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Thoughts after ALE2012

The second ALE (Agile Lean Europe) main event occurred in Barcelona the 29th-31st August 2012. At the beginning of the second day, an energising passion could be felt and those who were in Berlin last year, understood that the ALEnetwork magic is repeatable. I would like to thank all the organisers for this gift and hope others will follow their example. A thousand tips, smiles, books, domains of knowledge to discover, etc. are now somewhere in my brain. Some of them will reemerge later, some are already digested. So here below are those currently on my mind.   People in action ALE participant engagement is probably the most astonishing differentiator with other events. During the full three days, at every moment, the attendees proposed, shared and enlightened workshops and sessions. All of them are passionate, with different levels of knowledge. Most of them have an activity related to the ALEnetwork, like organising an event for their local community, running online pr...

Organising a conference, Mix-IT 2012

On the 26th of April 2012, Mix-IT 2012 took place in Lyon. This second edition was handled by the same team as the first. As the internal organisation had matured, the team was more relaxed and the pressure only soared in the last days before the conference. The following paragraphs concern my own feelings and what I learned. This is not the Mix-IT team view, which is available on the Mix-IT web site. Organising an IT conference is a pleasant exercise, mainly due to the rewards of meeting passionate people and skilled speakers. Hereafter, find a list of points to address when you want to launch a conference and my current opinion related to Mix-IT.   Defined goals : If you just launched an event without goals in mind, being consistent in the organisation would be hard. Choices would be difficult to make and would lead to long hours of unproductive discussion. For me, the Mix-IT goals are: The entry price must be affordable to every IT guy. Even an unemployed perso...

Eric Berlow: How complexity leads to simplicity

Ecologist Eric Berlow illustrates how you can simplify an overwhelming infographic to a few elementary points.

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Using her story telling abilities, she shares a deep insight from her research. Think about this: 14:13: Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.”

Happy new year 2012

May this new year, bring many sharing ideas and peaceful times. I wish you a awesome new year.

xALEc first session

Update:  please find the xALEc Dashboard here .   xALEc is an ALE online open space using Google Hangouts every Monday 9:30 pm CET. Adrian, (@adibolb), Jaumes (@JaumeJornet ) and I had the first xALEc session on December 12th, 2011. The session was like a physical open space session: a great conversation, not focusing precisely on the proposed subject. We collected a few tips and answers to questions we hadn’t asked ourselves before the beginning of the session. So it works, and please find below some remarks and a few improvements to consider for the next ones. Twitter is the best place for sharing links before the sessions using the #xALEc tag. Sessions can be proposed anytime during the day. The session starts at 9:30 pm. Leaders may prefer to open the Google Hangout with extras, 5 minutes before the session, The language barrier will broken after 5 minutes of conversation (enjoy each accent). We are not there to speak English but to improve our Agile/Lean...

xALEc - An ALE open space online

Update:  please find the xALEc Dashboard here . Last week, I talked with Olaf and Marcin about the possibility of meeting ALE guys online and sharing ideas and problems. But how could it be done? Using Internet communication tools for group conversations became a common practice a few years ago. Skype has been mainstream for this purpose for years. Due to its paid video offer for groups, only the voice system is really used. Google has proposed its Hangout system for a few months with a free video offer for groups. The availability of this function allows everybody to think about free group meetings online. Also, the facilities to use Google Documents in the hangout, provides a full online collaboration framework. Still to come, Google promised, a streaming facility for the people who want to listen to a conversation ( on air ). The open space format is finding more and more advocates in a wide range of communities and contexts. Future conferences will be more a mixture o...