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by Keith Ray.
Original Post: Rajesh's AYE Conference 2004 Trip Report
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I've been to two AYE Conferences, almost went last year, and plan to go this year. This can be a life-changing conference. As a result of attending AYE, I had an article published in STQE magazine (now known as "Better Software" magazine), found out about and attended the last PSL, and I got to know many really wonderful people. Unlike many conferences, the sessions are interactive -- not lectures. The "guests" and "hosts" are all participants, and the hosts can learn from the guests as well as the other way around.
Rajesh's trip report is in four parts. The first part covers the optional introduction to MBTI, Satir communication model, and Satir change model. Even if you know this stuff, if you haven't attended AYE before, I would recommend going to the optional intro session. When I attended the session, one of the presenters described using the concepts of the Aikido practice of "Center, Enter, Turn" to react to a Blaming attack: take a breath to center yourself, enter the dialog by agreeing with the Blamer that there is a problem to be solved, and verbally turn yourself to be along-side the Blamer as someone to help solve that problem.
The second day of Rajesh's trip report covers a session he took on geographically disperse teams, a session on Virginia Satir and her work, and the Agile BOF. When I went to my first AYE conference, agile methods were new, several attendees thought Kent Beck and Ron Jeffries were offensive (and maybe nuts); there were a lot of people asking questions about them, asking XP in particular. Jerry Weinberg invited me and others to dinner to talk about XP. I was able to explain to him and to various people who do rigorous heavy-weight methods that XP isn't an invitation to hack... that the testing and other practices make for a disciplined process. Jerry said XP should be named "a set of practices that people have known to be good for the last 40 years". Jerry was doing iterative software development work on the Mercury space program in 1950's.
The third day of Rajesh's trip report, he describes the seesion "Increasing Your Effectiveness as a Change Agent", which seems to either be a new session or one that has evolved a great deal (this is why I need to go back to AYE.) He also attended "Using your Yes/No Medallion", which is one of the Satir tools Jerry describes in More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit.
The fourth day of Rajesh's trip report, he attended and participated in "Satir System Coaching" (Family Sculpting), and "No Best Practices" by James Bach.
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