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HCT Postgraduate Workshop

Thursday 6th December was the Human-Centred Technology Postgraduate Workshop that we* organise at the University of Sussex.

This year things were done a bit differently.  Rather than traditional research paper presentations the day was re-focussed on research methods (by year) appropriate to everyone's level and interests.  The idea was to take full advantage of the functionality of the Sussex Creativity Zone (CETL) and provide the chance for all attendees to critically reflect on the research approaches they are taking.

Unexpectedly I found out the week before that I was to take part as well.  I am glad I did - even if my digital poster did suffer somewhat from being generated at the last moment - as it was enjoyable and useful.

So, on the day, I finished class early so that we could all get to the workshop.  We arrived during Ben's talk on 'Doing a PhD: Managing Your Supervisor', and I quickly had to jump up again to make refreshments for the first tea-break.  The day was then split into alternating sessions; digital poster presentations by year, and practical sessions targeted to level. 

In my case:

• Activity Session 1: Speed dating for the 3rd year doctoral students, elevator pitches for presenting your research.  In my case I repeated to each person I sat with: "I have no idea what I am doing!"  We then analysed the challenges and the shared positives. 
• Activity Session 2: Drawing pie-charts of our work life balance, looking at the work we completed in the previous week.  Mine was depressing, but I expected no less having started to deliberately reflect on this anyway.  (Nothing like having to teach time-management to make you notice just how badly you are doing.)  We then drew out the drivers and some general tips for the group. 
• Activity Session 3: Pairing up to sketch out our ideal thesis: type, contribution, thesis and structure.  I found this useful, even though it is a bit premature for me.  The shape could be anything at present.  Afterwards my supervisor happened by and commented that at least I knew I needed an abstract, introduction, literature review, discussion and conclusion!  Ho hum.

All in all a really useful day for me, and probably a good motivator for helping me to clarify just what I need to be doing at this stage in my game.

Challenges:

• Thinking time / tangible output
• Constraining the focus / area of study
• Maintaining a focus on the positive / not beating yourself up
• Barriers/difficulties (Technology, tools, pragmatics, financial)
• Pathological patterns - hard to break
• Theory
• OOPB / Too much to do
• Temporal and technical constraints
• Transition between disciplines to make contributions

Positives:

• Novelty
• Freedom to explore
• Found method to tell the story despite lack of clarity in literature
• Knowing where you are going and what you are doing
• Lots of potential

Drivers:

• Self-pressure / last minute
• Deadlines (internal/external)
• Anxiety
• Other people's agendas, requests and expectations
• Structure
• Priorities
• Problem/Barrier
• Boundaries
• Urgent vs. important

Tips:

• Explicit thinking time
• Explicit downtime
• Calming activities - i.e. list making
• Assure yourself that you can do it
• Talk about your problems
• Breaking up big tasks

My photos of the day are here.

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* Thankfully this year I was allowed to take a backseat organisational role and was only responsible for registrations, payments and receipts.

Hackday Dojo

The Brighton Farm organised Hackday at the Brighthelm Centre was a wonderful chance for the coding dojo group to get together to work on something different and fun.

We reserved six places for the dojo regulars and arrived with no idea what the group would be working on for the day.  Given the project-focus of the Hackday it wasn't run as a normal dojo session, we left the Randori behind in exchange for pair-development, stand-ups and iterations.  Using the 5 minutes before we started to get an idea for the resources available we came up with the idea for generating a real-world interactive game using Inform 7 and the many different sensors that had been brought by Thom Hopper. 

Tristan (from whom I stole the photo) has described the result as a "crazy Heath Robinson unholy mashup.  A text-based adventure game was enhanced to allow real-world interaction, such as pouring hot coffee on a temperature-sensing chip, or scanning cards embedded with RFID tags.  Extremely inventive and successfully delivered on time - a testament to Scrum and the the agile programming techniques that they used."

Tom describes it as "one of the most obscure combinations of technology I've ever been involved with: a text adventure game written for the day hooked up to a web server, a temperator sensor and RFID reader. Somehow we managed to balance a plot on top of all this and got the various bits of tech (Inform 7, web server, SFTP server, Java Robot classes, RFID reader, USB temperature sensor, a load of custom Java serial code and probably some other bits I've forgotten about) working towards a more-or-less-coherent goal... all run over 3-4 hours, obviously in an Agile fashion :)"

Jez gives a very detailed account of the day.  He summarises: "The eventual demo worked a treat. Thom had adapted the temperature sensor at the last minute to be embedded in the bottom of a cut off Coke can. Hot or cold liquid could be poured into this and be in direct contact with the sensor. This would post a message to a web server which the demo laptop was polling. The java Robot API was then used to write the appropriate command into the Inform game window at the prompt."

