I'm working on a blog post wrap-up of the 2011 ALM Summit experience, so today I did a little bit of white-glove research in the archives.
I can't find archaeological evidence of my attendance at what was then still called p&p summit in 2006, but I know I was there because that's where Peter Provost & Michael Puleio gave their "Agile Talk on Agility" which blew my mind and changed the way I do software and public speaking and made me a loyal Summiteer for life.
I did, however, find some real treasures: my p&p 2009 and 2007 (!) adventures in liveblogging. They're essentially my scribbled notes, so a lot of the actual content is completely unintelligible now, even to me, but they provide a window into my growth as an attendee and as a professional in this field.
Even at the time I was writing them, I knew perfectly well that those blog posts were an outlet for my insecurities as a dev and a #devgrrrl, so you'll see lots of that in there (see also the posts in between, from TechEd 2008). If you read them in chronological order, I think you'll see a growing level of experience and confidence.
I switched to livetweeting the rebranded #almsummit in 2010. By then, I was fully aware that the great value I get out of conferences isn't the received wisdom from a speaker in a lecture hall and never has been and I'm not sorry. (See also: my college, with an average class size < 20 and a high degree of informal access to faculty.) In 2006, 2007 and 2009, it was clear that I learned more by talking with colleagues about the previous hour during the 15-minute coffee breaks than I did in the hour itself. That's why I always worked so hard to recruit a good group to come with me. The other big change in 2010 was that I quit being afraid of the broader community, and I put myself out there to engage with them. Maybe the interactivity of the Summit's little Twitterverse helped: I started to see that highly skilled professionals struggle with the same issues as I do, or even struggle with issues my team had already, in our way, solved. I even got retweeted! In other words, I might have something to contribute!
Plus, I was thrilled to witness the impact of the community's livetweeting on the entire 2010 Summit. We stopped talking about Agile in a waterfall way (top-down, planned in advance) and started actually putting Agile Talk About Agility into practice (self-organizing, continuous feedback)! It was like our collective lightbulb moment! And, as Agile techniques are wont to do, it left me feeling smart and empowered. I can do this!
The other big event in 2010, not recorded anywhere, was my chance meeting with Linda from Northwest Cadence during one of the aforementioned coffee breaks. We hit it off, which set some slow-moving wheels in motion throughout 2011 and landed me where I am today. It's a good thing I'm not (too) afraid of the ALM community any more, because I'm up to my neck in it!
Stay tuned to the Northwest Cadence blog, where I'll talk more about making the transition from acolyte to Platinum Sponsor at this year's Summit…
