I spent the day in Portland’s Norse Hall with about ~180 other agile practitioners.  We were there for a Software Association of Oregon open space event to discuss rthe relationship between developers and QA in Agile projects.

It was the 3rd or 4th Agile open space event I’ve attended, and as at previous events, I met some really interesting, accomplished people.  I also confirmed (again) that the agile process that we built at my previous job was actually fairly mature and effective relative to our peers.  As one of the people with a big hand in developing that process basically from the ground up, that makes me feel pretty good.  And to the extent that I can share some of the lessons learned and best practices, I do so.  So this morning at 11:00 I co-hosted a talk on “overcoming geography” – how to create and sustain an Agile software development process when some or all of the team members are remote.

The talk was well attended – maybe 40 people – and the discussion back and forth was lively and varied.   You can view my raw notes from the discussion here.  A good portion of the talk centered around offshoring and/or outsourcing, which was not part of my original intent – telecommuting being more in mind as I proposed the talk – but the people who are actively managing offshoring teams gave a lot of really great advice.

The other sessions I attended were:

- a session on common non-technical problems agile teams face and how to fix them

- a session on what to do if you don’t have stories to work from

- a session on what to do if you don’t have a QA team

As is typical with open space talks, the discussion ranged broadly, and I picked up several good nuggets of wisdom.  Among them:

1. Instead of focusing your retrospective on what bad things you need to avoid, maybe focus instead on what good things you can do more of.
2. Automation, while it has its place, is not the Holy Grail of QA achievement, and there is still very much a place for “traditional” QA activities.
3. It’s good to focus very clearly on three or four things with user stories:
   1. Get to a shared understanding of what the story encompasses.  We used to call this a system metaphor in XP.
   2. Describe clearly what done means.
   3. Write stories that are testable.
   4. Don’t put too much effort in early requirements – stay ahead of the dev teams, but not too much.
4. Disconnected product management or project management organizations can be problematic unless that org is good at, and buys into, Agile project planning.

Speaking of system metaphors, this event suffered,IMHO, from a lack of a clear understanding of the intended topics.  So the suggestions for talks ranged all over the Agile landscape – estimating, planning, availability of customers, etc.  It all trended toward QA, but not as clearly as I might have hoped.  In that sense the “blurring” part of the event title may have presupposed a little too much specificity to an otherwise broad topic.

Other areas for improvement:

1) I would have had fewer meeting locations.  We had nine locations in two large rooms, and the initial set of talks proposed were whittled down to 5 or 6 simultaneous talks per session, which seemed about right.

2) The acoustics at this particular venue were terrible for holding simultaneous sessions in the same room.  As my hearing gets worse (thanks, Dad), I had to really lean in to hear some of the soft-spoken presenters or commenters.

3) The process of getting into the wiki used for posting notes was near-incomprehensible, and I write and use software for a living.  I would recommend a different, more UX-driven, wiki platform for future events.

One thing I’m really interested in is the role the SAO played in the envisioning, planning, and theming of the event.  Passive?  Active?  I’m not clear on the overlap of roles and organizations among some of the leading Agile practitioners in Portland, so it may be that the SAO was nominally a full partner from Day 1 of the planning.   The SAO is sort of like the WTIA of Oregon, or so I gather, so I wish really good things for the organization and the people who contribute time and energy to the group.

If you’re interested in going back and discovering some of the real-time notes, we used the hashtag #pdxblur on Twitter.

I’m at Powell’s books, nursing a pretty good buzz and a whole lot of good vibes.  Powell’s is rapidly becoming my second favorite place to hang out, after the George and Dragon in Seattle, where I spend a couple hours a week cheering on Liverpool.  Speaking of the George, someone from the local LFC supporters’ club in Seattle approached me out of the blue last weekend and gave me a sticker: “LFC SEATTLE – Supporters Club”.  I was pretty jazzed to receive it, and I got to meet and chat with both him and the club’s primary organizer, who almost tripped over his shoes indicating they need website help.   Nice to know even in a recession my skills are in demand.

I put the sticker on my laptop.  My son is impressed.  He sees the stickers as signs of accomplishment, of milestones earned; which, as a first grader, I’m sure is perfectly understandable.  Among the road-warrior crowd, though, stickers are an oddball element.  I gather that Apple fanboys dare not desecrate their pure Apple-logo covers with stickers, while PC laptop users are not hip enough to be generally into the sticker thing.  That, or I haven’t outgrown my 7-year-old phase.

I have a metric fuck-ton of things to say and a metric centiliter of discretion right now.

