Agile Learning Labs

R.I.P. Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch, famous for his Last Lecture, amoung other things, has passed away.

He would probably like to be rememberd through donations made to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

InfoQ Made Me Famous!!

No sooner had I discovered that I'm on YouTube, than I find out that InfoQ has published a short blurb on user stories that I wrote. My phone is ringing; could it be Hollywood calling.

:-P

Update (6/22/08)
The story inspired a long discussion on the Scrum Development Yahoo group.

Long Live Lucky Oliver

On Wednesday, I'm doing a presentation on doing presentations. One of the little gems that I was looking forward to passing on was Lucky Oliver. It has been my favorite source for images for presentations and the web. The quality and variety of the images has been consistently great, and the prices were more than affordable. Today I discovered that Lucky Oliver will be closing down on May 15th. I'm sad to be losing this source for great photos, and sad to see the business fail. Best of luck to Bryan, and everyone else at Lucky Oliver.

Now where am I going to get my images? Any suggestions?

Cheers,

Chris

Joel On Software Stuff

I just read this rambling interview with Joel Spolsky, over at ACM Queue.

He mentions the early days of Joel on Software, even before he started Fog Creek Software. Back then he had a bit more time for writing, and created some essays that I still consider required reading. Examples include:

• Command and Conquer Management
• The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing
• Painless Software Schedules
• Things You Should Never Do, Part 1
• Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don't Have Testers

Wait a minute! I’m basically giving you the links from his archive, starting at the bottom and working up! You can do that for yourself. Go to the archive, and start at the bottom. The old stuff is generally good and generally still relevant. I do have a personal soft spot for this one, if only because I was there for the birth. Joel shared the idea with me on May 30th, over lunch in New York City.

In the Queue article, he mentions evidence-based scheduling. The idea is very interesting and I’m going to make a point of picking his brain about it when he’s here. Oh yeah, Joel is coming to town in October. He has 4 demos scheduled in the San Francisco Bay area. They are free, but space is filling up quickly. Register here.

Earth-like Planet Discovered

Average temperature ranges from 32 to 104 Fahrenheit.  It has about twice the surface area and twice the gravity of earth, and it celebrates New Year's Day once every 13 earth days.  As soon as we can travel at the speed of light, trips to the planet, located in the constellation Libra, will only take about 20 years. There is a full article on the World Science website.