2009 Belgium Agile Open Space part 1

I was very eager to participate in Agile Open Space Belgie2009 in Ghent.

The day of departure on Thursday, February 19 was a long and exciting day in which I had to ‘devoure’ a lot of miles. First, from my home in Assendelft to Nijkerk to go to work, then drive to Nijenrode at Breukelen in the afternoon for the last of a series of seminars on change management, and then pick up Machiel in Hilversum for a joint trip to Ghent.

In Ghent we arrived at our B and B hotel where we were welcomed by two very friendly hosts. We decided who would take which room. I took the room in which a lot of African art and things were displayed, singing ‘welcome to the jungle’… Machiel took the room that looked like an office. We were invited for a glass of wine and were also served a snack. I think that we chit chatted for over an hour. Because of 8:00 am breakfast next morning, we wanted to go to our rooms early.

Friday morning we were served a delicious breakfast. We were not even 300 meters away from the conference location IBBT and therefor got there in time. We saw some familiar faces and a lot of new people. So, meet and greet. Of course we started with kick-off, explain how Open Space works and topics were suggested by the more than 50 participants. Very interesting topics for me as well. The most interesting this first day were Machiel’s session about scrum Kanban and the one hosted by Koen about Agile Consortium Benelux (ACB).

The scrum Kanban session was an intense meeting of proponents and opponents of the combination scrum + lean. Some of the participants were very passionate and got quite personal. Machiel reacted very professional and calm with caution, imho. The questions and replies gave him a good opportunity to sharpen his approach in real life. That’s why I like Open Space and am so happy to join.

The session on ACB focused on the, still very small, participation of Be in the ‘Benelux’ and about what ACB could mean to the Agile community. At this moment it is more a Dutch initiative (and possibly European when UK gets involved). The observations and suggestions made during the session, gave Koen and Patrick things to research or insights on the possible added value of ACB to (Belgian) Agile community.

IBBT turn out to be very suitable for this type of meetings. Hot coffee and tea (with biscuits) were available throughout the day, in the afternoon tasty sandwiches were served for lunch and later in the afternoon we could also take soft drinks to our liking. After an intensive and enjoyable day, dinner was served in ‘Vooruit’, which was located appr. 1800 meters from the conference site. Machiel and I would get directions on how to walk to this place by one of the other participants, but instead we got a ride to Ghent town centre in ‘Amsterdam’ style.

The daily special with fish, vegetables and basmati rice was very tasty. The drinks flowed abundantly. The moment that a few pints of beer ended up into Rob’s lap, was a sign for us to go back to the hotel. It was a nice walk along a Ghent’s canal, called ‘Muinkkanaal’, and a lot of vintage industrial buildings. There wasn’t anything wrong with our coordination for, even though we were not familiar in Ghent, we walked straight to our hotel. In my room I called my spouse to say goodnight. And then, before my head even touched the pillow, I fell asleep.