He rather interestingly comments on the two different focuses for the game-play development: "I was focussed on producing a single simplest interaction to prove that the system would work, whereas Simon was interested in the story as a whole (i.e. start with the solution and work backwards)."  The narrative game-play vs technical implementation should have been split into separate development groups sooner, but this dynamic for is an interesting issue for iterative text-adventure game development.

For my part, although starting with helping out with the game development, I ended up finding myself pulled into the facilitator role.  I'm not sure whether this helped the group retain focus, avoid obstacles, and coordinate - but I would like to think I wasn't just loitering around as this beautiful piece of madness was developed.

My sponsored fortune cookie said: "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" (Winston Churchill).  The result was crazy, but certainly did work!

Discussion:
http://www.farmhackday.com/2007/11/21/built-at-hack-day/
http://www.jroller.com/jnicho02/entry/fun_at_brighton_hack_day
http://www.tomhume.org/2007/11/brighton-digita.html
http://blog.cogapp.com/2007/11/22/hack-day-roundup/

Photos:
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/brightonhackday/

Christmas Geek Dinner - Year of the Social

It was lovely to attend the Christmas Geek Dinner.  I was able to arrive late and be surprised about what had been arranged.  Bliss.

I'm remaining nothing but glad that I took the sensible route and deliberately stepped back a bit from co-organising the girl geek dinners.  I was severely over-committed, spread thin.   Although I had put a lot of work into setting up the dinners, now they're established and my time is precious, the time came to redistribute my time more effectively.

The night itself was great fun, with an interesting talk from Aral*, lovely food, gifts and a fun raffle.  It was a tribute to all the hard work put in by Simon, Devi and Rosie.

Although it was strange to not be involved, especially given my tendency towards volunteering for everything, attending as normal attendee was a sheer pleasure, and I hope to do so again soon!

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* Amused that 2007 really was the year of the social, both locally (more socials than ever) and globally (more focus on social and communication media).

Agile SkillSwap

I had the sheer pleasure of giving a SkillSwap talk on agile with Tom entitled 'Agile: Iterating the Reasons' on 21st November.  As it occurred the day after XPDay, although shattered, there were a lot of arguments fresh in our heads.

I did the dry conceptual basics and Tom countered with the enthused practicalities.  It was the first time I had ever co-presented and it turned out to be a complete joy, together we could look at a subject from more than one angle and bounce ideas off each other.  I think it also gave a nicer pace.

I'd be curious to see whether much study has been done on co-presenting for teaching - I think there may be a strong parallel to pair programming.  Quality was improved, interest (at least on our side!) was maintained, and - as this type of presenting is much less draining - may be more efficient.  Teaching is exhausting, but much less so under these conditions.  Theoretically it may be possible to teach more classes under this model where the work is shared.

I loved doing this, and just hope that the people attending gained something from it as well.  Our slides are available on request.

d.Construct

In trying to reflect on d.Construct 2007 I fear I have less to say than I would like.

From the volunteer’s perspective, a role I have filled many times at many other conferences, it was by far the slickest organised conference I have ever attended.  Smoother even than the ones I used to organise back in the day.  I’m glad to have helped for the little I could.

As a conference it also had the nicest T-shirts.  This must be true as I actually plan to wear mine again.  The gift bag was also darned good.  These things so often get overlooked.

I remember that I was on a high from having my first pint of cider in a month the night before.

I remember I was jet-lagged, having flown back from the states and burning man the day before.

I remember the microphone not working just when I needed it to. 

I remember really enjoying the talks.*

I remember drinking afterwards.

I remember drinking some more.

I remember wondering if I should have had some dinner.

And now I seem to have a notepad full of drawn faces, but I don’t recall who drew them.

This probably all summates to a very good conference (v.g.c.).  Shame I don’t seem to have much in the way of notes.

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* I unfortunately clashed slightly with the talk that related to my research area, which somewhat wound me up through not mentioning all the masses of work being done in the area.  It wasn’t a bad talk, in fact it had incredibly well-done slides, just not for me.  Couldn’t be helped.

I did however develop an instant crush on Matt Webb for being the first person in my recollection to ever mention Grice in a presentation.   I wish I had not just hit jetlag nap-time so I could have focussed more on the talk overall as it seemed potentially really fascinating; sadly sleep was battering at my concentration.

