Looking for answers

As I explained in a previous blog post , I feel that trying to progress only by using books, the Internet and our local agile community exchanges does not provide us/me the tools to be really efficient. A few months ago, Alexandre sent me an Internet link to a group of Europeans who intend to build a network with different goals. If you read Olaf’s post , you will understand the full story, but the first important event was in Madrid at the XP2011 conference, where more than 30 people proposed a vision of the ALE Network . That is summarized in the video below. Utopian? If you take a look at the ideas , I bet you would tell yourself: there are too many ideas and nothing realistic will happen. A network the size of Europe seems big to me from a transport point of view. I was thinking myself about making a call this summer, but I was thinking about a closer border. It could be the Franco-Provençal territory first, then its extension would be done step by step. But the ALE...

The “ Club Agile Rhône Alpes ” was born in Grenoble and then, its creators helped us, Lyon citizens, to develop a section in our town . On Tuesday 7th of June, we hold a retrospective of this year’s activities. This backward-looking session also helped us to exchange about our general feelings of Agile/Lean in our area. Previous to the retrospective, Stephane made a brief introduction of his telecom lab and concluded by asking questions like: How could I teach agile to my students? What is the first step for agile in a research context? I understood Stephane is interested to be more active in our community. This is great news, because our active group was mostly composed of coaches and industrial profiles. Having a researcher will probably help us to define clearer goals and also push us to review the new research papers in our fields of knowledge. Welcome Stephane. Romain led the retrospective and proposed the speedboat game to achieve it. We didn’t accurately follow the fin...

Two months ago, Mix-IT took place in Lyon, and our team ( JUG Lyon + CARA ) will soon give some feedback about this event. For my part, I learned a lot. Below are a few points that I want to share with you. Context The idea of a conference in Lyon was initiated by JUG Lyon, and then they proposed that we (Lyon Club Agile Rhône-Alpes) co-organise it with them. For me, Agile Grenoble is the main Agile conference in this region and organising a similar event would be pointless. Therefore, a combination of Agile content with technical knowledge was a clever way to not tread on anyone’s toes. Self-organised team We talk a lot about self-organised teams in the Agile world, but most of the time someone defines the scope of the work. To be fair, Agnes’s ( JUG + Jduchess ) expertise in event organisation really, made the difference, because she really made sure everything was covered. For the first time in my life, I saw a group of people in which ideas were generated every day, ...

A few days ago, when I understood teenagers do not know who is Bin Laden , I really feeled that 5 years is a lots. So I don't wait anymore.  I posted this video which is one of my favorite. A golden oldie!. If you want to know more about the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint, read Guy's article. Sources: Yahoo search Blog : Teens Don’t Know Who Osama Bin Laden Is, According to Yahoo! Search Trends Guykawasaki : How to Change the World: The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

A c olleague posted the following video to emphasize his thoughts about important things. Do we need a break in our life to understand what is important? There are a few similarities with Steve Job' Stanford Commencement Speech, where he tells three stories...

The lean startup idea is moving forward, and Eric Ries is about to launch a book called "The Lean Startup". Eric is currently promoting this book by giving some talks. Please find below the one he gave to Google New York. If you don’t know him yet, check his blog or have a look at the previous post I made last year.

Everybody can blame their top managers for a good reason. But we can really judge them when they talk about us from outside the company. How many times do they need to say that we are smart, to make sure we believe them? What is Eric Schmidt's score?