Organizational Meeting and Thoughts about Future Dojos

[Ron Romero]

We've suspended dojos thru the end of the year.  I'd like to suggest that our first meeting of the new year be an organizational meetings.  What do want the Dojo to be?  How do we meet the needs/wishes of developers in the community?  How can we change the format to achieve these goals?

We can start the discussion here on the email list.  I'd like to start by listing what I think are the core strengths of the Dojos.  Beyond these three items, I'm wide open to suggestions on format and content.

1. I like the hands-on development in the dojos.  Other groups exist to talk about or be lectured to about software development.  I see the Dojo as being unique in Austin in that we actually write code (with the exception of hack nights, but see #2).
   
2. Similar to the above (and perhaps making us more unique), we engage in group coding.  I think we should retain the idea that at least some of the attendees are working together, though I think we should also allow for multiple groups, or people doing solo tasks.
   
3. Some have told me that the best parts of the Dojos are the informal discussions about software development.  I'd like to make sure we retain that, and also specifically encourage it.  This is different from a formal meeting, but similar to Open Space conferences.
   

This leaves a lot of options.  What do y'all want?  What would get you to come out to a Dojo?

Thanks,

Ron

[Ron Romero]

I've been thinking about dojos -- the real kind, the martial arts
kind. One of the interesting things is that everyone's not doing the
same thing at the same time. Some people are getting a group lesson,
some practicing katas alone, masters teaching student, masters working
on something challenging, and some people just talking.

In our dojos, we've usually had only two things going on: the kata,
and free-form discussion. What if made the dojos more like a hack
night. Bring something you're working on, show it to some people,
code together, code alone, whatever. I'd even suggest keeping the
katas, for beginners, students, and managers who used to code. We can
work on free software projects, or people can even bring commercial
stuff, like the Android projects I'm doing on the side. And, of
course, we would keep the free form discussion about whatever stuff
people are interested in.

Whadja think?

Ron

On Dec 20, 11:18 am, Ron Romero <zir...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We've suspended dojos thru the end of the year.  I'd like to suggest that
> our first meeting of the new year be an organizational meetings.  What do
> want the Dojo to be?  How do we meet the needs/wishes of developers in the
> community?  How can we change the format to achieve these goals?
>
> We can start the discussion here on the email list.  I'd like to start by
> listing what I think are the core strengths of the Dojos.  Beyond these
> three items, I'm wide open to suggestions on format and content.
>

>    1. I like the hands-on development in the dojos.  Other groups exist to

>    talk about or be lectured to about software development.  I see the Dojo as
>    being unique in Austin in that we actually write code (with the exception
>    of hack nights, but see #2).

>    2. Similar to the above (and perhaps making us more unique), we engage

>    in group coding.  I think we should retain the idea that at least some of
>    the attendees are working together, though I think we should also allow for
>    multiple groups, or people doing solo tasks.

>    3. Some have told me that the best parts of the Dojos are the informal

[Sukant Hajra]

Excerpts from Ron Romero's message of Mon Dec 26 12:50:51 -0600 2011:

>
> I've been thinking about dojos -- the real kind, the martial arts
> kind. One of the interesting things is that everyone's not doing the
> same thing at the same time. Some people are getting a group lesson,
> some practicing katas alone, masters teaching student, masters working
> on something challenging, and some people just talking.

I just posted about fallacies to the Agile Austin list. There are a lot of
fallacies out there, and some make for easy cheap shots like the "weak analogy
fallacy." Our industry is saturated with analogies, and many of them have
helped me, so long as I remember to keep them in check.

However, the martial arts analogy is a pretty uninteresting to me. I've seen
people like Corey Haines interpret the "kata" idea as highly practiced
executions of very boring problems. Implementing an artificial problem really
fast with artificial iterations is really uninteresting to me. It makes for a
cute video to post on Vimeo/YouTube, I guess. But it's not the most
interesting part of programming for me. The interesting and hard part is the
context-sensitive thinking -- the part that's never the same twice -- not the
route part, like editor keystrokes.

> In our dojos, we've usually had only two things going on: the kata,
> and free-form discussion. What if made the dojos more like a hack
> night. Bring something you're working on, show it to some people,
> code together, code alone, whatever. I'd even suggest keeping the
> katas, for beginners, students, and managers who used to code. We can
> work on free software projects, or people can even bring commercial
> stuff, like the Android projects I'm doing on the side. And, of
> course, we would keep the free form discussion about whatever stuff
> people are interested in.

This makes a lot of sense to me. If people want direction, you can design a
set of problems that seem like they've had the right mix of complexity, fun,
and technical dependencies.

This is exactly what I'm challenging myself to do with the student mentorship
group. It's /hard/ to come up with pedagogy. With students, I feel the need
for pedagogy is more valuable. Professionals are a little better about
self-study.

-Sukant