Why Bother Going to Agile 2009 or Agile 2010??

Agile 2009 was a blast again this year. I learned a lot and met lots of incredibly interesting people. While talking to a friend about MVP for GUIs I realized that somebody that had just presented on the topic was sitting at a nearby table and we asked him about it and got a great answer.

I believe there are lots of folks out there that would get a lot out of some of the conferences that are out there, like Agile 2009, if only they went once and experienced it. I've decided to dedicate some portion of my time to getting the word out on that. As a first step I created an impromptu video which includes many great answers to the question "why go to a conference vs just surfing the web and reading books?" Next time I'll be better prepared and do an even better version.

The video was taken while the conference was in full swing, but it was the last day and some folks were tired of going to sessions and were just hanging out in the open area. Esther Derby was doing an "Open Jam" session, Alistair Cockburn was just hangin' out, Dave Anderson was having a spirited discussion on something interesting (I know not what), and others were networking, just catching up on e-mail or waiting for the next session that they wanted to attend.

I'll post more impressions of the conference soon.