We had some serious agile brainpower gathered in one place on Monday, what with:
- Lyssa Adkins, co-founder of the Agile Coaching Institute and author of Coaching Agile Teams, who was leading a personal agility course earlier in the day along with…
- Alistair Cockburn, one of the 17 developers who met at the Snowbird Resort in Utah back in 2001 and created the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (better known as the Agile Manifesto), creator of the Heart of Agile concept, and a local (he lives in St. Pete), and…
- Maria Matarelli, agile coach and presenter by day, fabulous club DJ by night, and co-organizer of the Tampa Bay Agile Social meetup…
…all gathered for the end-of-the-year Agile Social meetup, which also doubled as a birthday party for Alistair:
It’s not a proper birthday party without Happy Birthday being played in some form, so we did just that. Maria started a DJ set with a more acoustic-sounding mix 50 Cent’s In Da Club (which many people know only as “Go shawty, it’s your birthday”). In the spirit of agile, I decided to play along with an improvised accordion line, and the result was captured in the video at the top of this article.
After the set, and as is my tradition whenever I meet someone who signed the Agile Manifesto, I had to ask Alistair my standard question: “Was the gathering at Snowbird anything like Hot Tub Time Machine?”
Alas, he said no.
So far, I’ve asked this question to three Agile Manifesto signers:
3 down, 14 to go…
From left to right: Joey deVilla, Lyssa Adkins, Alistair Cockburn, Anitra Pavka.
Tampa Bay has a lot of agile goings-on, thanks to a lively community of agile practitioners and gatherings, including:
- Tampa Bay Agile, which organizes a great many local meetups and is managed by some great people: Stephanie Davis, Evy Vicioso, Becky Hartman, Julee Everett, Adam Ulery, Tami V., Carol Dekkers, and of course, Alistair Cockburn,
- Agile Social, organized by Jennifer Cullen, Ashlie Stevens, and Maria Matarelli,
- A number of Lean Coffee events — these are morning pre-office-hour events where agilists get together to discuss issues on their minds,
- Lean Beer, the after-work agile event that’s like Lean Coffee, but with beer, and created by Fred Mastropasqua.
Want to find out more about events like this in the Tampa Bay area? Follow this blog and my Twitter account (I’m @AccordionGuy) — I post a weekly round-up of upcoming tech events, and agile gatherings are a part of that list!