I finally figured out the right analogy for software development. Alas, the target audience for this analogy won't be happy with it.

The Internet accelerates everything. We now watch companies go from "the next great thing" to "meh" in the space of a few short years.

Retrospectives allow you to analyze what worked and what didn't about a project so you can do better in the future. How often, though, do people have either the resources or the wherewithall to do a retrospective on a complete disaster -- arguably where we'll learn the most?

Some notes of my own, and some collected from other attendees.

I have yet to toot my first tweet. Most of social networking has been lost on me. Too much noise, not enough signal.

In a recent discussion, there were assertions that C++ was a poorly-designed language. I was on the C++ Standards Committee for 8 years, and saw the decisions take place. I think it's helpful to understand the language choices for both C++ and Java in order to see the bigger perspective.

This issue came up during the organization of the upcoming Pycon conference, regarding speakers posting their slides and notes. I liked what I wrote to the organizing group so I wanted to share it here.

At the free Alternative Languages Day 0 of the upcoming Java Posse Roundup, one house has decided to have a coding dojo on the Fan programming language, which I hadn't heard of before.

No Starch Press sent a copy of this book to me for review. My brother and his wife have been home schooling my 15-year old niece, and he wants to teach her databases.

One of the great things about hosting Open Spaces/Unconferences is the way that it inspires other people to do it, turning the idea into a viral meme. Grzegorz Duda sent me this message which I thought was worth sharing.

Since my (personally) revolutionary experiences with (1) dynamic languages and (2) open spaces conferences, I have been trying to understand how these revolutions happen. This presentation from the TED conference has given me some insights.

James Ward and I in an interview for "Drunk on Software."

I asked Guillaume Laforge this question at the JavaGruppen conference in Denmark while he was giving a compelling presentation on Grails.

The next Flex/AIR workshop with James Ward and myself will be February 25-27, 2009, Crested Butte, Colorado, This is right before the JavaPosse Roundup, so you can get the most out of your airline ticket.

Because of a conflict with the SD conference, we moved the Roundup to March 3-6.