IncreasingYourWardRating

At XP Universe, Kent came up with an off-the-wall idea, the WardRating, or DegreeOfWardness?. JosephP noticed an interesting phenomenon and, together with AlanFrancis (and much beer) came up with an (just slightly) crazy idea.

By the end of the conference, there were quite a few folks walking around with their chests puffed out proudly, showing that their WardRating of 3 or 4 or more had gone up a notch or two, since they had the chance to pair with others who had more experience. Since JosephP considers XP to be an orally transmitted tradition, he found this to be a GoodThing.

A few other thoughts occurred to him:

• An XP Fest (analog to OOPSLA's design and code fest, but without the excess baggage) took place, and the participants built real software for a real, non-profit organization
• Both tennis players and chess players go to tournaments to play against others in order to increase their ranking.

So, putting this all together, JosephP and AlanFrancis had the following idea: why not organize some kind of XP Fest at conferences (or at XpDay, for example), where folks can come along and pair with others on non-profit projects, while at the same time, in a sense of collaboration rather than competition, they have the chance to raise their WardRating. It would also help us as a community, since we get more people introduced to the "real" XP. We're going to need that in a few years, when XP finally takes off, and everyone will want to ride the bandwagon ;-)

JosephP (WardRating 1)

In the old days when we all had jobs, we started trading days between companies as a mechanism for spreading the OralTradition?. This worked really well. I proposed this at an OOPSLA workshop a while ago (JosephP was there) and everyone seemed taken by the idea. This seems to have dropped off a bit in the new economic climate, but is worth trying to revive. -- SteveF (WardRating 2 (kinda))

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