I’ll give you five reasons why: Madras Royale, St. Elizabeth Sour, Village (?) (see, at that point my memory starts to get fuzzy), and then, after a change of venue, a Cask-Conditioned Jubalale, and a Nitro Jubalale.  A fun night.  A very fun night.  Entertaining and informative and promising and energizing and engaging and, well, just damned invigorating.  I started out after work at the Park Kitchen, which is a very cool but small restaurant/bar in the Pearl District, and from there to the Deschutes Brewery, where the beer is FUCKING STRONG and where ESPN lulls you into a kind of stupor such that when you walk out of there to head to Powell’s Books, not 2 blocks away, you head in the wrong direction.  But it’s all good.   A few extra blocks of walking among the interesting downtown Portland streets is never time misspent.

I used the term “vex” tonight.  This is a word straight out of Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy.  It is surprisingly appropriate tonight, for I’m vexed.  Not angry – no, not by a long shot – nor frustrated, exactly, nor indecisive, again inexactly, but unsure,  uncertain, and with more than a little self-reflection and pondering going on.  Not in the What Is My Ultimate  Purpose On This Green Orb sense, but more like Where Do I Go From Here sense.  I guess if life were easy everybody would do it.

OK, Anthony, so you’re feeling so expansive and happy and, well, let’s face it, buzzed, how do you feel?

Fulfilled.  I am surrounding myself more and more with people who share some of the same fundamental attitudes towards life and people that I do.  Life is meant to be lived, and to be enjoyed, and that things are mostly good, in spite of everything, and that optimism is a better way to approach your days than pessimism.  A healthy, snarky, dose of cynicism serves (very occasionally) to offset the ruby-red roses that I cast in front of me, but not too much, and not too consistently, lest I degenerate into an embittered old layabout, more content to complain than to act.  To do.  To participate, to throw one’s hat in the ring, to do battle, to compete, to win or fail as circumstances and my own efforts warrant.

And I’m ready to compete.

To win.

And if you doubt me, even for an instant, you have yet more to learn.  Above all things, perhaps (love of my children being the one untouchable constant), I exist to challenge myself.  I am tired of (as a friend put it tonight, so eloquently, if so simply) “tying my shoelaces together”.  I want to stride purposefully, to run, to bring those I value along for the ride, to ride simultaneously, together, in purposeful collaboration.  To join together, ad-hoc, as energies and purposes align, and achieve remarkable things.

And, as a writer, I want to document these things.  The ups and downs, the progressions and reversals.  The temporary, euphoric highs (such as tonight) and the (also temporary)  challenging lows.  Writing helps ease the demons back in their cage, and let my better angels take flight.  Writing is cathartic, and revealing, and (depending on who you are) sometimes intentionally obfuscatory, and you really have no choice but to read or not-read, to absorb or not.  Filter it how you will, my intent remains the same.  My existence, my subjective existence, plagiarized by my mind and fingers and keyboard, and delivered in emphatic detail.  I hope you keep reading, because I certainly intend to keep writing.

I’m blogging from the café at Powell’s City of Books after a wonderful dinner at the Davis Street Tavern, an upscale gastropub in the area between Pearl and Old Town.

It’s got a great interior – old brick walls, hardwood floors, combined with modern-ish wood furniture, high ceilings, art, and a very mixed crowed.  When I arrived around 6:15 the place was packed – standing room only in the bar area, and a 20-30 minute wait for tables.  A couple groups came and went after I walked in, disappointed that they couldn’t get a table right away.

The wait was worth it.  A spot opened up a the bar and I ordered from a menu that worked in all the right ways – variety, traditional dishes, eclectic whims and nouvelle cuisine.  I almost ordered the lamb burger but settled on a combination of seared albacore Carpaccio and an orecchiette with sugar snap peas.

The albacore missed, by just a pinch, as everything was overly flavored, leaving the subtlety of the fish well behind in the dust.  There was a tomato-and-cilantro sort of chop/puree along with a large scoop of chunked/pureed avocado, and the albacore itself had too much whole ground pepper.  But it was still a good dish.

The orecchiette was dense and perfectly flavored, if not quite hot enough when it was first served.  The sugar snap peas barely made a supporting role – this was all pasta, all the time, and it did what good pasta dishes do – make you feel warm and loved and homey.

I accompanied my meal with a couple Oregon beers: Double Mountain Vaporizer Pale Ale and a Ninkasi “Sleigh’r” Dark Double Alt Ale.  The Vaporizer rocked; the “Sleigh’r” really didn’t have much to recommend it.

