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Please list your comments on XpDay2 below

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I heard that the coffee/tea breaks were too short - its the only time we get to socialise, see the sponsors, buy books etc..

Also most of the sessions were too short. Therefore I suggest the balance wasn't far wrong.

I would say, generally speaking that the event went very well. Personally I was dissapointed that I couldn't go to Ken's workshop on Scrum as I was presenting the DSDM session. I guess any of the delegates who were interested in agile methods in general (as opposed to XP explicitly) might have preferred to attend both sessions. Perhaps there would be room for more creative scheduling at a future event. Andrew Craddock?

All the people from our company thought that most of the presentations & workshops were of a high quality. I found it especially valuable that developers were able to share their experiences, both in the sessions and during coffee. The size of the venue felt right for the number of people, and the actual number of people seemed good, as you were able to recognise people after a few hours, and wasnt a faceless mess. In future, for Robocode it would be useful for people to know what tools they should be familiar with, as one of our guys ended up spending quite a lot of his time learning CVS, although I think he still got a lot out of this session. Rupert Poon?

Overall, a worthwhile couple of days. I went to both the Robocode and the Lego workshops, and enjoyed both. I agree with the comment above about the Robocode workshop - I felt that the number of things that one had to learn to get the robot going obscured what we were supposed to be learning, which was XP. The Lego workshop suffered a bit from its compressed timescale. The presence of an 'external' customer in the Lego workshop was valuable, and something that could perhaps be done for the Robocode workshop. Chris King?

People suggested that some different stories might be better for the half day "compressed" Lego session.

The RoboCodeWorkshop could probably benefit from a page of its own. (By this I mean I learned a lot, not that it needs lots of improvement!) -- MatthewAstley?

The presentations that I attended were all very good (I was especially inspired by the Dolphin robot dog) - the venue was also good although it seems to be an XPDay tradition that the first day is too cold. I was also pleased that lots of people chose to come to the pub and continue the discussions. -- TimM

I'm pleased that there were so many sessions focussed on learning by doing. But there was at least one delegate from a non-agile shop who managed to avoid the practical sessions. RachelD told me that the schedule was designed to encourage people to participate. Is there a way of designing a "stealth workshop" - one that looks like a panel discussion, but turns out to be more of a workshop? I suspect that some people think either "I don't have time to do practicals", or "I'm scared of looking like an idiot". I'm prepared to admit that I was quite anxious that I might make a fool of myself by taking part in the robocode and lego sessions, but I'm glad that I did participate. Personally, I got the most value out of the practical sessions, but they can be intimidating and I'm worried that the people that most need to do them are discouraged from participating. --DafyddRees

I've written a response to the comments on the Robocode session, and notes on the workshop outcome on the RoboCodeWorkshop page. -- DuncanPierce