DDD Southwest

So I want to take a little time out to mention DDD Southwest.  If you are based in the South West of England, then this is a great conference for you to attend.  It’s on a Saturday (the 23rd of May), and it’s free.  Even if you are not based in Taunton, I think it’s worth travelling down for.

Let me explain Why.  The conference is run by Guy Smith-Ferrier who is one of the most community focused individuals, and one of my favorite speakers.

Main Agenda

The main agenda is great, great speakers + topics.

• Silverlight (i’m sure there will be some SL3 in there, knowing Richard) – Richard Costall
• ASP.NET MVC – Steve Sanderson (great book on MVC)
• Oslo – Robert Hogg
• C# 4.0 – Guy Smith-Ferrier
• MEF – Ben Hall
• Refacoring – Gary Short
• Scrum – Richard Fenell
• Quantum Computing – Dave McMahon
• Windows Azure – Chris Hay (a little biased I know).

Don’t get me wrong it’s a real honor to be asked to speak at this conference, and the speaker line and topics is superb, but this isn’t what is exciting me the most.

A call for new speakers

This really excites me, there is a call for new speakers.  So there will be a bunch of sessions from new speakers, with new takes on various topics.  It will be superb and I can’t wait.  It wasn’t that long ago when I was a new speaker, and it’s a great opportunity for new speakers to get sessions without competing against the big guns.

I think this is a great format that gives new speakers a chance to cut their teeth, in a supportive environment.

Alternative Track

I think this track however excites me the most, as I haven’t seen this format before.

It’s the Conference Party Games Track :)

• Park Bench Discussion
• Rotating Speaker Panel, where anyone can join in answering
• Small is beautiful and hard
• Make beautiful code from average code
• Workshop for single handed developers
• Balloon Debate
• One Ballon, 5 languages represented by 5 people.  The ballon is sinking and you need to ditch languages to gain height.  For the first 30 minutes, each person representing a language has to argue their cause.  After 30 minutes the audience throws out 3 of the people / languages.  It’s then head to head.  Winner takes all
• Planning Poker
• Looks super cool, everyone estimates a problem and shows their estimate simultaneously and then has to come to a consensus of the estimate

What a superb looking day, and it’s looks pretty different from other conferences.

Well done Guy on producing such a great format, and I’ll see you there.