go pair

At the recent Agile on the beach conference I was chatting to Paul Massey who runs BlueFruit Software in Redruth (which, by the way, is a great company to work if you're looking for a job as an embedded developer). I was reminded of something Paul mentioned to me a while back that relates to pair-programming. He and a friend played go against other people on a server. Their go rankings were 8k and 9k respectively. Interestingly, they then played against other people as a pair. And their joint-ranking went up to 6k. Paul writes:

When I play go, I have a problem that I struggle to find the patience for strategic thinking. I combat this problem by doing strategic thinking when my opponent is playing and tactical thinking when it's my turn. Yesterday I realised the parallel with pair programming, i.e. tactical thinking when at the keyboard, and strategic thinking when away from the keyboard. Both are important.

cyber-dojo dates

If you'd like me to run a private cyber-dojo for you please email me. I love travelling (especially to places where you can fly-fish for atlantic salmon) and meeting new people. There is often no charge but I do ask you to cover my travel expenses.

past cyber-dojos

I no longer keep this list updated...

• Agile on the Beach conference, 5th-6th September 2013, Falmouth, U.K.
• C course for Cisco, in Chennai, 29th-31st July 2013
• C course for Cisco, in Bangalore, 24th-26th July 2013
• Geoffrey Dunn (@gd_twit) installed and ran a cyber-dojo in Sydney, Australia, 26th July 2013
• Cambridge Software Craftsmanship meetup, organized by Ceri Shaw, 18th June 2014, in Cambridge, U.K.
• Malooba startup, with Errol Chavannes, 23rd May 2013, in Falmouth, U.K.
• IDBS with Brian Hobbs, 21st May 2013, in Guildford, U.K.
• Agile Adria conference, 22nd-23rd April 2013, in Zagreb
• ACCU 2013 conference 10th-13th April 2013, in Bristol, U.K.
• SkillsMatter's 3 Day Agile Development course, 25th-27th February 2013, in London
• Synch-Norwich meetup, 24th January 2013
• C++ patterns course for Cisco, in Oslo, 20th November 2012
• With Chris Vaux at GCHQ, 16th November 2012, in Cheltenham, England
• For Ericsson, 13th November 2012, in Croatia
• Ed Sykes ran a recruitment cyber-dojo 24th October 2012
• Vincent Baur (of Schlumberger) ran another C++ cyber-dojo with even more attendees in Clamart (suburb of Paris) on 23rd October 2012
• Olve Maudal (of Cisco) ran a cyber-dojo, 10th October 2012, in Oslo
• SkillsMatter's 3 Day Agile Development course, 26th-28th September 2012, in London
• At a BCS SPA meeting, 2nd October 2012, London
• Mark Chen (of Schlumberger) ran a C++ cyber-dojo in Calgary on 26th September 2012
• Vincent Baur (of Schlumberger) ran a C++ cyber-dojo in Clamart (suburb of Paris) on 24th September 2012
• Mike Long and James Grenning ran a full day coding dojo workshop in Houston, USA, week of 10th September 2012
• At Agile On The Beach conference, Cornwall, England, 7th September 2012
• For Aviva, in Perth, Scotland, 13th-15th August 2012
• For Cisco, in Bangalore, India, 31st Sept - 4th August 2012
• SkillsMatter's 3 Day Agile Development course, 18th-20th June 2012, in London
• at IKON 12th-14th June 2012, in Teddington, England
• Mike Long ran another big cyber-dojo for 32 people in Beijing, Thursday 17th May 2012
• After attending the Scandinavian Developer Conference Emil Jönsson ran his own cyber-dojo
• At Skillsmatter's Progressive Java tutorial London, 14:00pm, Friday 4th May 2012
• at the bar in the evenings at the ACCU conference, Oxford, 24th-28th April 2012
• Scandinavian Developer Conference, as part of a Mastering Agile Practice tutorial co-run with Kevlin Henney, 18th-19th April 2012
• At Skillsmatter's London office, 6:30pm, Thursday 5th April 2012(not the 3rd)
• Ericsson in Helsinki, Finland, 19th-20th March 2012 (read blog-entry)
• Agile Riga in Latvia, 17th March 2012
• at Manpower, in Uxbridge, England, with Steve Brownett, 22nd Feb 2012