Brighton Agile Forum

Prompted by the interest that several companies and individuals around Brighton have expressed in Agile methods I have started the ball rolling on creating a Brighton-based agile group.  Much as I enjoy travelling up to London to attend XtC*, it would be lovely if there were such a group down here.  I think I would find it very beneficial and so would many others. 

So, I have started to set one up.

The idea is to build a Brighton Agile Forum community; through monthly pub get-togethers combined with the standard wiki and mailing list.   

It is very early days yet, so I am spreading the word to gather interest.  Anyone who may be interested should feel free to add information or re-write the wiki, sign up to the mailing list, spread the word, and generally get involved if they are interested.  (Everyone knows the drill.)

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* Err, I suspect that should really say 'despite having to travel up to London I still enjoy attending XtC'...

Brighton Coding Dojo Night

I have been so in shock at the Coding Dojo Night being over and done with that I have been very lax in posting about it.

Due to the generous sponsorship of the University of Sussex, Agile Alliance and Future Platforms we managed to create something quite special in a lovely venue.  We were able to provide food, plenty drink and prizes (books courtesy of Apress, and Sushi lessons thanks to Okinami). 

We had a badgemaker  (manned by Dom), thanks to the lovely resource centre, which allowed everyone to name themselves and give us a feel for the mix of programming levels present (people chose a colour badge according to whether they felt they were a novice, journeyman or master).

The night started with a Aikido demo (co-staring my brother and Tom Hume), and was then followed by a talk from Karl Scotland briefly explaining agile and the history of the coding dojos.

We then launched into our four groups of ten people to have a stab at programming in Inform 6. (Although Inform 7 would have been easier to pick up and had a nicer interface, we liked the very traditional style of Inform 6).

Each group worked together for an hour and a half to collectively create a text adventure game.  They weren't the most playable of games given such a short space of time to learn and produce, but they were fun to produce.  The code should appear here soon should anyone want to take a look.   

The photo pool from the night is looking fabulous as well:

     

 

I'm really happy so many people came and contributed to help to make it such a great night.

Thanks to the lovely people at InQbate for helping set this up - and putting so much effort into making the venue really special.  And obviously thanks to everyone who organised this alongside me.

Brighton Girl Geek Dinner - April

The third Brighton girl geek dinner happened last Tuesday, and feedback suggests it was a great success. 

Aleks Krotoski gave us a very interesting talk on 'The Social Life of Virtual Worlds' which managed to appeal even to those that had never managed to click with Second Life. 

The projector was mildly better behaved, thanks to the ministerings of Neil from FP, but we quickly had to discard the PA system due to painful feedback.

We introduced two new things that impacted on everyone this time, both sensibly prompted by Rosie: a no smoking policy (which is only fair when food is involved), and a money box.  The latter is to help us continue to provide a lovely night for everyone, while allowing attendees to show their support. 

I must sort new music for the next one though - I'm starting to be aware that every night so far has kicked off with John Farnham's The Voice.

With a Bang

As Ivan puts it: “There is something of an established scene in Brighton and some long-standing mailing lists that propagate this sort of thing”.  Most (almost all really) of [the new events] are free. A lot of them are about learning new cool stuff and sharing knowledge. For instance, some of the topics discussed at the geek dinners were, in Simon’s words: “Phone, jQuery, OpenStreetMap and ExpressionEngine….”. In Johanna Hunt’s words “The event consists of a friendly evening meal, designated speaker and lots of people! You don’t need to think of yourself as a ‘geek’ to attend”. [...] I think this is the beauty of these events. Encouraging not only geeks but anyone who is interested. Good free food is an added incentive to us Brighton foodies.
-- Brighton with a Bang

I find it interesting that so many social events have kicked off in Brighton in such a short space of time - I am not sure what shift in the landscape led to it though.  There must have been a previous need, but it is lovely to see so many people coming together now to learn from each other and give support now in more than just a virtual way; there are some things that for me are lost in mailing lists and forums no matter how vital and useful they may be.   

Anyways, always nice to see my name crop up.

Sussex Geek Dinner

Collected the rental mic from the resource centre yesterday for the Sussex Geek Dinner (covered by recent donations).

Yet again it was a great night, single-handedly organised by Simon, and had a good talk.
Thanks to Glenn Jones from Madgex for his interesting talk on microformats.

Thanks to the PA system this time I could hear the talk as well - which made my day.

