If you see anything about LMAX - the Disruptor, Continuous Delivery, or even the selection criteria for hiring developers, you’ll see that LMAX is pretty keen on Agile. However, no-one’s documented the Agile process there, as far as I know. Although I personally had it on my todo list, I never had the motivation, the hook to do it. And I realised eventually that’s because I’m not sure it’s a process that would work very well for another team, in another company, working in another business.

Devoxx 2012 from Roy van Rijn on Vimeo.

Devoxx topped off a crazy two months of conferences. I’ve heard people talk about the conference season in the past, and been slightly (OK, very) jealous of all that jet-setting. I’ll admit, however, to a slight feeling of relief that my focus until Christmas is pretty much going to be coding. I hope.

Tori Wieldt from the Oracle Technology Network interviewed me at Devoxx. Because I was there to be on the Why We Shouldn’t Target Women panel, the interview is just another platform for me to air my views on this subject again. Yes, I am actually wearing pink….

Panel with: Martijn Verburg; Regina ten Bruggencate; Trisha Gee; Antonio Goncalves; Claude Falguière; Kim Ross

I’m back from Devoxx, having had lots of food for thought. In particular, my panel on Why We Shouldn’t Target Women generated a lot of discussion and I’m still trying to process it all.

The panel went really well, we got decent interaction from the audience, and of course my fellow panel members were awesome. I managed to restrain myself from using the opportunity as my own personal soap box and allowed other people to speak occasionally. Sadly the only male on the panel stole the show somewhat, so Antonio won’t be invited in future… Actually in seriousness, it was great to have a guy on the panel to present his point of view. It was interesting that he’s a father, highlighting that parenting issues are not the same as women’s issues, and conflating those two concerns hurts both genders. But Antonio’s hair is far too shiny and pretty and he’s funnier than I am, so I’m not standing next to him again.

Stephan wearing the Brazilian flag at the opening keynote European conferences are different (and cool) because you get to hear even more languages spoken than you usually do in London (apparently the most diverse city in the world for spoken languages). I think the idea of a Paris Devoxx with 75% of the talks in French is brilliant - I’m always banging on about diversity, we shouldn’t expect developers to learn in English only.