dmalloc
DavidH
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 posted on 01 Jun 07 at 05:51 AM |
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Proposal: Motivate younger people, the next Gen?
being fairly young (not having hit 30 yet), I often do not see young people (my age) at the various Agile events which are of less technical
nature.
The AA should consider sponsoring a Program which targets people in that younger spectrum to early on intriduce them to Agile Concepts. This could go
hand-in-hand with curriculum adjustments at Universities and other bodies teaching about CS and Social Structurs.
This should be a multi-tiered approach, coupled with a specific marketing drive to bring in fresh blood.
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gdinwiddie
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![[*]](./images/grass/default_icon.gif) posted on 03 Jun 07 at 07:31 PM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by dmalloc
being fairly young (not having hit 30 yet), I often do not see young people (my age) at the various Agile events which are of less technical
nature. |
Do you have any insights as to why this may be? Or, as to what might attract younger people?
I've never really thought about it in terms of an age divide, but I've always been a bit puzzled by the divide between those, such as myself, who
want to learn general principles that will remain valid as the technology changes, and those who want to learn specific technologies. Is this the
sort of divide that you're seeing?
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dmalloc
DavidH
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| posted on 06 Jun 07 at 04:18 AM |
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I cannot really explain why there is little interest from people my age. All I can tell (from attending events and being a part of the community) is
that I do not see many people interested in this sort of thing which are about my age.
Usually there is a strong focus around technology, but not the other interesting topics we face when it comes to Agility. Maybe the reason for that is
the career path for individuals, where it is unlikely that you are confronted with managing in your early years?
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debhart
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| posted on 06 Jun 07 at 09:37 AM |
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Get 'em young
I keep coming up against the idea of early training, too. Particularly because I'm thinking about how to attract young women over to the dark side
;-) so I can have more female colleagues.
I think, if we could get kids doing hands-on agile-type teamwork, we could show them how cool our jobs are. I don't think they would have to do
programming, necessarily. How about agile-style work on those lego-robot teams? (I believe Jean T knows something about this).
Maybe we should fund that!
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ChrisClarke
Chris Clarke
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| posted on 06 Jun 07 at 04:04 PM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by gdinwiddie
Do you have any insights as to why this may be? |
I think a lot of people coming out of University don't know what Agile is. I remember it turned up on one slide, in one lecture, in my 1st year and
never appeared again - so I'm all for any adjustment to University curriculum - as their seemed to be little focus on any patterns of software
development.
Being young myself, I think most people in the 2-3 years after University stage are interested in gaining skills they feel to be useful for their
career and this is usually represented by the appearance of keywords in job ads such as 'Spring' or 'Hibernate' and if it happens that 'Agile'
doesn't appear that often then they might not have any motivation to learn it.
I think the best way to get people in to agile is to have them do it. Having done it myself, I don't want to do it any other way. Maybe running
some ExtremeHour style workshops at Universities would help?
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dmalloc
DavidH
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| posted on 07 Jun 07 at 07:26 AM |
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Curriculum development is a very long winded and sometimes very political process. I can relate to it, because we tried to do it with the University
of Innsbruck. You need to be in a position where you hold quite a weight in the industry to be able to actually influence the topic selection on a
higher level. I think such presentations, free of charge, which enable a university to simply offer some added value for no extra cost, would be a
great idea!
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marick
Brian Marick
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| posted on 07 Jun 07 at 03:14 PM |
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| Quote: |
How about agile-style work on those lego-robot teams?
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I helped out with one such team (a horrible experience). That competition would work well with an Agile style, though the rest of the adults on my
team didn't go for it.
As an aside for people who want to teach kids programming: hooking the Robot up to Ruby over bluetooth I think works better than the rather slow Lego
programming environment. A big part of it is because you can type commands at the Ruby interpreter and actually see the robot do something
immediately. Unfortunately, my daughter prefers the sims. email, and chat.
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dmalloc
DavidH
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| posted on 09 Jun 07 at 05:06 PM |
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That sounds very interesting. I would love to develop something around that if the AA ever started sponsoring something like that (not my time but the
equipment). We could put Video Tutorials online.
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