Behind the scenes with the Program Committee- Pär Sikö

We will be featuring program committee (link: http://oredev.org/2012/about-us) member insights on Øredev in upcoming newsletter editions. For it is their curiosity and thirst for increased knowledge that is the inspiration for session subjects and speaker invitations. Several of them shared their thoughts on the content and the Øredev experience. First up is Pär Sikö, who chimes on  a couple of the speakers and sessions he's responsible for and looking foward to.

An accomplished speaker himself, he and fellow committee member Martin Gunnarson, have co-presented at conferences around the world. In fact, the first time they graced the stage together was at Øredev when they were asked to do a lightning talk. Both surprised and delighted with this debut experience, this talk would turn out to be the first of many.
With a multifaceted point of view of Øredev, being on the committee provided Pär with the opportunity to influence the overall schedule, something he has been interested in doing for a long time. 

Speakers?

"Koshuke Kawagushi is a very well known name in our community and when I sent the invitation letter to him I could never dream of him accepting it.

Jonas Birgersson is a person that has the same kind of "reality distortion" field that Steve Jobs had. He's a guy with an incredible story that is both exiting and fun."

Sessions?"

I will definitely attend the Jenkins, Structure101 and UX sessions."

Thanks Pär. You and Martin have earned your handmade cookies.

Jim McCarthy will be presenting the keynote "Culture Hacking and the coming era of Magnificence" on Wednesday evening of the conference. 

We asked him to elaborate on culture hacking and he and his wife Michele, (and colleague) were kind enough to oblige. You can find out much more about the McCarthys at their website http://www.mccarthyshow.com/

Culture Hacking: The Magnificent Destiny of Software and the People Who Use It
By Jim and Michele McCarthy

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The era of designed culture begins now. 
What is a culture?
A culture both describes and shapes a group. It is made up of a set of elements:  shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices.  And more.  Any group who lives according to a unique set of these elements has a culture. Corporations, civic groups, and even families have their own cultures.
There are millions, maybe billions, of cultures.
How do things stand with cultures now?
Cultures are something you more or less inherit.  You walk into them and take your best guess about how they work. There is no way to opt in or out.
Cultures are made up of a jumble of attitudes and practices along with a concoction of rules, mores, and taboos. Typically, none of it is written down. There are no references, guides, or even explicit rules for the cultures in which you live. At the extremes, there may be laws, or formal corporate policies. Someone might help you. Otherwise, you are on your own. It’s anybody’s game.
Whether or not a given culture is comfortable to live in, productive for the people who work in it, or helpful or rewarding in any way for anyone at all is pretty much an accident of fate.
 
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In 1996, we began experimenting with team cultures in a way that would change things. 
To address the specific problem of self-destructive behaviors within teams in corporations, we created and repeated an experiment. Our experiment requires that a group of people do the following over a period of four or five days:
Form an aligned teamCreate a state of shared visionDesign, implement and deliver a great product.In this environment, we found we could rapidly develop and deploy new cultural elements as they were discovered and/or created. Every innovation was repeatedly tested by many teams in different situations.
We have been iterating the same experiment for the last 16 years.

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We assessed  the results of the ongoing experiments in two ways. We looked for correlations between experimental elements and the state of that team’s end product.We examined the effects of cultural elements on individual team members:what they felt was their most significant learning or collaborative experiencetheir immediate sense of personal gainwhether or not any gains persisted into their post-experiment life.Using these rough measures, we determined which innovations were most effective and which could be discarded.  The new knowledge from each experiment was recorded and passed on to succeeding teams as their starting point.
We continued to experiment in our own teamwork laboratory. We also began trying out the most successful practices in everyday corporate settings. As it turns out, we were also unconsciously inventing the process of incrementally creating cultures.
 

As agile development and all it’s methodologies are becoming buzz words in the industry, everyone’s eager to claim being part of the movement. One common mistake is to focus in on what each individual can do to change. While improving individual performance is of course important, for agile development, the old adage “A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link” continues to hold its strength. It is team performance that is essential, and where the big improvements and greater success are to be found. As a team, we are able to achieve so much more than we can as single individuals. As longtime supporters of all things concerning “Individuals and Interactions”, we are featuring an entire day at Øredev, dedicated to presenting a handbook for launching successful agile teams. Attendees will gain knowledge of not only how to start an agile team and get it up and running, but also how to accelerate and continuously improve. The aim is to provide you with the tools to create small miracles.The day starts with Diana Larsen telling us how to achieve lift-off for the agile team to get it up and running. Next, Catherine Powell will explore varying agile team structures with real world examples of what makes agile teams perform well. After lunch, Karl Scotland will present kanban thinking, with tools to measure and improve your team. Jim McCarthy will introduce us to the core protocols: a set of rules that makes cooperation effective and smooth. Finally we invite you to a deluxe double session on Dialogue sheets with Allan Kelly. This workshop will give you hands on experience with this effective tool created specifically for facilitator free workshops, to be implemented in your team. Join us for a whole day of fun, that by day’s end will arm you with a sleek selection of tools you can start employing right away. And- did we mention you will get your own dialogue sheet to take home? Good times are in store! Come and discover just how powerful teamwork is with Øredev! //Jakob Klamra

At Øredev 2011, Alexis Ohanian gave the kick off keynote.  Well known and respected for his activism in protecting the freedom of the information superhighway, Alexis has been crowned "Mayor of the Internet" by Forbes Magazine. He is publishing a book, "Without Your Permission- How the 21st Century will be made not managed" -for release in the Fall of 2013. And more recently, President Obama found time to stop by and and answer questions on reddit, co-founded by Ohanian in 2005. We say 'Kudos Alexis!' You can see his keynote h ere.  A growing host of other excellent video selections from the Øredev library are available as well. All downloadable and sharable. Follow Alexis at @alexisohanian and learn more by visiting his site alexisohanian.com

Hosting such an illustrious and rising star gives us a happy feeling and a terrific souvenir. What kind of souvenirs will we create this year to look back on in the next? That's always an exciting facet of constructing an annual event. You get one chance to perform, and without a doubt, everyone contributes and magic moments are spontaneously styled, to be carried away in our collective hearts and hard drives . We will be featuring different contributors to the conference in upcoming newsletters. If there is something or someone you would like highlighted, please contact kathy.compton@oredev.org. Visit our speaker list, http://oredev.org/2012/speakers for a kickstart on ideas. As we said, we love to give back. And to look back. But the absolute best is looking ahead!