Claudio Perrone’s Monologues

Øredev, the largest technical conference in Sweden, has left a profound impression on me. I’ve never felt such a sense of community and purpose in an event of these proportions before.

The constant exchange of ideas and points of view was incredible. I loved seeing attendees and exhibitors taking as much of an active role as the speakers (check Chris‘ article, for a brilliant example of creativity at work). It was like witnessing 900 people putting aside their differences and fulfilling their social responsibility to share their experiences with everyone else.

I am truly honored to have played even a tiny part in this fantastic event. My Agile Tales session went really well, at least judging by the warm feedback and the emails that I’m still receiving!

The organizers made a recording of all talks and I can’t wait to see them published at the oredev.org website. Of all the sessions that I’ve seen, I particularly loved Aslam’s content and presentation style. I’m definitely going to dissect and steal some of his ideas in the future

In many ways, the moments I treasure the most, however, happened outside the session rooms; I spent a lot of quality time meeting many interesting and diverse people in the corridors, at the local pub in the evenings, or even in the hotel at breakfast. Inevitably, nobody recorded those precious fragments, but never mind.

I was also particularly pleased to see Aspects of Leadership, Agile, Alt.NET and Domain-Driven Design being treated as first-class citizens, with dedicated tracks and great speakers.

Is Øredev the best conference I have ever been to? Quite possibly.

Frankly, I’m growing tired of product/vendor-driven conferences that are almost exclusively versed into a single technology platform. Don’t get me wrong. They play an important role but, unfortunately, they hardly attempt to address any of the most fundamental issues that we face in our industry. As my awareness grows, so are my pragmatic needs for better and broader education.

Thanks so much to Michael Tiberg, Emily Holweck and their entire crew for organizing such a sophisticated and enjoyable conference. I hope I will be there again next year.

As I have started doing some serious work on refining the structure of my Agile tales of creative customer collaboration presentation, I thought it would be a good idea to create a 1-minute movie trailer to break the ice and remind you of the Øredev 2008 conference in Sweden in November.
So here it is! Put on your headphones and enjoy.

Øredev Presentation Teaser from Claudio Perrone on Vimeo.

So, what do you think? Do you like it? I certainly loved being the screenwriter, director, sound engineer and producer for exactly one minute of moving pictures! I now keep playing the soundtrack in my head though…mmm…I can’t get rid of it.

Let me share some trivia with you:

• The soundtrack is based on the popular classical piece “Carmina Burana (O Fortuna)”.
• I edited this work twice. I used iMovie ‘08 on my Mac at home initially, but I found its lack of features (e.g. a timeline) too frustrating. I then switched to my old Sony Vegas on Windows, finally overcoming my fears due to the complexity of its interface. Although I am a very casual user, I’ll probably consider trying Final Cut Pro in the future.
• The first picture (yeah, that’s my big face, attached to that even bigger nose) is part of a great shot taken by the fabulous Martin Fowler at a recent software architecture workshop.
• After I finished my first draft, my colleagues gave me a lot of very constructive feedback; my wife Irene, however, has been my biggest fan and most methodical reviewer. The other evening, she gave me a dense list of comments and then rushed me to go upstairs and fix the trailer, mainly so that she could watch one of her beloved TV shows in peace!

Anyway, the whole point of the teaser is to remind you that my talk is going to be on Friday morning, November 21st and it is going to be… oh, well, you’ll see. Mark it on your calendar and miss it at your peril

As you may have guessed already, I’m really looking forward to speaking at the conference and hopefully I’ll have the privilege to see you there.

The number and quality of speakers lined-up for the event is so impressive that, besides catching up with many good friends, I will avidly attend as many sessions as possible myself.

I have an embarrassing confession to make. I can easily shed a tear while watching a well-crafted movie. I really do. Someone in my family once teased me, saying that I’m so oversensitive that I would probably cry watching Daffy Duck.

There, I said it. Join my close friends and make fun of me. I’m a victim of the power of story to persuade and influence. My defenses are lowered, my disbelief is suspended and I’m vulnerable.

Not long ago, I was preparing for a technical presentation when I started wondering why movies can be so engaging and memorable while most presentations are comparatively dry and unremarkable.

Mainly thanks to Garr Reynolds and his magnificent Presentation Zen approach, I learned how to create slides with strong visual appeal: dense text and worn bullet points were replaced by a careful combination of words and images, creating a fertile ground for powerful metaphors and anecdotes.

Wow. I suddenly realized I entered the world of visual storytelling.

I also recognized, however, that my early work was somewhat episodic, like a movie with great special effects but a weak story.

It was then that I became almost obsessed by one single thought: could I learn the craft of screenwriting and adapt it to elicit emotions in my own technical presentations?

I wanted to become a better visual storyteller, going beyond my self-limiting goal of giving “right” recommendations delivered in a clear fashion. I realized I had a chance to find my own voice and give meaning to facts with my experience, passion, and subjective interpretation.

To my greatest surprise, I uncovered a fascinating world that is affecting my journey through life to no end.

Next week, I’m going to share some of my findings at the legendary Software Architecture Workshop in Crested Butte (Colorado), where some of the most renowned thought leaders of our industry will gather.

This adventure has just begun.
The rest of it will unfold in time.

I have really enjoyed doing some public speaking this year. I’m just back from the DDD Community Event in Galway and, once again, the feedback on my talk has been very positive. I always feel the responsibility of fulfilling people’s expectations, so hopefully I didn’t disappoint anybody. I must be doing something right though: 2 weeks ago I’ve been invited to present at Øredev, a ~1000 attendees conference in Sweden in November!

