Opinions wanted

[Taggart]

So I have an idea for GDevCon and wanted to get some opinions.

In the past, we have ended Thursday after lunch. However this year we have the room for a few hours after that. I was going to run a small TDD workshop on Thursday afternoon. It would be about 2 hours.

I was thinking :
- 20 minutes introduction and set the agenda. We do something straightforward like the Yahtzee kata - writing a scoring algorithm for a Yahtzee game.
- Then about an hour of pair programming working on the kata, working on practicing TDD.
- 20 minute debrief of lessons learned.

It would be free to all attendees. Should be approachable to both beginners and experts (just have a different intention/focus while doing the kata depending on experience/skill level).

Would people be interested in that? I'm kind of worried that people would be too exhausted after 2.5 days to stick around for that. I also think that it adds a new element to the conference. Listening to a couple of days of presentations is good, but I think a little interactive/experiential learning is quite useful.

Thoughts?

[cbutcher]

I'll prefix with the disclaimer that I won't be there, but it sounds good to me.

At worst, people who are exhausted won't show up. So long as enough people (how many?) do, then you're still set for an interesting session.

I would imagine that the sooner you announce something that extends the duration, the better, and the more attendees, because otherwise people might make/have already made plans to travel that conflict with staying a few hours longer (but maybe most people already fixed their travel plans, in which case there may be no remaining gain to be had from rushing to announce...)

[Taggart]

The other options for Thursday afternoon include tubing or hiking...

Allen was also talking about doing a session, so we could have 2 sessions in parallel.

Another thought is to have some sort of roundtable ask-me-anything session

We're still trying to figure out what the best use of Thursday afternoon is.

[wiebe@CARYA]

I also won't be there 😑.

I could use some TDD (or unit testing) hands on experience, so I'd try to join.

I'm not sure if the timing (at the end) is great. It sounds like it could be a nice break from presentations; some hands on workshops, maybe in parallel with a panel discussion or other interactive activities.

[Bill_Welch]

I like it.

I have such a busy schedule this year I am not going to be able to be there but if I were I would attend

[Ray.R]

First and foremost:  Congratulations on the Consultant of the Year award

Spoiler

to quote Nancy...

I like all the ideas that you propose.  One thing I wish they did back in the days of NI Week was to have fun activities on Thursday afternoon instead of everyone dashing out to the airport to catch a flight back or to drive away to other towns, although we did do that with a road trip to San Antonio which was great.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend, although it was very tempting.  I wish everyone attending lots of fun and an opportunity to reconnect with friends.

Cheers!

RayR