While eating, I enjoyed chatting with Ian, another transplanted worker up from San Francisco on contract and also working (tangentially) in the tech industry.  Portland has a very nice feel to it in terms of feeling comfortable talking to and meeting new people while you’re out and about.  Since I’ll be down in Portland every month or six weeks, it’s nice to get to know more people to meet up with when I’m in town.

I left Seattle this afternoon for a few days to attend to some business and career development activities down here in Portland.  I was last down here in early October, and enjoyed exploring downtown and the Pearl District after hours and found that I really like the vibe that Portland gives off – calmer, less frantic, and less concerned than Seattle is.  Not to say I don’t love Seattle – I do!  But the occasional trips down here which my near future will bring are a welcome break from my day-to-day affairs.

The train was late leaving Seattle – mechanical problems, which produces WAY less anxiety than if the same announcement were made about a plane one was about to board.  So I arrived, checked in to the hotel near Lloyd Center, then hopped the MAX to Old Town, where I crashed the end of Portland Startup Weekend, in time to hear a couple presentations by entrepreneurs and advisors, and then the actual pitches by the startup teams themselves. 

Ray King, a serial entrepreneur and current CEO of AboutUs, gave an understated but very informative talk that was partly biographical and partly tangible advice. Several times throughout the talk he admitted to weakness in his current competitive position, about challenges facing his company, which was  a welcome change from some spiels that I hear from entrepreneurs who seem to think that 24×7 priapism is the only correct attitude to project.

I’ll have more to say about the startup pitches themselves in tomorrow’s post, but a general word about what I saw at the tail end of Portland Startup Weekend: a close-knit group of about 40 or 50, probably left over from some much higher number on Friday night; a communal, supportive environment, and a working space (NedSpace) that, save for an unfortunate, coincidental, and LOUD corporate party one floor below us, seemed ideal for both focus and collaboration for a group of that size.

I saw some people I’d known from Seattle, like Carolynn Duncan; and met a few tweeps that I’d only interacted with on the twitter: @thubten, @jmartens, @irisknows among them.  I also think that I saw @kathleencapps but was unsure it was her from her bio picture.  At any rate, it’s always nice to make new contacts and cement existing relationships.

Tomorrow I’ll recap the startup teams as I was able to see them – in final-pitch mode – and talk a little bit more about the upcoming Open Space event I’m attending (and hopefully presenting at) on Wednesday.

Two iPhone apps stand out for their usefulness today: TaxiMagic, which helped me find, book and pay for the cab ride to the King Street Station in Seattle this morning, and PDXBus, which is perhaps the best iPhone app ever.  Getting around Portland’s mass transit system is stupid easy with this app.

All in all – a very fun, productive, and relaxing day.  Looking forward to the week ahead!

After yesterday’s marathon liveblog, I’m a little pooped.  I’m not totally convinced I want to write tonight, for a lot of reasons in addition to just pure tiredness.  Yet, I’ve blogged and written enough to know that there’s stuff in there, stuff wanting to get out, and that the process of writing will be helpful and a little bit cathartic and hopefully entertaining.

First of all: it appears as if I’ll be going to this open space event in Portland next week dealing with Dev/QA interactions.  I’ll probably sign up to lead a session or two, because in my most recent full-time job, I think we did an excellent job of developing a healthy team attitude about that line between development and QA, about how flexible it was, about how sometimes people have to wear different hats, but most importantly to inculcate the notion that no matter what our title or role, we were all on the same page with regard to shipping quality product.

I think it helps that I’ve always been a developer and development manager that had a strong respect for, and tangible talent for, quality assurance.  Some managers who have been promoted from the development ranks focus more on the code than on the problem the team is supposed to solve.   They spend a lot of time working on development processes and not so much on QA processes.  Which is a shame, because there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit out there regarding QA process that can help defeat the cycle of never-ending fire drills associated with immature software teams.

What else?

I’ve been busy; very busy, but content for the most part.  I’m working a lot but very focused and getting good code written.  I had a big deployment tonight that ran an hour long but for the most part went well and offered us some cogent lessons that we can use to improve our process (defining “process” very broadly to include both the actual deployment as well as all the preparation and planning that happens before a deployment).

I haven’t been sleeping well.  That 3 AM insomnia has returned, almost every night.  I may take up running in the dark again.  Staying awake in bed sucks, and one can only play so many levels of Angry Birds at one time.  I suppose I could find an all-night place to go hang out, but the problem is that I’d miss that one additional hour of sleep I get between 4:30 and 5:30 AM.

