Well CITCON (parent page here) for Australia 2009, has come and gone. A little like me and my initial pass by of the Acacia Ridge Hotel ;-) . Thank you to whoever was manning the hotel phone, my call soon had me back on track.
I must also thank Bob of Transentia for bringing CITCON to my attention. The planning evening was an education. I and the others sat in a (rather large) circle, and our two hosts, Jeffrey and Paul got the show rolling. At first I thought, each person has to introduce themselves, this is handy padding! But my cynicism was unfounded, it served to get people engaged, not just there to be spoon fed something that will leave them within 48 hours ;-)
The topics were decided by the group, yes self organising and interested (no not self interested) groups, albeit with just a little idea seeding by those with something to promote (hey, we all do it!). Not being a tester (though I admit to having set up and managed CI / Continuous Integration with CruiseControl), I did initially wonder whether being open to anything just might be waiting to bite me. But no, I found that the mind share was invaluable. Quite a diverse crowd, all with their own experiences, levels of experience and ideas of what a topic represented.
Not being shy to say something (whether valuable or stupid), I think the only thing missing was maybe a chairperson role, within each session, to allow less pushy voices to be heard. In all, I thought the communication lines were open, but I noticed some groups were a little silent (or was that stony silence caused by me)!
What did I walk away with? Apart from a nice T-shirt (thank you CITCON sponsors?), I did get a ThougtWorks evaluation DVD (Cruise of course, and more ), I got the personal views of a range of people on various topics (some session notes here and photos), from a Maturity Model for CI to “Is Scrum evil!”
Being from the coding side, it was nice to meet and listen to Dr Paul King (of Groovy, and as he points out, many other things), and his talk on Groovy DSL’s for testing, which was very interesting. Testers are generally not API nor coding keen. I proposed that to the group and had a less firm response from the testers than from the coders! I asked my partner later and had my suspicions confirmed, but the more testers who use a tool, well the more of us developer types who will be gainfully employed in supporting them. Can’t be bad!
The registrants are listed here, should you be trying to identify someone you chatted to, or if you want someone else’s view. Try Bob’s view, I just did. I will conclude that like Open Source software, at the price, it really was unbeatable!
