Thursday, April 30, 2009

Back on the Road


After a seemingly endless stay in Cleveland, I'm setting out for the road again. This time, I'm taking the big leap, heading out for 3 months, leaving on May 3nd and traveling along the east coast until the beginning of August. I'll be posting again regarding tour plans for August and beyond (hint: Chicago, Arizona, Arkansas, perhaps Hawaii), but I wanted to fill everyone in on the plans for the upcoming three months.


Where to this time? After talking to some people, looking at availability, here is the list of places:



Wow, that's a lot of driving, a bit more than 6000 miles, according to google maps. I'll be continuing doing the video interviews with the people hosting me, stopping in places and doing road thoughts videos, as well as speaking at conferences and user groups along the way.


What the heck is my pairing tour? Well, the basic premise is that I spend between 1-5 days with people, usually around 2-3, pair-programming on whatever they want to work on. What do I get out of it? Room and Board! Yup, they provide me with a place to sleep and food while I'm with them. That's it, a very simple exchange.


Interested in following my schedule via google calendar? You can by watching the Journeyman Tour public calendar. Feel free to attach it to your own calendar, or just periodically take a look. I keep it updated with where I'm at and whom I am pairing with. If you notice me at a location without a person scheduled, and you are interested in hosting me, feel free to send me an email. If the day truly is free, I'll most likely take you up on your offer.



I want to thank all of the people who are hosting me on this trip, my longest one, yet. The opportunity to work with so many excellent people, both learning and sharing my experiences, is a true blessing from the community, and I appreciate it.


I'd like to point out a couple of really cool events going on during my travels:


  • (Tampa and Orlando) Day of Ruby: these are great one-day events focused on introductory Ruby and Ruby on Rails (RoR) topics. The sessions are intended to build, from the ground up, a basic understanding of Ruby and RoR, for people interested in this fun and productive language. Oh, did I mention they are free! You can find more information at DayOfRuby.org.

  • Bucharest OpenAgile Conference: This is the first agile conference in Romania, and I've had the extreme honor of being invited to speak. It looks like a good line-up of speakers, including Ken Schweber over video link. Me, I'll be flying in to give two talks at the conference: a talk on developer practices in an agile environment (read: so you are doing agile, eh? how did your development practices change?); and, a talk on the role of testers in an agile team, based on Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory's fantastic book 'Agile Testing' and experiences of my own with testing in an agile environment.
  • Apprenticeship Patterns Seminar at Nexwerk office: I'll be video conferencing in to talk about apprenticeship and journeyman stuff.