I got a chance today to express sincere gratitude and felt really good about it.  It’s a strange culture we live in when one has to wonder how heartfelt expressions of gratitude will be interpreted, but there you have it.  I don’t think that we say “Thank you” (and mean it) enough.  I try to let people know when they’ve made my life better, tangibly or intangibly.  And I appreciate when others do the same for me.

My blog post on Canlis’ social media strategy involving original menus has gotten a lot of comment and page views.  Was I wrong?  Not sure.  I may take Brian up on his offer to have a drink with him and Mark and learn more about how Canlis is embracing the future.  I have an inkling that it might be an exciting talk.  What chafes a little bit is the notion that because I offered up the opinion that Canlis’ social-media strategy might be wrong, that I’m actually saying the restaurant itself, or the owners, are faulty or bad or whatever.  That’s not the case and I’d urge people to read more closely and try to separate honest discussion of strategy from the people behind the restaurant.

My liveblog from yesterday’s Deploy 2010 also garnered a lot of page views, if not so much commentary.  I got a lot of tweet love, and many people came up to me during or after the event to let me know how much they enjoyed the writing.  I’ll tell you the single best thing about liveblogging the conference: I didn’t pull punches expressing who I am.  There was one line in there that I initially was hesitant about publishing, as it was a little crude, but that’s what I would say in real life, and I don’t intend to start censoring myself on my blog.  A couple good friends told me how much they laughed when they read it, so I guess mission accomplished.

Speaking of Deploy 2010, it was a good conference, if a little uneven.  The first couple iterations of any new conference format are tough, I think, as the organizers try to find the sweet spot between theme, presenters, audience, and sponsors.  I think that Jen Cabala and Chris Pirillo did a great job organizing, and to the extent that the talks needed work and/or focus and/or consistency, there are always ways to address that issue.

Feeling very grateful as the night winds down.

I’m convinced that there must be some combination of beer, coffee, sleep, environmental stimulus, angst, and sex drive that is optimal for the blogger.  As I write this I have some (ed: or all?) of the above in varying quantities, most notably “environmental stimulus” – I’m sitting in the coffee shop at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, maybe the largest bookstore in the nation/world/universe.  You could get lost in here, and I’ll bet many people do.  In an earthquake, you could quite literally drown in romance or erotica or Persian-studies anthologies.

Earlier this evening, I drank beer at a hipster place up the street, where the big event was the bartender’s announcement that “she’s no longer homeless!”.  A nice young man from South Carolina – or Gresham – tried to sell me a homemade CD of his guitar music, and when I demurred, changed tactics and offered to sell me drugs.  I am currently in the cafe in Powell’s drinking my signature cappuccino.  I had a nap. 

As for the rest of the list of optimal blogging inputs, let’s leave something as an interpretive exercise for the reader.

As I was drinking my beer, I leafed through Portland’s equivalent to the Stranger, called The Mercury, and it was nearly the same in every regard – but, surprisingly, it was a little nicer, a little cleaner cut.  Whether that’s the result of Dan Savage’s blunt, cover-the-children’s-eyes brand of erotica, or whether the Seattle crew has a bigger drinking problem, or whether the Portland advertising purchasers are more family-friendly, like Sesame Street viewers, I didn’t feel like i had to wash my hands (or eyes) after reading the Mercury.  In fact, if there was a single reference to “penis” in the entire magazine I’d be surprised.

Portland has been busy and fun. I arrived Monday after a relaxing, dull-the-senses train ride, exactly what I needed after a couple weeks of anxiety and turbulence surrounding my big announcement that I was leaving my previous job and moving on.  The cascade of untapped emotion that came along with that decision, and the series of inevitably sweet-sad goodbyes with coworkers whom I know and love, has slowed to a trickle.  I’m still convinced it was the right decision, for me personally, and that moving on will open up new vistas.  However, part of me will still clutch to the past, as ridiculous as that is, and I’ll have to be aware to open up and seize new opportunities as they arise.

I had a nice time catching up with a friend Monday over drinks and food at a cool little place downtown.  Tuesday was a U.S. Open Cup meetup at a soccer bar, where I drank too much and watched the Sounders come out on top over an overmatched Columbus Crew team.  Tonight is quieter, which I’m not sure I like.  What I think that means is that distraction remains my friend while I continue to work through things in my head about where I am, where I’m going, and that I don’t want to be too eager to sit still and listen for the echoes as my mind shouts out these questions.

