Motley says: "I fear public speaking more than I fear dying!"
Summary
Motley: Speak at a conference?!? Are you insane?!? No public speaking for me!
Maven: Speaking at a conference is a great way to build confidence and influence not just your company, but the industry.
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[Context: We'll continue with HPT Part 3 next time. For now, Motley and Maven's buddy James just returned from speaking at a conference]
Maven: Hey - did you hear James just returned from a conference? He actually did a speaking gig at the Agile Development Practices 2007 conference in Orlando from Dec 3-6. He said it went quite well.
Motley: Crazy nut job. Don't you know that the average person fears public speaking MORE than dying? First time I heard that statistic I was quite shocked, yet not surprised all at the same time. There's no way you'd catch me doing that.
Maven: Ah, but it's great experience! What better way to practice your communication skills, meet influential people in the industry, make new contacts, help others, and have a great time while you are doing it! Plus, when you speak at a conference they usually compensate you a little, reimburse some of your fees, and give you free conference registration. Lots of fabulous benefits.
Motley: if you say so. Not sure I could get up in front of 100 people or more and do it. I think I'll expand my scope of influence and work on my communication skills in some other way. What did he speak about anyway?
Maven: A great topic: "Balancing Emergent Design with Big Design Up Front (BDUF)". Here is the abstract:
"Big Design Up Front (BDUF) is a design technique that has been part of the development cycle for decades. Unfortunately, fully specifying a software design in the presence of change without a crystal ball is rarely effective. Agile principles and practices leverage feedback-oriented techniques such as emergent design to embrace change and design “just-in-time.” By balancing BDUF and agile emergent design practices such as test-driven development to avoid “cowboy coding,” we can develop just enough design documentation to guide our development toward the project’s big-picture goals. This balanced approach has been employed successfully at Microsoft to develop large software systems. James Waletzky discusses the pitfalls of BDUF and how agile methods help you reduce design risk. Learn what emergent design is and is not, how refactoring keeps designs clean, and ways to document your design with “just enough” detail. James introduces tools to help your design efforts, including XML comments, Sandcastle, and a C# Design By Contract language extension called Spec#. Take away practical design techniques that will improve your software designs in a world where predicting the future is impossible."
Pasted from <http://www.sqe.com/agiledevpractices/Concurrent/Default.aspx?Day=Wednesday>
Motley: Well, that does sound like a cool topic given other conversations we've had. Can I see the slides?
Maven: Sure. Here they are:
http://waletzky.no-ip.com/download/BalancingEmergentDesignAndBDUF.pdf
NOTE: This is a low-bandwidth connection. Let me know if you want me to e-mail the slides to you in PPTX format.
Motley: There's some good stuff in there. I like the little script. Think it's based on us?
Maven: I wouldn't doubt it. James seems to listen in quite a bit. He was wondering if any of our eavesdroppers have any comments or questions about the topic. Should we pass the word that he would like to hear from them.
Motley: I think you just did. Pay attention, Mave!
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Maven's Pointer: At Microsoft, to get to the more senior ranks of software development, you have to do a few things well. One is to be technically very good at what you do. Two, you have to expand your scope of influence. This may require some explanation: instead of concentrating on just feature development at small granularity, you have to influence multiple features, a product, a product line or the industry. Three, you need to have good communication skills. Speaking at an industry conference with reputable speakers is a great way to get that experience. I strongly recommend it. Once you get over your initial fear of public speaking (ugh), it's actually quite fun!
James' Pointer: I really enjoyed the Agile Development Practices 2007 conference. If you ever get a chance to go to an agile conference, go. You'll meet lots of great people and you will learn a lot about software development. The Agile Development Practices conference is is happening again in November 2008 in Orlando, and another big one entitled Agile 2008 is from August 4-8, 2008 in Toronto.
Maven's Resources:
