Communication skills can be anything but soft. As an example, communication skills can make it easier to see through other people's games and play 'hard ball' in a correct way. I like the comment written by Jason Yip:

I don't even like to say conversation, confrontation, collaboration skills are "non-technical". There are reliable techniques for these sort of things and "non-technical" seems to me a subtle suggestion that it's all magic.

Sometimes I learn these things quickly, others take more time to master, even though the idea is simple - changing my behaviour is not always easily done - that also makes communication skills 'hard skills'.

Agile seems to become mainstream enough to regularly do open enrollment training courses. Rob Westgeest and I just finished setting one up, aimed at software developers who want to experience agile software development firsthand.

We mainly market it through our customers. In a way, the course is marketing itself - since the idea for Rob and me to do this together came from a customer. I hope to write more about how we created this course later.

In a three day hands-on course, Rob Westgeest and I introduce planning, test driven development and analysis skills that enable programmers to more effectively contribute to a thriving business. We combine explanation from our experience with immersive exercises and a multi-day case, resulting in a working system. You can find the course description, organiser bios and dates (all in Dutch - the course can be in English if desired) on the eXperience Agile website.

While I was at it, I overwrote my backup and the released version on the webserver. I noticed only afterwards the blog was out of whack. Some aggregators are also affected (i noticed agileplanet was). I re-dated as many files as possible, and those that couldn't got an old date, so aggregators are not affected too much - in a few days the entries disappear from aggregators anyway.

It's probably better to start versioning work right from the start, but its' annoying subversion does not maintain the original dates on import nevertheless. I haven't even found an option that makes it possible.

Other ideas (e.g. for non-session activities) will remain welcome until the end of the conference. This conference is what the participants make it, the co-organisers provide the container that makes events possible.

So far, we've had a lot of positive reactions, also from people who won't be able to attend - some want to register for 2006 :-) . I'll keep you posted on the feedback I get and other stuff that's newsworthy.

I'm looking forward to Agile Open a lot. It is so cool to see something like this grow.

There are people who never learn from their driving experience in snow or ice. Every year, they're surprised by the snow or the ice, and they drive too fast (or too slow). These people may have plenty of years of driving experience, but it's the same year repeated over and over again.

Unfortunately, they did not seemed to have learnt to work better as a team. At first, I was relieved that we didn't have that many meetings, and I could 'just do my job (programming)' ( I'm different these days....). Until after a few months it dawned on me, that the team was chasing the same defects over and over.

This was easy to trace, as the group had nailed down several practices quite well. Every night an extensive suite of integration tests was run, and defects were collected in a defect tracking system (do you notice how I refuse to use the magical word 'bug' here?). Defects were closed and then later on re-opened. Sort of teh same defect repeated over and over again. In the end, the company was taken over, and this particular product was never released, because the new parent company preferred their own version of the product (how strange).

The group was very good at what they thought was their task - programming C with some ++. That is how they recruited new team members as well. I remember a conversation with my boss about a job interview. One of the things they did was see if the applicant understood certain language constructs. My manager exclaimed in surprise to me, 'this guy did'nt even understand ... (some obscure use of the C union construct)'. The uninon construct had at that time been made entirely obsolete by classes in C++. I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut, as I had never used the union construct much, and did not know about this particular use of it either. My manager was very happy about my performance nevertheless....

Years of experience had given her detailed understaning of the C union construct. What the team needed was detailed understanding of team working. Despite the groups individuals being highly intelligent (individuals had MsC's, PhD's, patents granted, creative testing skills), the group as a whole had years of experience of the same thing and did not function as a team.

What this group needed was not a new recruit intimate with language details... People can pick up details or entire languages quickly from working closely with teammates.

I enjoy experiencing the development of Agile Open. We try to keep involvement in organising the event as open as possible. So we now have more goals and start to have preliminary ideas for sessions on the wiki and the mailing list now has a lively discussion on what the schedule can be like. Even though we do not plan the sessions, we do plan to create a container around it. So far, we have an opening session, with an explanation of the process and announcement and selection of sessions. At the end of the first day, there is likely to be a temperature reading so the conference can be modified while it is running followed by a conference banquet of some sort, and there will be a short re-opening session and a closing session on saturday.

