Today saw me deliver two sessions at The Community Conference NRW06 in Dusseldorf. Originally, I was only delivering one session: Test-Driven Development (and Code Coverage). Knowing that speakers occasionally have to cancel or pull out, I offered a second session to cover this eventuality – that session was a re-run of my Managing Iterative Development Using Scrum presentation. The Scrum session enjoyed full attendance – my room was full. The TDD session also enjoyed a large turnout – it was in the keynote speech “halle” so there were some empty seats. I didn’t perform a head count, but I reckon I had 35-40 attendees in both sessions. Not a bad result, although I say so myself. I must have done something right, praise for both sessions from Vinzenz can be found here! Vinzenz danke.

Apart from meeting Dan again (Dan has spoken at DDD community events in the past), I was able to catch up with is stage partner Michael Willers. But where was Christian Weyer? Christian promised me an Indigo t-shirt when he came to Scotland in July 2005…did he cancel his appearance because I was on the same agenda? Had I come to Dusseldorf to “get him”? Had the image of a mad kilt wearing Scotsman put fear in to the heart of Christian?

Speakers were given these rather cool polo shirts to wear:

I particularly liked what was printed on the back of the polo shirts:

Oliver Sturm and Stephan Oetzel

A roadie waits to be let it…yes, he is wearing a Metallica t-shirt!

Weather was good – we sat outside

Caption contest for the gentleman with the black t-shirt in the middle?
— “The invisible beer bottle?”

Crowd scenes – room 4 was packed

Stephan writes about NRW06 over here whilst announcing the existence of NRW06 – The Movie!

I will post the slides and code in the next blog entry in a few hours time – the demonstrations have a crib sheet, so you should be able to replicate them.

One thing this event confirmed for me, if you want to learn a language, live the language, immerse yourself in the country that speaks the language.

Community Rocks!

NRW07 promises to be a good one!

Technorati Tags: NRW06, Dusseldorf, Community, Events, Scrum, TDD, Code, Coverage