So Scan-Agile is coming up on the 8:th of March.
I’ll try to forsee what I’ll go watch from http://scan-agile.org/program/.

10:00

Venkat Subramaniam:

How to approach Refactoring – key step to agility

I’ve seen Venkat a couple of times and he’s a solid technical presenter.
Here he is presenting scala:

If the topic (Refactoring) interests you it’ll probably be a worthwile.
I think I know enough about the topic though so I think I’ll try to check something else.

Dave Snowden:

The new 3 C’s: Complexity based approaches to project management

Something about Project Management. Here he is presenting something called Cynefin:

I forsee this presentation being a bit too academic for my tastes.

Brant Cooper:

It’s the End of the (Startup) World as We Know it

Attending!

I haven’t heard of the guy but he seems to know his stuff:

11:00

Olaf Lewitz:

Agile Community Building – Using StrategicPlay with Lego

Attending!

This is a 90minute session.

Here’s an interview with Olaf:

I have no idea what it’s about but if it has Legos it must be good!

11:15

Phil Calçado:

Better Functional Design Through Test-Driven Development

So TDD with functional languages. Might prove interesting.

Joseph Pelrine:

“Cynefin – Making Sense of Agile”

This sounds like Dave Snowdens stuff, but I know for a fact that Joseph Pelrine has very engaging sessions.
It’s probably worth to attend no matter the topic is. Here he presenting about coaching self organising teams: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/coaching-self-org-teams

Stuart Eccles

Hey, this guy doesn’t have a topic yet.

13:45

Daniel Knott:

Mobile App Testing – Challenges, Solutions and Best Practices

Attending!

Probably about how to do functional testing on Android and iPhone. I’m not burning for the topic but might be useful.

Kati Vilkki:

Creating continuous improvement culture

I guess this is going to be about retrospectives. Kati is an agilista from NSN.

Otto Hilska:

Flowdock’s journey to product-market fit

Flowdock is a nice product. I’m gonna guess this is going to be some 37 signalish approach. (They are using their own product etc)

Riitta Saarikangas:

Vuorovaikutuskoulutus: sosiaaliset vuorovaikutustyylit

This is a 90min session, I guess about social interaction.

15:00

Chris Matts:

Feature Injection

I’m not quite sure what feature injection is, but I found this comic:
http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/articles/1643-feature-injection-

Some day I’m going to read it.

Laura Snellman-Junna:

Mechanics of Empathy

So I guess some psychological thing explained so it can be understood by us nerds.

Tuomas Rinta:

Lean Organizational Growth

Attending!

I guess about how to scale a startup’s organization once it gets to a certain size.

16:15

Daniel Temme:

Quit Your Job

If you don’t enjoy your job you’re wasting your life.

Marko Taipale:

Showing the unseen

Some agile technique involving pictures.

Marc McNeill:

Agile Experience Design

Attending!

Don’t know the guy but the topic is interesting.
Here’s someone else on Agile User Experience:

Ari Tikka:

Zen at work

“After a short introduction we will do a 25 min meditation exercise.”

Ok

Earlier today I got this obsession of overlaying an aerial view of current day Helsinki over an old map from 1837. I had to rotate and skew the pic to get a better fit and here’s what I turned up with:

Check out the live version. It may work on some browsers (chrome).

 

Just finished The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin. The predecessor, Clean Code, was one of the best books on programming I’ve ever read so the expectations for this book were high.

Does it deliver? Yep. It might not be Clean Code good but still pretty damn good.

This book doesn’t really cover code at all but focuses on the coder, his behavior and on his  methodologies. It tackles very many difficult issues in very few pages in a clear and concise way. To cover the ground Bob does in about 200 pages is a major feat; especially when he manages to sprinkle in a fair amount of amusing anecdotes from his programming career to support his arguments.

I may disagree on some points but in overall agree with more than 95% of the stuff anyway so I’m not going to nitpick. This is an easily approachable book and won’t last you many evenings. This should be on any apprentice, journeyman and master programmer’s must-read-list.

Short description of each chapter:

Chapter 1: Professionalism – How to act like a professional. Surprisingly few coders know how to do this.

Chapter 2: Saying No – Say no to stuff you can’t promise 100% as trying and failing will just make people distrust you.

Chapter 3: Saying Yes – When you say yes you should mean it. Commit to the stuff and don’t give vague promises.

Chapter 4: Coding – When you should code, for how long and what to do about external forces affecting your coding ability.

Chapter 5: Test Driven Development - Arguments for TDD.

Chapter 6: Practicing – Tips on how to practice and keep up with your craft.

Chapter 7: Acceptance Testing – How to do acceptance testing.

Chapter 8: Testing Strategies - Explains how and what to test on different levels. The levels being depicted in a pyramid from the lowest layer to the top like this: Unit Tests, Component Tests, Integration Tests, System Tests and Manual Exploratory Testing.

Chapter 9: Time Management – How to get stuff done and how to deal with interferences and time thieves.

Chapter 10: Estimation – Arguments that estimates are always uncertain and should be communicated that way. Proposes several methods of doing agile estimation.

Chapter 11: Pressure – Keeping your cool and staying clean under pressure.

Chapter 12: Collaboration - The most common collaboration anti-patterns you might be guilty of.

Chapter 13: Teams and Projects – Arguments for that teams shouldn’t be split up after projects.

Chapter 14: Mentoring, Apprenticeship, and Craftsmanship - How apprentices should be mentored into journeymen.

Appendix A: Tooling – The minimum tool set you should at least have in use if you wish to call yourself a Professional.

 

I discovered this video on mobile game analytics using Flurry.
Good stuff:
http://casualconnect.org/lectures/2010-seattle-lectures/insights-from-2-5-billion-iphone-and-android-monthly-user-sessions/