Simply Buy Tickets

Ticket sales are properly launched for the upcoming Brighton Coding Dojo night which will be held at the Creativity Zone at Sussex on 10th May as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. Tickets are £3/£2 and the night includes a full buffet (making it a real bargain). 

Public, students and professional programmers are all welcome (although some knowledge of programming constructs is preferred).

Come and join us, and tell your friends.

Coding Dojo 11

The eleventh Code Dojo (my, this is starting to look well established!) was on 26th March at the FP Offices.  We continued Kata Four (Data Munging) in Java - looking at the second part of the Kata. 

It was good to have some new people attending (PiersCawley, GrahamCarlyle and MakotoInoue) and they helped instigate a lot of interesting conversation at this session about ways to address problems, Test-Driven Development, Up-Front problem discussion (as opposed to solving), refactoring, the limitations of Java, and applications of Agile. 

I almost wish I had taken notes. 

(Thankfully the session was recorded so I can just watch the video again at another time should I choose.)

As Dom puts it: "I learned an enormous amount from the interaction this evening. [...] Chatting  afterwards made me realise how I tend to be very focussed on solving the problem at hand rather than stepping back and trying to create something beautiful."

On Biting the Heads from Chickens

Further to the Argus article about the Brighton Girl Geek Dinners we were invited to talk on BBC Southern Counties.  Interesting experience. 

I will not forget being told that a geek is a performer who likes to bite the heads from chickens.  I think we did ok for ourselves.

My father kindly recorded the session for me - onto audio cassette, a medium I have not used in a long, long time.  Old with the new.

Brainiac and Boffin and Square

Call them square or tell them they're four-eyed brainiacs. They won't mind - they call themselves geeks after all.

Uniting to celebrate their love of all things uncool, a group of technology lovers have launched their own Girl Geek Dinner nights to meet fellow boffins.

They gather at The Eagle pub in Gloucester Road, Brighton, where they socialise, talk about the latest programming software and enter a challenge to find the best means of communicating - Instant Messenger or Twitter, a site for talking about what you are currently doing?

I have some issues with the way The Argus has portrayed our Brighton Girl Geek Dinners - ah well, still good publicity.

Second Brighton Girl Geek Dinner

The Second Brighton Girl Geek Dinner again went off smoothly, and once more noone complained about my choice of background music (obviously the most important thing).

The lovely rented PA System from the community resource centre did the trick, with only minor feedback issues.  Again the set-up for the dinner was complicated by the projector at the venue, which refused to work for a good hour, with various people up on tables.  The night was saved by someone's demand for a manual we could look at.

Thankfully Niqui came prepared and gave a beautiful talk. 

I felt slightly worried that twitter may stop me from concentrating though - wondering if I should turn it off on my phone.

Dinner was sponsored by many lovely companies and we had three books to give away.  Oddly all three winners were at my table, which I swear is just a case of wonderful chance.

Photos from the night are appearing on the flickr group.

The next dinner will be in late  April, looking forward to it!

Festival Dojo

We are almost ready to launch ticket sales for the upcoming Brighton Coding Dojo night which will be held at the Creativity Zone at Sussex on 10th May as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival.   Tickets will be £3/£2 and the night will be fully catered (a real bargain).  Public, students and professional programmers are all welcome (although some knowledge of programming constructs is preferred).

Further information will become available on http://www.brightoncodingdojo.co.uk/ within the next week or so.

My major question right now is whether I think people can learn a new language and the concepts of test driven development in one session…  Should we announce the language so that people all have the chance to level the field and then apply TDD?  Should we just emphasise the learning the language together and make it an exploratory night?

This question will impact strongly on how the coding dojo night will be organised – as we cannot guarantee skill level, language or knowledge.  So far it is proving quite difficult.

The lack of clarity of purpose has affected even our publicity:

 

I fear people may expect some kind of performance-art martial-arts display on coding…

Dojos 9 and 10

19-02-2007 - Kata 4 Data Munging in Java

Enjoyable night where everyone left satisfied that they had successfully completed the first part of Kata 4 (Data Munging).  There was even time to look at some decent refactoring.  Once again there was an entertaining tension between those that believe in test-first at all times, test sometimes, and those that just don't see it at all.

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07-03-2007 - Kata 4 Data Munging (Wednesday Ruby Session)

The interesting thing for me this night was that I actually understood what was going on to a significant level, which almost tempts me to play with Ruby.  Otherwise the session was, as Dom says, "Exactly the same as the last time, we only completed the first part of the kata."   That doesn't mean it wasn't enjoyable.

