance Testing, telling the tale of our team producing the guide on acceptance testing and dogfooding our own recommendations.
PNSQC2008, Oct 13-15, Portland, OR. We have a paper "Acceptance Testing: a love story in two acts". No Shakesperian-level drama, but some exciting stuff for sure.
PDC 2008, Oct 26-30, Los Angeles, CA. Together with Mary Poppendieck and other colleagues from p&p, we’ll be presenting the Agile Perspectives pre-conference event.

If you are planning on attending any of these conferences, please come by and say hello. I would love to hear your stories of using or reasons for not using the Enterprise Library, Unity, other p&p assets. I would also be glad to chat with you about our upcoming guidance on Acceptance Test Engineering and hear your experiences, lessons learnt, and suggestions.

Also, I talk to user groups regularly. If you are from the city I am visiting (or nearby) and would like me to give a talk to your user group (agile, .NET, software testing), feel free to ping me.

Unity Extensibility Workshop

gmelnik — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:13:00 GMT

Microsoft Main Campus (Building 99)
February 18-19, 2008
Redmond, WA

Description

Unity is Microsoft’s lightweight, extensible dependency injection container.

Microsoft patterns & practices will host Unity Extensibility Workshop to walk the participants through the design of Unity container and its extensibility model. You will become familiar with all aspects of the container infrastructure and container extensions: from using existing extensions to building your own. A special attention will be given to the integration of Unity with Enterprise Library 4.0 and the refactored application blocks. Because the workshop will be hosted by the Enterprise Library team, you will also have the opportunity to ask questions and potentially influence the future of the Enterprise Library.

Purpose

− Transfer knowledge from Microsoft patterns & practices experts and authors of Unity/EntLib4.0 to attendees about building container extensions and integrating them with Unity;

− Transfer knowledge from the attendees to Microsoft experts about the common extensions that are useful in their application contexts;

− Advance hands-on exercises for others in the software engineering community to learn from.

Prerequisites

− This is an advanced, participatory workshop. It is highly recommended you have a working knowledge of programming in the DI style. There will be some introductory content around the technologies, but there will be a heavy focus on writing C# code.

− You must have prior experience using one of the existing DI containers, such as Spring.NET, Castle/Windsor, Structure Map etc.

− It is recommended you read “Deconstructing ObjectBuilder” posts by Chris Tavares.

− You must bring a laptop and a VPC will be provided. If you can have Microsoft Virtual PC installed ahead of time, it will save you from having to install it after you arrive. This will prevent you from having any other system requirements on the machine.

− If you plan on attending, please think of at least one extension idea you would like to introduce to Unity. One of the main reasons we’re hosting this workshop is to discover and share particularly valuable and important extensions (so we can make the underlying extensibility mechanism as easy as possible). We will ask you to define your scenarios at some point while you are here.

Cost

− There is no registration fee for the workshop.

− Attendees are responsible for making and paying for their own travel to and from Bldg 99 in Redmond, WA.

− Attendees are responsible for their lodging accommodations during the workshop. Suggestions can be provided after registering.

− Breakfast and lunch will be provided on all 2 days and a dinner event will be provided on Tuesday night (Feb 19).

Registering

We apologize for the short notice, but please send your info in by Feb 15. Attendance is limited to 25 people and registrations are based on the first come-first serve basis, so please RSVP by sending a note to Grigori Melnik as soon as possible. In the email, please provide the following information about each attendee:

− Full name

− Company name

− Software engineering background

− Types of DI containers used

− Email address (required for internet access)

− If a vegetarian lunch is required

Feel free to contact me for any other questions.