Thanks for the review of the Gathering. As it has been made clear, I had little to do with organizing the guerrilla Open Space, and simply supported and promoted it. Deb was the inspiration behind it (with Mike), and as she was leading the whole Dialog Room experience, she was free to run that as she chose. She chose this, and apparently it was a great choice.

Now to the thunderstorm… I have to agree, it was a painful experience for me too. I kept wanting to not be there, but figured that while I was I should join in to the best of my ability. I am not a joiner though, so this was just hard! I didn’t get it, didn’t see the point (and yes, I knew it was a thunderstorm). What was I supposed to get from that? It had nothing to do with team work, or self-organization (it was the opposite of both).

As Deb says, some things work, some don’t. Maybe the group was just too darn big for such an exercise — it seemed to go on for ever!

I also hear you about the tiresome keynotes that we get at every conference these days (not just this one). It also caused me to miss Harvey, and I am sorry for that.

Something needs to change in the way conferences are run. And I don’t just mean more open space (that suits some, it doesn’t suit all, it doesn’t suit me that well). We seem to have these two extremes now: Traditional Keynote+Tracks format and Open Space. There is a massive, barren landscape in between the two that must be explored.

All reviews like yours are great input for the next event… and the one after that. So thanks for your openness and for taking the time to share your responses and ideas.

And I label what others said as dishonest, because some of them said very different things about this very activity in private conversations just a couple of minutes later. But I guess not everyone is as blunt and nasty as I am. And “dishonest” is a bit too strong. We are all raised to hide our true opinions in social settings. That’s why it is hard to have honest opinions in such a “mike round”, people would say what they feel is expected in this setting rather than what they think.

Deb: don’t worry about smileys – they are a config option. And kudos for you and Mike too for organizing the Guerrilla Open Spaces. Great job!

BTW: sorry that comments are moderated, but otherwise we would have some about various drugs and related medical conditions from lovely spam bots.

It is not for me to agree or not with your perspective – its entirely your and remains so.

I would say though, that I think you misunderstood the ‘one word’ round that Tom facilitated. He was asking you to summarise what you were feeling about the gathering (not the rainstorm exercise specifically).
With that in mind, I think its rather unfair to somehow label what others were expressing as dishonest.

I’m sorry that the rainstorm experience for you was so apparently pointless as to be silly.

Thank you again for the personal honesty with which you have described your experience and I hope you will reflect on the additional context I have shared with you.

Mike

Like you, I found a lot of value in the Scrum Gathering this week in Munich. Some of it came from the sessions, but more came from the adhoc conversations I had with good people.

You’ve mentioned the closing “wave” activity a couple of times, so I thought I’d clarify something there. It was an impromptu contribution from the Dialogue Room, not an activity planned into the closing by Tom. I wanted to use a “wave” to explain the mechanics of doing it, but most didn’t know what that was, so I had to explain it a different way. And I thought it would be obvious that it was creating an auditory “thunderstorm” but that apparently didn’t work for some, who still had that “wave” in mind. Next time I’d explicitly call it a Thunderstorm. That would give you fair warning, too, so you could leave for those five minutes

I’m glad you enjoyed the Guerilla Open Space I organized, though. I’ve never done that in the space of 24 hours before! I couldn’t have happened without the help of servant-hearted people like Mike Sutton and Cory Foy and others who stayed late and got up early to help.

As you saw, we took some risks: some worked, some didn’t. The organizers were very supportive of our efforts, as you saw (Tom invited people to check out Open Space, in his keynote introduction). Fortunately, I believe in leaving room for mistakes and learning and I hope you do too.

See you at the next event!
deb