EntwickelBar 1.0

Blog Dec 2, 2017

We just had EntwickelBar 1.0, the first and best Open Space Unconference in Düsseldorf. Of course, I am extremely biased since I organized the conference together with two friends (Jens and Christian).

I love open space. There is some effort involved in organizing an open space event, but the amount of value that all participants can gain from the event far exceeds the amount of effort it takes to put everything together.

I am also continually surprised by how well the open space method works.

At the beginning, we set up the marketplace. Traditionally, this consists of an empty agenda and a circle of Post-ITs and markers in the middle with a ring of chairs around the Post-Its.

Then the moderator opens the open space, telling the story of open space and how the open space event will run:

principles

1. It begins when it begins
2. It is over when it is over
3. What happens is the only thing that could happen
4. Those who come to a session are the right people

The Law of Two Feet

• As soon as you can no longer contribute something to a session or can no longer learn anything from a new session, you should leave and go somewhere else where you can contribute or learn more.

Christian got this picture of me doing the open space moderation

What always astonishes me about open space events is how well it works. In almost no time at all, our agenda was very full with amazing topics.

Keep reading if you want to see my sketchnotes from the different sessions or the flip chart pages from my sketchnote session.

Sketchnotes from the sessions

I feel like I took away quite a lot from the day. I joined some interesting discussion groups about software design bias and hype driven development, and got a short intro to Test Containers and JUnit 5. I also stopped into the Clojure session briefly just to say hi.

The topic session that I found most interesting was about Trunk Based Development. It was simply very interesting to discuss how the development process is usually different for everybody. Pretty much everybody in the room had an option about the “right way” to develop, even though we all were using Git. We all are still probably convinced that our way is best, but it was definitely eye-opening to discuss that with others. I now also know what trunk-based development is, and even though I will not be doing it myself in the forseeable future, I now also know that some people do use it successfully.

Here are my sketchnotes:

My Sketchnote Section

I also held a session about sketchnoting during the conference.

Here is a picture of me holding the session (photo cred: Benedikt Ritter (source))

In my session, I covered the why and how of making sketchnotes. Then I talked about the elements that can be used in sketchnotes (arrows, etc.) and how to use color meaningfully. Afterwards, we had some further discussion and Mattias Rottländer added to my session by teaching everybody how to draw the docker whale.

Here are my flip charts (in German) from my session:

All in all, it was a great day!