What's New for the Week of May 29, 2006

Here's our host news this week:

Esther is back from a few relaxing days at the cabin and getting ready for Secrets of Agile Teamwork next week in Portland.

Jerry opened the summer cabin in Santa Fe National Forest. He's looking forward to his upcoming June 11 keynote at ICCA National Conference in Newark, NJ. And, in June 12, he'll be book signing in New York City, place to be announced soon.

Don will be starting a collaboration on a Diagram of Effects for Context Switching (aka multi-tasking) with Willem van den Ende on the wiki. And he'll be spending time with daughter and grandchildren late in the week in DC.

June marks Steve's last month as a large corporation employee. He turns over one of his remaining projects this week. He continues to confer with colleagues about starting up his consulting business. He had a stimulating conversation with Jim Bullock over lunch about marketing and selling consulting services on Saturday. The conversation with Jim made it clear to Steve that the words "organizational effectiveness" rather than "organizational development" fit better for where Steve ultimately wants to focus his work. Steve is scheduled to confer with Stuart Scott this week.

Dave and family took a short vacation to Mariposa, in California's Gold Country. He's working this week to help a client build out a system for running developer tests in parallel across multiple machines.

Johanna is in her office this week, finishing her conference deliverables for her England trip in June.

AYE Classic Article - Five Frequent Feedback Flaws

We all agree on feedback's importance. Feedback tells us what works and what needs to change. Do you sabotage your feedback efforts? This week's AYE Classic Five Fatal Feedback Flaws by Naomi Karten points to five areas you may be able to improve.

What's New for the Week of May 22, 2006

Here's our host news this week:

Esther heads up north with her husband and her new dog for a few days of hiking and relaxation.

Don's back in North Carolina working on client projects. Additionally this week he'll be practicing Farmer Meditation.

Steve spent much of last week writing XSLTs and documenting them. He typically helps define the requirements rather than do the programming work so he relishes the experience of solving a problem at a different level. He hopes to wrap up the programming work this week.

Johanna is finally home after two weeks on the road, catching up with email, children, and hubby. She's taking SCRUM Master training this week.

Jerry has been maintaining his blogs and Shape forum, while enjoying the generous reviews of Weinberg on Writing. Early in June, he will be in New York and New Jersey, presenting insights from the book.

Dave is happily back on the ground after a weekend of bumpy air travel. He's spending the next few weeks helping a client beef up their automated testing.

Safety Margins

What happens when there isn't a safety margin? This week's new article Safety Margin by Steve Smith points out why safety margins are needed and how to present the information to management. You can find other articles in the AYE Library on the Article page.

What's New for the Week of May 15, 2006

Here's our host news this week:

Don's working in Williamsburg, Virginia this week. When not busy with client work, he intends to visit some historic sites.

Esther brought her new dog home on Friday. The newest member of the pack is a French Bulldog named Pudge. (That's Pudge on the right.)

Steve is thrilled to announce that he is starting his own independent consulting business on July 1.

Jerry has just returned from another writers conference--two, in fact. Doing lots of phone consulting, avoiding travel as much as possible. Food poisoning soured the last trip.

Dave is helping a client untangle a large pile of legacy code.

Johanna returned from the recruiter's conference to spend a weekend at home. She's at Star East (along with Esther) this week, leading the Behind Closed Doors tutorial, facilitating problem-solving sessions, signing books, and reconnecting with colleagues she hasn't seen in a while.

AYE Classic Article - A Different Kind of Conference

You’ve probably attended a conference at some point in your professional career. The format is nearly always the same, although the focus may be slightly different. At the front of the room is a speaker with overheads. The speaker comes to teach and everyone else comes to sit quietly, listen politely and be filled with information. Sherry Heinze tells us about a different kind of conference.

What's New for the Week of May 8, 2006

One thing that's new is that I'm behind on posting the news. Now, on to the news...

Esther has revived her newsletter and the latest issue is in the mail. If you'd like to receive the newsletter, send Esther an email including your postal address.

Dave is coaching and teaching testing skills, and is reworking some introductory testing documentation for JavaScript (which actually can be unit tested).

Steve returns home after enjoying a four day weekend in the Midwest with family and friends.

Jerry's been working with other novelists in a secluded workshop environment, with his lastest novel manuscript, "Mistress of Molecules."

Don's finished scooting around in the Carolina's (Monday and Tuesday) and will be working in the office getting ready to be in Virginia all next week.

Johanna has emailed another Pragmatic Manager email newsletter, and is off to a recruiting conference in Las Vegas this week.

In addition, the AYE brochures are in. If you would like one (or many!), email Johanna.

Peer to Peer Feedback

Have you noticed that occasionally you want to share information with someone, but aren't quite sure how to do it? This week's new article Peer-to-Peer Feedback by Esther Derby offers suggestions on helping difficult conversations go smoother. You can find other articles in the AYE Library on the Article page.

Here Comes the Schedule

The initial cut at the 2006 schedule is up. We iterate on the schedule, so when we announce a new speaker (watch this space for an announcement soon), we'll revise the schedule. The empty spaces are for any more guest session leaders and contributed sessions.

What's New for the Week of May 1, 2006

Here's our host news this week:

Dave is finishing two writing projects, and is cleaning up loose ends before starting two new ones.

Steve is home this week working on the final phase of two projects.

Don will be focusing on finishing two projects and a couple of articles this week. His article Shifting the Burden - Whose Monkey is It? has been posted.

Esther is headed to northern Minnesota to meet an adult dog who seeks a new domestic situation. If all goes well, they'll decide to be pack-mates. Other than that, she still has her nose to the grindstone, working on the
Retrospectives Book.

Jerry has been celebrating with Dani over her new book, which is now for sale on the web. See "Teaching People Teaching Dogs" .

Johanna is working in her kitchen while she's waiting for a broken heating pipe and all associated broken things to be fixed. She's written down two chapters of the project management and is hoping to write another chapter this week.