For Mob Programming 2020 we will be continuing our original emphasis on plenty of hands-on immersive mob programming sessions.  There will be several parallel tracks hosted by the Moberators we have been inviting. Here is what we are thinking for our 2020 tracks:

Moberator-Led Sessions: These are our core type of session.  They will focus on specific topics such as TDD, better test suites, techniques for turn-taking, dojos in various languages.  We will be announcing the session details later on.

Open Jam: In the past we had a format with open space sessions in the middle of a conference day.  We would like to extend this to be happening all through the conference’s two days. There will be a way to propose sessions on the spot and to attend any that appeal to you.

Continuous Mob: This is a track where one project will span the 2 days of the conference.  You don’t have to commit to staying in this track the whole time; the idea is that the stream of work will continue and people can be present for some or all of the sessions.

Leaders:  If you’re not coding anymore (or never were) but you want to understand the business benefits of mob programming, this is for you.  In these sessions you’ll hear from people who’ve helped their organizations become a better place to work, and get the work done to a much higher standard – by supporting their mob programming teams.

We can do more things to make our day-to-day volunteer work be more in the form of small Agile teams.  We will use a set autonomous “Swarms” that cover key areas like Registration, Venue, and Program for each conference, to name just a few.  Rather than have meetings where we status the work and then go off and do it alone, let’s have more in-person sessions where we actually move the work along together and use pairing or mob programming practices.  The choice of Agile practices can be decided by each swarm, and we (ANE) can help them get coached in the practices they want to learn.

One of my favorite little informal rules (from Extreme Programming) is to do the simplest thing that could possibly work.  Let’s all keep that in mind as we make agmp2019 another super event!