Coding Dojo 8

Coding Dojo Eight was last night.  We somewhat resurrected the number of attendees by finally appealing to a language other than Java, which I think constituted a good thing and was a refreshing change.  Dom ably led the session, and had put a lot of work into preparing slides and a starting point for addressing the soduku solving challenge for a second time.

This time the problems with finishing the challenge seemed lay more in the depth of the challenge to be explored, although there was again a divide between people who prefer using TDD and those who are not so familiar with it.  The age where the solver class sat empty will stick in my mind for some time, and will remind me of the power of well-timed tea-breaks to help the group along (and not to forego them in future).

My dojo energy is currently split between organising the weekly sessions and the exciting plans for the Fringe Festival Coding Dojo Night which will be held at the InQbate Creativity Zone at the University of Sussex on 10th May.  More details will become available on the event website soon.  It's enough to say that I am very excited about it.

Also, I have finally changed the FP dojo wiki from friki to vqwiki - affording me the option to actually make it look nice down the road.  The data is all transferred and the wiki is ready to be used.

Brighton Bloggers

After a jaunt up to XtC, and some conversations about preparations for XPDay 2007, I finally made it down to the Brighton Bloggers Meetup organised by Jane.  Although I arrived at the tail-end* of the night it was obvious that the turn-out had been impressive.   It was lovely to realise how much the list had grown since back-in-the-day when I produced it (as Jane reminded me - it had perhaps 20 sites on it max), but also nice to see how many people were still around years later. 

It was a wonderful thing on her part to take on keeping track of this community and keep a living record.  I am looking forward to the next meet-up whenever it may be.  Next time I may even manage to turn up on time.

(Oh and happy fifth anniversary to Esther.)

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* I always thought it should be tale-end as that's when the best stories get told...

Coding Dojo 7

Coding Dojo Thoughts..

Session 7 (22-01-2007):
This session focussed on Sudoku Solving.  Although the group never really came close to exploring the algorithms for solving sudoku they did work hard and representing the board.  Again, this was a case where perhaps something should have been created in advance, for example an example board.  It should be interesting to see how the code they created can be continued to another session.  The new layout based on the recommendations from the previous group seemed to work well.  Now all we need is less deadly chairs...  (As ever Jez is much more reflective about the session.)

Fringe Festival:
A group of us are currently toying with the idea of running a large dojo session as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival in the exciting Cetl in Creativity space.  If the idea carries off it will be impressive.  Contact me if you are interesting in volunteering your time or support to this project.

Sussex Geek Dinner

The Brighton Girl Geek Dinner was followed the next day by the Sussex Geek Dinner, which is single-handedly organised by Simon.

This time Mikel Maron spoke beautifully about OpenStreetMap, and the audience were thoroughly engaged. 

It made me reminisce to childhood days discovering all the back paths of Brighton, when it was travelling the streets that was interesting and not just getting to a destination.  Just as the Phantom Tollbooth taught me to remember to look up.

Brighton Girl Geek Dinner

So the first Brighton Girl Geek Dinner went off very well. 

Despite my reservations about the name I was very proud to be involved in organising it, and the reception was phenomenal.  Within a day of advertising we were at full numbers, and even developed a waiting list.  This confirmed the suspicion that this was indeed something that had been missing.

Once we had fought our way past all the technical problems, Rose's talk, although very academic in form, was well received and I believe everyone had a good fun night. See the Flickr Photo Group to get a feel.

Even better, no-one complained about my choice of background music. (which was a relief!)

In typical form the prize draw, sponsored by FP and DrivenQA, had apt choices for the winners.  Initially the three numbers selected at random meant that the main prize went to Vicky Walberg (from our main sponsoring company), the second prize went to Sophie, and the third prize originally went to... me.  (Typical, but not really fair, so we redrew.)

I'm looking forward to the next one already.

Coding Dojo 6

Dojo 6 was again a quiet affair - looking at Kata 6: Anagrams.   The small-group dojo is consistently more fun and more productive, and this was generally agreed in the call I put out to the group about how we should run it in the future. 

The main things which came up this week was not interactional but organisational, which made a nice change.   I think we may be mostly settling into a rhythm for pairing.

I just need to think about this issue with layout for the next session:

(drawn by an attendee)

Dojo 5 - Return to basics

Hmm, so this week's coding dojo session was a very small one.  I'm hoping that the reduced numbers has been due to general illness and the desire to stay indoors in the warm and dry, that generally comes upon us all at this time of year, rather than anything else.

