On Saturday, December 14th, Craig, John, Mark, Matt and Zach joined about 30 other people for a summit on software craftsmanship in Libertyville, IL, at the office of 8th Light.
Working as several small groups, the participants charted their careers in software. While each person related his story, all others took note of similarities, differences or other interesting aspects of each person’s path. Meeting all together again, we reviewed what each group captured in the context of gathering raw material that we could distill into a definition of software craftsmanship. We then formed small groups different from the earlier ones to develop ways that we would identify a software craftsman. Finally, we gathered as one large group again to integrate all that we learned into a statement or even a manifesto of software craftsmanship.
Not uncommon for such a meeting, we generated at least as many questions as we did answers. This summit was only the beginning, though. Our community continued the discussions and work mere hours after the summit was over.
Thank you to 8th Light for organizing and hosting the summit, and thank you to all those who attended. It was great to meet some of you for the first time, to see others again and to advance together our craft.