PDoTDD: It’s a Wrap! Recap Edition (Part 2/2)

As predicted, I did forget a few “Thanks” from my previous post on this subject.  I’d like to thank my own employer, Dovetail Software and, personally, the CEO, Stephen Lynn who generously granted me time to attend and help organize the event.

I’d also like to thank the employers of each attendee of the Friday afternoon session who granted them time to attend and supported them in their furthering their knowledge and community involvement.

Now, on to the point of this post…

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Recordings</p>

Many of you asked for recordings of the sessions. Let me assure you, we tried, and it just didn’t turn out that well. The audio was OK, but you couldn’t see the screen. Also, we had some technical difficulties and so we didn’t get all the sessions. All in all the recordings were a failure and not worth trying to recover.  We’re regrouping and updating the labs to fix various mistakes and inconsistencies.  Once we get to a stabilization point, we’re planning on getting some screen casts together for those who weren’t able to attend (actually, for those who were also, everyone).

Labs

As I mentioned, the labs had some issues. We’re working on updating those and getting a milestone established so we can issue a ‘release’ in a ZIP file format. Please be patient. In the meantime, you can grab the current source directly from our Google Code project SVN.

Of course, you could go even further and help us update and perfect the labs. We could always use more help! 🙂

Going Forward

We’re currently kicking around ideas of how to keep in touch with the attendees and keep the learning happening. We’re also thinking about having smaller events, more frequent and during more convenient hours (lunchtime events? breakfasts?  We’re open to suggestions here).  If you’re interested in something like this, let us know.

We’re also trying to figure out how to cover the spread and disparity of experience and understanding we saw at the event. Several people were at the very beginning. Several people were more advanced. Everyone else was somewhere in between. It was hard to serve everyone in the best way they need to be served.  One thought was to have the various events focused on “absolute beginner”, “I’ve done some unit testing before”, “I’ve tried TDD before, but struggled”, and “I’m doing TDD now, but it’s hard and I’m looking for more tricks and tips”, etc.

What do you think?

Do you have any suggestions? Constructive criticism? Do you have talents or skills that might be particularly useful to make this process go better?

Do you think we should set up a mailing list or something to further the discussion?