If you would have told me ten years ago that I’d be sitting in Powell’s, arguably THE mecca for book lovers, and ardently wish to be somewhere else, I’d have dismissively called you a meathead and/or slapped your nose, Three-Stooges style.  And yet I am wishing I were elsewhere.  Ah, that will pass, I suppose, for nothing is truly permanent, not even the most finely polished feelings.  The trick, as I summed up in not-so-many words to a friend last night, is to capture the happiness available to you now, in the present moment, and not let the weight of the world (or the weight you take on) crush you, block you, blind you to good things that are available if you were just to reach out.  Life is meant to be lived, not endured.  Suffering is temporary, not transitive.

So – back to Portland?  I think so, yes.  I’ve buried quite a few ambivalent memories here and will be better able to experience the quirks and angles that Portland has to offer next time I return.  There is a lot of city to discover, a lot of serendipity to open myself up to, and the feel of the place meshes well with what I (think I) need right now – young, alternative, diverse, energetic, and literate.

Tomorrow I board the return train to Seattle.  I may catch up on some reading, or I may review a couple things on the laptop, or I may write some code, or all three or none of the above.  Who can say what will happen?  A friend is fond of saying we manifest the things that we need, at the time that it makes sense, so I may think on that and put some thought into what it is I need/want and how to put my world in the correct place to allow that to happen.

We’ll see.  In the meantime, last night in Portland, and on the way back to the hotel I’m going to stop by Voodoo Doughnut on the advice of a friend, and pick up a sweet nom for the MAX ride.  Their motto is “The Magic Is In The Hole”, and how could I not love that?

Northwest Innovation News has a press release out announcing Jive Software’s $12MM Series B follow-on round from Sequoia. From the release:

Portland-based Jive, a developer of social networking software for businesses, said this morning that it has raised $12M in a Series B round of funding. The round came from Sequoia Capital, the firm’s original backer. According to Jive, the new funding will go towards increasing its product footprint and for product development, as well as for sales and customer support. In a statement, the firm said the firm is profitable, and just saw its fourth straight quarter of record revenue growth. The new funding brings the company’s total raised to around $27.0M.

I like to see Northwest companies do well; and Jive has been on my radar for a while as being an example of a firm that focuses, pays attention to the customer, and executes well.

Congratulations on the extra cash – I’m expecting additional big news from Jive in the future.

I think I have a strange obsession with coworking spaces.  I’ll have to ask my biographer to explore that one day.  In the meantime, enjoy these awesome pictures of the Souk space near downtown Portland.

h/t @cassondra

Dave Schappell, founder & CEO of Seattle-based TeachStreet, has launched a new startup drinking game called Hops and Chops — a chance for Seattle startup types to cure Wednesday’s hangover with a Thursday cocktail.

He says it was inspired by Beer and Blog, a Portland gathering which I’ve seen Rick Turoczy tweet about time and again – proof that in some essential alcohol- and startup-related respects, Portland is further advanced than Seattle!

Dave has asked that we spread the word – full text of his invite is quoted below.

Key influencers are already (pardon the pun) hopping on board!

Please help us spread the word about a new recurring happy hour/networking/meet-someone-new event.

Idea is that you can add this to your calendar and always know that folks will be there — grab dinner, have a beer, and head home/back to the computer!

Website for it — www.hopsandchops.com
Twitter for it — www.twitter.com/hopsandchops

* Where? – Linda’s Tavern (Capitol Hill) – 707 E Pine St, Seattle, WA 98122
* When? – 6:30pm, every Thursday (starting 9/25/08)
* Who/What? – Startup junkies, networkers, folks interested in learning new things and meeting new people, activists, and fun people!
* Why? – Here’s the gist:
o We were inspired by a fantastic recurring Portland happy hour event called Beer and Blog semi-coordinated by Silicon Florist & others.
o We liked that it’s recurring and in a set-location — you can just put it on your calendar, and there’ll always be a few folks to catch up with.
o Folks who start companies are frequently inundated with “let’s have coffee/lunch” requests — this gives you a way to aggregate them and make intros/network in real-time.
* Other? – Idea is that maybe we’ll bring in speakers from time to time… maybe tech-related, or maybe just cool/fun to help you learn something new/meet someone new. We aren’t stressing over it… we’ll figure it out as we go.
* Notifications? – Sign up for our Hops and Chops Twitter or follow the Hops and Chops RSS feed.

From bizjournals.com:

Ruby on Rails application performance management company New Relic Inc. said Thursday it received $3.5 million in a first round of funding.

Menlo Park-based New Relic said funding came from Benchmark Capital.

The company plans to use the funds to drive product development and to expand sales and marketing programs.

The take on the deal from Northwest Innovation News (subscription required) is that New Relic will use the funds to expand in the Portland market by hiring additional Ruby on Rails talent. Good news for the Portland software market.