As promised, I put my slides on Slideshare. If you haven’t had a chance to attend, at least you could get a fair idea of what the session was all about. Let me know what you think! Don’t be fooled however, the slides are just a tiny part of the whole story.

In my exploration of how to design a better presentation, I used key books such as Presentation Zen and Beyond Bullet Points. I loved the ideas and approach of the first, the Hollywood-style methodology of the latter.
In my quest, I also came across Made to Stick, an eye-opener book which gives amazing examples of how simple, unexpected, concrete, credible and emotional stories can make ideas memorable.

So, what is this new presentation style about? While PowerPoint has been fundamentally the same for almost 20 years, our use of it is beginning to change. Slides are finally becoming more visual and essential, with a renewed appreciation of how people learn. I am particularly interested in the focus on stories and movie structures to make our messages more compelling.

It’s a fascinating idea isn’t it? In fact, I want to develop it further. Content matters more than ever. Pretty pictures that don’t carry a compelling story are just (annoying) pretty pictures.

In preparation for my next presentation, I just received 7 books on screen writing and more are on the way (speed-reading is handy, isn’t it?). No, I won’t be the next Stephen Spielberg and I don’t see myself walking down a red-carpet event any time soon. But I want to learn as much as I can from that industry to be better at mine. My challenge will be to present a potentially dense technical topic in a dramatic and captivating fashion. Who said it is going to be easy? It will be my pet project for my next few months, 48 minutes at a time.

I’m just back from Stockholm, where I presented a session titled “Passionate Teams and Cooperative Customers: Agile tales of creative customer communication”.

Based on my direct experience, I offered some concrete suggestions of how to revert seemingly impossible (but common) situations in IT projects using a combination of agility, effective communication and deliberate creativity. All of these are skills that I’m firmly convinced we can learn and improve upon, and I was committed to do my best to push the boundaries and bring the message across.

What can I say? The feedback has been absolutely tremendous, both on the core message and delivery style. I knew I had prepared something good, but boy, the response went far beyond my best expectations. I will follow Tom Raftery’s excellent advice and publish my slides on slideshare in a few weeks, right after my next presentation.

I will indeed repeat my session here in Ireland at the DDD Community Event in Galway on Saturday May 3rd. If you happen to be around, you may consider coming over and join the action; there are plenty of interesting sessions, the event is totally free and you can register here.

At the Swedish event, there were lots of speakers from ThoughtWorks, including my good friend Dan North who, a few hours before my turn, helped me refining a couple of messages I wanted to convey on Behaviour-Driven Development.

I’ve also been really privileged to meet ThoughtWorks’ founder and chairman, Roy Singham, at dinner. His fervour, values and clarity of intent are simply remarkable and totally explain why ThoughtWorks is such a unique and respected consultancy company all around the world. He confirmed that he is seriously considering opening an office in Sweden within this year, an opportunity that the best talents in Sweden should not miss!

There would be so much more to say about the event and the stories behind the new and old friends I met, but unfortunately I just exhausted my small quota of writing energy! Let me conclude by saying that the event has been a great success and was extremely well organized by Cornerstone. I’m really, really delighted that InnerWorkings has such a good partnership with Cornerstone in Sweden. Well done guys!

I’ll be back to Stockholm in early April, delivering a talk at one of the main IT conferences in Sweden. For such a technology-centric event, it is quite fascinating to see an entire track dealing with the often neglected issues of people working together. We should really give the organizers a standing ovation for such a splendid decision.

My talk is titled “Passionate Teams and Cooperative Customers: Agile tales of creative customer communication“. I have the abstract here for your convenience:

“In this session, Claudio presents stories of effective collaboration, thinking tools and valuable insights that can transform “incompetent” customers and “arrogant” teams into unstoppable forces.

We are getting so used to complexity that we no longer notice it. To bring simplicity to our software however, we need to communicate effectively with our customers, distill their knowledge and bake it into our domain models. Yet, we focus so much on improving our technical skills that we often offer elaborate solutions to the wrong problems, unprepared to deal with a world where perception is far more important than logic.”

If you happen to be at the conference, make sure you attend my session! I bet you won’t be disappointed ;-).

The list of stars that will join me at the event is, quite frankly, a tad intimidating (see here).

I always wonder about what drives people to speak in public. Is it the genuine spirit of contribution? Perhaps the publicity and recognition that inevitably goes with it? Is it maybe the excitement of being on stage? It’s probably a combination of all of that and more; my biggest reason, however, is to confront my greatest fears: speaking in public is like Freddie Krueger, a pure nightmare becoming real. In fact, it is the preparation and the waiting for the moment of truth that drives me nuts. All my insecurities emerge all of the sudden, my entire body reacts, and I become absurdly anxious. Then again, once on stage, everything changes completely: I’m on a mission, I’m (over)prepared, I just can’t fail.

So, there you go. It is never easy and probably it will never be. I still haven’t won my fears at all, but the past rewarded me with really good memories (like when, a million years ago, I addressed a group of scientists at CERN for a whole week, for example), and the future will surely hold even better ones.

By the way, have you ever considered speaking in public? There is a good chance that your own community would love you to volunteer on a topic you feel passionate about. If you live in Ireland like I do, this is definitely the case. It takes a lot of commitment, but perhaps this year you could try. Just don’t let your fears eat you. People want you to succeed, don’t you know?