Scan Agile 2012 conference was held on Thursday 8th of March. Great day which really made a difference. Here’s a small summary of the talks I went to.
Venkat Subramaniam
While I had the pleasure of meeting Venkat Subramaniam fall 2011 through a Sysart Hotspot event and knew about his excellent presentation skills, I was skeptic about the refactoring topic. Would I benefit from yet another one short refactoring lesson? In short, I did benefit. The approach was on the motivation of refactoring, not on the how part. Nothing really new, but repetition is the key for learning.
Make it work, make it better
He also pointed out a book called On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by Zinsser which is said to apply both natural and programming languages. I just ordered it.
Joseph Pelrine
Joseph talked about Cynefin. While interesting I felt the talk could have delivered more by giving examples and advice on applying the Cynefin.

Apply, inspect and adapt
Kati Vilkki
Kati talked about creating a continuous improvement culture. Feedback loops, safety to fail and empowerment were among the topics covered. Loads of good of information.
When did you feel full of energy in your work life?
Chris Matts
Chris is a funny guy who said that if we get only one thing out of the talk, let it be this:
Protect revenue
The talk was in the rough stages and perhaps I wasn’t the main audience for it. However, the searching for examples and producing a model an “Olaf” with “Bob” for understanding the system was something which will stay in my head for a long time.
Marko Taipale
Marko showed four cases of fuckups. Queues and visualization were the main points I got out of it.
Reidar Wasenius
20 minutes of Aivobic from a funny PersonalBrainer. See the following video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-9efXeMuRI.
Summary
Like many others have said, the best thing which I got out of Scan Agile 2012 was the encouragement and enthusiasm. 60 minutes was too long for most of the talks. Perhaps we’ll see shorter ones next year?
Afterparty with free drinks was great of course.