We will not select sessions before the conference, as that is done by the participants at the first morning of the conference. I want to make that extra clear, as we are having difficulty getting the way the conference works across, especially for those who have not yet attended an open space conference. It is not two days of unstructured chatting, nor is it a pre-defined conference (as the IdeasForSessions page suggested to an Open Space veteran). So it is both possible to have fun with creating sessions beforehand, as it is to propose a 'in the flow' spur-of- the-moment session on the morning the conference starts.

For your information, I post the full text of the invitation below:

Agile Open 2005
1st Internatonal Open Space Conference on Agile Software Development
29 and 30 April 2005, Mechelen (Belgium)

http://www.agileopen.net

Movements really rise or fall on the strength of on-going social occasions - XP user group meetings, XP Days, Agile Seminars, XP and Agile conferences, and the Agile Open Conference are the epicenters of the agile movement.

The Agile Open conference is an international OpenSpace conference intended for software development and business people from all walks of life, taking place on 29 and 30 April 2005, in Mechelen, Belgium ... we invite you to an amazingly open, warm and lively community space where people spark new insights in and relationships for collaborative (software) development and doing business together.

Agile Open is for participants, by participants: we determine the actual program together at the start of the conference. We do not expect people to invent all the sessions on the spot, so we encourage you to put ideas for sessions on the conference wiki. Any ideas for sessions you would like to experience, or hear and see happen, as well as ideas for sessions you would like to organize and facilitate are welcome. Equally, this page gives an impression of the variety of sessions you can expect at the conference:

http://www.agileopen.net/Conference/IdeasForSessions.html

Location

The conference will take place at Elewijt Center, in Mechelen (Belgium): http://www.elewijtcenter.be The center is near an international airport and train station (Brussels). The Elewijt offers a limited number of rooms. We offer our help in making reservations and encourage hotel room sharing.

Fees and Registration

We have limited the number of participants to 60, on a first paid, first served basis. Until April 8th, the conference fee is 180 Euro (exclusive of 21% VAT); from April 9th, the fee is 230 Euro (excl. VAT). The fee includes conference access, lunches, drinks, one dinner, and closing reception.

Registration is possible through http://www.agileopen.net/Conference/Registration.html . On-site registration is not possible.

Organization

Agile Open is organized on a non-profit basis by Agile Systems vzw (http://www.agilesystems.org), a non-profit organisation with the purpose of collecting and disseminating knowledge and experience about agile software development and systems thinking. The conference organizers are:

Marc Evers (NIWI-KNAW), Willem van den Ende (Living Software), Nynke Fokma (Moebius), Pascal Van Cauwenberghe (Nayima), Vera Peeters (Tryx), Marko van der Puil (Brains4All)

Idleness as a waste of time is a damaging notion put about by its spiritually vacant enemies. Introspection could lead to that terrible thing: a vision of the truth, a clear image of the horror of our fractured, dissonant world.

I have gotten some of my most disruptive ideas when forced to stay in bed for days because of illness. For instance, the decision to become an independent consultant came to me, when I was admitted to hospital for over a week, back in 2001. I was striving hard to get various things of the ground (and working hard to that effect as well). When I was admitted to the hospital by surprise (so the neurologist could run a lot of tests in a short time) I was, so to say, stopped dead in my tracks.

Having nothing to do for most of the day besides a little reading, I pondered what things I could do to increase my effectiveness. After a few days of lying in bed, I realized I was not getting anywhere. This was disruptive, because until then I was living under the assumption I had found my dream job. I realized it was time to do something else.

After a week at the hospital, I became an outpatient. I stayed at home another week. Because of the heavy antibiotics I got, I was too tired to do much, so I spent most of my time just sitting in the garden (yes, summer can be an excellent time to be ill). Spending this idle time, with some reflections on life which hospital visits seem to bring inevitably, was a major factor in my decision to explore independent consulting as an option.

It is not guaranteed to work - not every time I get lay in bed ill, I get disruptive ideas. Introspection remains scary. There have been times I was scared to go on holiday, in case I might get those disruptive ideas. Especially, since at first, I have only an idea of what is wrong, not what could be done to remedy the situation. I'm trying to spend more idle time now.

When I started my independent consulting, I imagined I would have more time like when I was in university - just visiting people, hanging out, chatting on the couch. Instead, I have worked more hours than ever before... So recently, I'm making more time to travel and hang out with friends and colleagues.