CodeFreeze
Last week I was at a SoCraTes unconference called CodeFreeze, and it was awesome! I feel like I’ve just come out of a bubble. Like the kids that go into Narnia, stay there for like 20 years, become Kings and Queens of Narnia, then suddenly have to go back through the cupboard. Well, I’ve just stepped out of the cupboard.
CodeFreeze is a SoCraTes unconference situated in the remote area of Killopaa in Lapland, Finland (Not too dissimilar to Narnia). I’ve never been to a conference or unconference of any kind so it was all completely new to me.
The People
I went to the CodeFreeze with 3 others from HolidayCheck and we got on so well, but CodeFreeze is definitely a place you could go completely alone and receive the warmest welcome. The people there were very friendly and invited/encouraged everyone to join in on discussions and activities. They made it a safe space to speak about anything. I found myself in one session giving my opinion on software architecture and my opinion was taken into consideration as much as the more experienced developers in my group.
The Talks
As it was an unconference, there were no invited speakers for the event, all the sessions were community lead. So those that wished to host a session, added a card onto the Trello board, and then those who wished to join that session, made themselves a contributor to that card. With around 40 attendees, this filled the week with sessions, leaving room in the day for outside activities.
Some of my favourite sessions were:
Architectural Kata: A session I attended twice, and was a group activity based around the C4 model.
(I used the C4 model today to structure the architecture of my masterpiece!)
Talk on Micro-services and DDD
A talk about “The internet as a workplace and the ethics around invisible disabilities”.
Our Talk
As the Apprenticeship scheme takes a lot of inspiration from the Software Crafter community, we saw it fit to do a talk about the Apprenticeship Scheme at HolidayCheck. And even though I hate public speaking, it went really well. The talk lasted about 20 minutes and then 20 minutes of discussion followed.
The Place
I mean the pictures don’t do it justice but are a good start to giving some indication of the utter beauty of this place. Killopaa is about 1 hour coach journey from the airport into complete frozen wilderness and is situated around evergreen forests flattened by snow and ice. And every room had its own sauna!
The RPG
I had watched TV programmes and youtube videos with dungeons and dragons in and always knew I’d love RPG. But this trip confirmed it. 4 out of the 5 conference evenings I played an RPG game: The Sprawl, Dungeon World, Skeletons and FATE. The part that I liked about it was that you get to completely emerge yourself into a fictional reality which you also help create; almost like living a film.
A couple of the games were described as “Agile”, and you can definitely draw parallels and could definitely be used as an agile tool. You have to, as a team, work together to navigate through a campaign by making group decisions and playing to each others strengths. As you do not know what is going to happen you must be agile to deal with issues as they come and change and discuss your plan. Which sounds a bit like an agile product team, minus the elves and dragons.
Personally I think it would be cool if Scrum Masters facilitated an RPG game when new product teams get created. As you can break down barriers between people through interactions and collaboration in a comfortable medium where social and status barriers don’t exist; where the most senior engineer is just as skilled as a Junior.
So, I’ve bought a copy of Dungeon World, a light weight, easy beginner fantasy RPG game and might host a game at HolidayCheck, either at lunch or after work.
What’s next?
Next is coming back to work, and being motivated by the interactions I had within the SoCraTes community, the values that they all hold are great values, and I would like to adopt some of these myself.
The next conference I think I shall go for a more technical one, something I feel maybe CodeFreeze was lacking a bit. As I am still quite junior in my coding competency and would of enjoyed more mob/pairing sessions.
Also… Got to see the Northern Lights!