• Ericsson in Budapest, Hungary, 8th Feb 2012
• Ericsson in Helsinki, Finland, 18th January 2012
• Olso Coach Camp in Norway, 7th January 2012
• Opera in Oslo, Norway, 15th December 2011
• Mike Long used cyber-dojo during the Global Day of Code Retreat in Beijing, 3rd December 2011
• XP Day 21st November 2011, London, England
• SkillsMatter's 3 Day Agile Development course, 9th-11th November 2011, in London
• Ericsson, 3rd November 2011, Helsinki, Finland
• Diamond Light Source with Mark Booth, 28th October, Didcot, England
• IKON 27th October, in Teddington, England
• Ericsson, 20th October, in Budapest, Hungary
• Lars Thorup ran a TDD coding dojo using cyber-dojo at the Silicon Valley Code Camp 8th-9th October
• Agile .NET Europe in Zebrastraat, Ghent, Belgium, 10th, 11th October
• Ericsson Agile Conference, 20th-21st September, Helsinki, Finland
• Tampere Goes Agile conference, 17th September, Finland
• Agile on the beach conference, 15th-16th September, Falmouth, England
• Agile Lean Europe conference, 7th-9th September, Berlin, Germany
• McAfee, 31st August, Aylesbury, England
• Jeremy Lightsmith and Gary Bernhardt tried to run a TDD coding dojo using cyber-dojo at the Agile 2011 conference, 7th August, Salt Lake City, Utah
• SkillsMatter's 3 Day Agile Development course, 3rd-5th August, in London
• Mott MacDonald in Croydon, 21st July. Read blog entry
• Olve Maudal (@olvemaudal) ran a cyber-dojo in San Jose, California, 23rd June
• with Kevlin Henney (@kevlinhenney) in a 2 day version of our Mastering Agile Practice course, 21st-22nd June, for CommaSoft, in Germany. Read blog entry
• Erik Bakstad (@ebaxt) and Johannes Brodwall (@jhannes) ran a cyber-dojo at JavaBin, Oslo, Friday, 17th June
• Mike Long (@meekrosoft) ran a cyber-dojo at Schlumberger, Oslo, Friday 17th June
• NDC conference, 8th-10th June, in Oslo, Norway. Read Gil Zilberfeld's blog posting.
• Software Craftsmanship conference, 26th May, at Bletchley Park, England.
  Read Jean-Laurent Morlhon's (@morlhon) blog writeup (original in French)
• Absolute software 24th May, in Redruth, UK
• SkillsMatter's 3 Day Agile Development course, 4th-6th May, in London
• Olve Maudal and myself ran a cyber-dojo (at the bar!) during the ACCU 2011 conference, April 13-16th, in Oxford
• Kevlin Henney and myself used cyber-dojo as part of our ACCU 2011 pre-conference tutorial , A Day of Deliberate Practice, April 12th, in Oxford
• Kevlin Henney and I ran a Day of Deliberate Practice partly using cyber-dojo in our DevWeek 2011 Post-Conference Workshop, 18th March, at The Barbican Conference Centre, London
• The return of cyber-dojo, Oslo Coding Dojo meetup, Wednesday 16th February, 6pm at The Scotsman, Karl Johan's Gate 17
  Read David Kowalski's blog writeup
• Opera in Linköping, Sweden, January 17th-20th 2011
• Alex Graff ran a cyber-dojo at Pinesoft where he works.
• Lean Kanban eXchange conference, December 3rd
• XP Day London conference, November 29th, 30th
• Pure in Kings Langley, Herts, 16th November
• GothPy meetup, Göteborg, Sweden, 3rd November
• JAOO 2010 conference Aarhus, Denmark, 4th-8th October
• Agile Cambridge 2010 conference, UK, 15th October.
  Read Simon Prior's blog writeup.
  Read Paul Grenyer's blog writeup.
• ACCU London meeting, hosted by SkillsMatter, 16th September.
  Read my blog entry
• JavaZone 2010 conference Oslo, Norway, 8th September
• Trondheim Coding Dojo Norway, June 30th, 2010.
  Read Anders Hammervold's blog writeup
• NDC 2010 conference Oslo, Norway, June 16th-18th.
  Watch Scott Bellware's video
• XP 2010 conference Trondheim, Norway, 1st-3rd June.
  I ran one session with Jeremy Lightsmith on Tuesday morning. Together with Olve Maudal I ran another session at the Open Space on Thursday evening
• Oslo Coding Dojo Norway, 18th May 2010
• ACCU 2010 conference Oxford, UK, 14th-17th April.
  I ran three cyber-dojos with Olve Maudal.
  Read my blog writeup
  Read Mike Long's blog writeup