It was good to look at the binary chop kata at last.  Four implementations were managed out of five, although more were discussed.  I really wish we had had more time to actively discuss and reflect on the goals of the kata:

1. As you’re coding each algorithm, keep a note of the kinds of error you encounter. A binary search is a ripe breeding ground for "off by one" and fencepost errors. As you progress through the week, see if the frequency of these errors decreases (that is, do you learn from experience in one technique when it comes to coding with a different technique?).
2. What can you say about the relative merits of the various techniques you’ve chosen? Which is the most likely to make it in to production code? Which was the most fun to write? Which was the hardest to get working? And for all these questions, ask yourself "why?".
3. It’s fairly hard to come up with five unique approaches to a binary chop. How did you go about coming up with approaches four and five? What techniques did you use to fire those "off the wall" neurons?

It was interesting that having a pre-written test helped the group greatly to pull in the same direction, but not to produce efficient code.

I must sort out my knowledge of java for the next session - I keep feeling like this is a game I want to play rather than just watch.

Coding Dojo Revisited

So on Wednesday we held our one-off Coding Dojo session.  I was exhausted post-XPDay but thoroughly enjoyed myself.

It will probably be the last time we try to hold it on a Wednesday.

It was a slight failure in terms of attendance (dropping from 12 to 5, due to a general inability to make Wednesday sessions or confusion over date), but it ended up being great fun.

The group revised the code from the previous session.  Once again the aim was to create a text adventure game in Java, with elements specified (a tribute to 24 Hours of Inform).

This time, due to more cohesion in approach (reduced numbers led to increased turns and increased agreement, amongst other elements) the group succeeded.

It was also nice to see the spontaneous introduction of storycards by Jez (who describes the interesting features from the session much better than I can).

Dojo Game

The dojo ran again last night, and seemed to go well.  This time we started to explore representing a text adventure game.  The elements* I gave were never implemented (or even considered beyond the first 5 minutes).

I think there is starting to be an interesting tension between methodologies here.  Those that are used to development driven through TDD methods vs. those that are used to traditional methods.  Both these groups seem to be being subverted by the time constraints, as people leap in to do the one thing in the problem space that they can immediately see in their 5 minute slot, and so neither methodology leads as each individual pairing over-rules any systematicity.  The result is, simply-put, something of a mess.  Fascinating.

I am starting to think I should get people to sign ethics forms so that I can properly look at the data for how this is working.  It looks like it could produce some beautiful work.  Shame this is social and not for my PhD.

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Interesting Thoughts from Dojo Session 1: Tom, Dom, Jez, James, Joh

Very Interesting thoughts from Dojo Session 2: Tom, Jez 

Flickr Photos: CodingDojo

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One thing which I think we need to explore at the start of the next session is the purpose for the dojo. 

• Are people coming to explore a problem space, experiment with agile, learn from other people, show off their programming skills, etc? 
• What do people see the purpose of the dojo as: art, practice, learning, teaching, exploring, communicating, socialising?
• Should we be aiming to be 'completing' a task in the time period, or just exploring the start and space?

This should be to open up discussions that have already been happening in the tea-breaks and certainly not to change or formalise anything.  At the moment I think there is a very good balance in the various interests and desires of everyone involved.  A stated purpose would be limiting and restrictive.

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* A House, A Cat, A Blue Necktie, A Nodding Dog Ornament, Something Orange, and a Lift.

Dojo Checkout

The first Coding Dojo session seemed to go very well.  There was a good mix of skill-levels and some interesting approaches to the problem of representing supermarket purchases in Java (Kata 1).   One thing I found interesting was the  notable difference in speed, interaction and achievement between pairs who had prior experience of working together.  I honestly had not expected it to be so marked.

(Tom's photos are here, here, here and here.  His account of the session is here.)

Next time we need:

• A better projector screen (although our makeshift piece of paper functioned well enough, it was not ideal).
• Some clearer rules of engagement
• Forfeits, etc
• Filter coffee (so I can have some, darn that allergy)
• A better way for me to keep time
• A better microphone
• Unit testing from the beginning!

Type Club

Thanks to the generous support and enthusiasm of Tom at Future Platforms, my idle desire to set up a coding dojo in Brighton has now been realised.

Further details are available on the wiki.

I am very excited by this.  The approach potentially has so many applications for teaching programming, group work and communication skills, while also being good fun. 

I'm very much looking forward to the first night.