ACCU Conference 2007

This year, I have opted to attend the ACCU Conference in Oxford, England. The conference was strongly recommended by my co-worker, Steve Nutt, who attended last year and is actually from Oxfordshire. Judging from the session information, the conference will be quite unlike any I have ever attended. After nine years, Microsoft has certainly adjusted my expectations to the informational depth and access of the PDC (Professional Developer's Conference). The topics certainly interested me a great deal, as did the opportunity to travel outside of the United States. Thus far I have only been to Niagara Falls, Canada a few times, which felt like a pretty sanitized any-town tourist destination. Something tells me Oxford and London are going to be quite a bit different than my trips to Niagara Falls and Disney World.

On Tuesday I will be attending the pre-conference seminar "Implementing Lean Software Development" by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. I have high hopes of visiting Thames Lodge No. 1895, part of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Oxfordshire, on Tuesday evening after the conference. I am presently in e-mail contact with a member of the Lodge, who has been very kind to assist me.

On Wednesday the conference really gets going with "Coaching Software Development Teams" by Michael Feathers, "Reviewing the C++ toolbox" by Alan Griffiths or "Fingers in the air: a gentle introduction to software estimation" by Giovanni Asproni, and "Linting Software Architectures" by Bernhard Merkle.

On Thursday the selections turn even more difficult "Choose your Poison: Exceptions or Error Codes?" by Andrei Alexandrescu or "Towards Simple Code" by Sommerlad, Asproni and Henney, or "Stop-the-Line Quality" by Mary Poppendieck, then either the two part "Introduction to Component-Level Testing" by John Lakos or "Pattern Connections" by Kevlin Henney then "Typical Pitfalls in Agile Software Development" by Jutta Eckstein.

On Friday I really, really want to go to Bjarne Stroustrup's talk on the Future of C++, but if I skip "The Appliance of Science: Things in Computer Science that every practitioner should know" by Andrei Alexandrescu, then I'll never hear the end of it at work. I already take enough heat during the morning caffeine intake sessions for my use of computer science terms like "substitutability" (go Liskov!) and "subsumption". Doesn't "parametric polymorphism" just roll off the tongue? Then I am going to listen to the first 45 minutes of "CUTE: C++ Unit Testing Easier" by Peter Sommerlad then sneak out at 2:45pm to see "Continuous integration: what it is and why you should use it" by Ivan Moore. Finally, having totally missed the chance to hear Bjarne speak on the future of C++, I will go to the two specific C++ Futures sessions which really call to me "C++ Threads" by Lawrence Crowl and "Standard Library report" by Alidsair Meredith.

The last day of the conference arrives with Saturday. The morning session is impossible with my candidates including "Making New Friends" by Dan Saks or "Renga: Conceptual Integrity and Collective Code Ownership" by Nat Pryce and Steve Freeman or "Concepts: An Introduction to Concepts in C++0x" by Doug Gregor, but then the last session is no question with "Meta-Intelligent Design" by Phil Nash.

After all of this information my brain may really be mush! It is pretty essential that I have the chance to hear Bjarne Stroustrup speak, perhaps I will see if Steve and I can switch. He goes to hear Bjarne during the computer science session and I will go to hear him during the Continuous Integration talk. In any case, this conference promises to replace quantity with quality. Normally I have several time blocks where there are no interesting sessions at the PDC, keeping in mind that this is a conference with at least a dozen concurrent sessions. At the ACCU most time blocks have at least two or three interesting sessions.

Embarrassingly enough a major topic of conversation between Steve and I has been what to wear. Aside from the fact that I know next to nothing about the weather in England, I was also not sure about the politics of the group. Just to be contrarian, I will wear my John "maddog" Hall t-shirt to the PDC or my "Real Programmers use Visual C++" t-shirt to the Java Users Group. Are Microsoft t-shirts safe here? Should I kick it old school with some SGI gear? What is a geek to do? In any case, I do plan to wear my AccuRev shirt to the conference!