Mon, Nov 03, 2003
Hillside Group Annual Meeting
#
I attended lots of great meetings and talks over the past two weeks.
I'm going to start posting some notes and observations in reverse
chronological order. (9I)
Last Thursday and Friday, I attended the HillsideGroup's annual
post-OOPSLA meeting, held at the Anaheim
Sheraton in Southern California. RichardGabriel, president of the
HillsideGroup and one of our advisory board members, and DirkRiehle,
HillsideGroup's treasurer, invited me to attend. (9J)
The Hillside Community (9K)
My parents recently moved to Irvine, which is about 20 minutes south
of Anaheim, so I'm always looking for opportunites to go down south
and visit. But that's not why I wanted to attend this meeting.
Regular readers of this blog know that PatternLanguages are central to
BlueOxenAssociates' strategy for understanding and improving
collaboration and communities. This is why I asked RichardGabriel to
join our advisory board in the first place, and is ultimately why I
wanted to attend this meeting. (9L)
HillsideGroup was founded a decade ago by a bunch of software
engineers (including Gabriel, the GangOfFour, and several other gurus
in the field) in order to figure out how to write pattern languages
for software design. The group hosts several
Pattern Languages of Programs
(PLoP) conferences every year, which are loosely modeled on writers'
workshops. (9M)
When a bunch of engineers model their conferences on writers'
workshops, you know that they're not your run-of-the-mill geeks. When
these same engineers are intimately familiar with the works of
architect ChristopherAlexander, you know that they're definitely not
your run-of-the-mill geeks. (9N)
All of this was evident throughout the meeting. Those in attendance
(about 40 people) were thoughtful and highly self-reflective. Many of
them had written books, and many more are writing books. More than
anything, I was delighted to see the quality of meta-thinking within
the group and a general inclination for action. These are folks who
have recognized that PatternLanguages are a wonderful tool that can be
applied to many other things besides software design, and have done
exactly that. For example, the HillsideGroup has a pattern language
for shepherding (mentoring new writers), patterns for PatternMining?,
etc. (9O)
I was struck by the group's overall camraderie and openness. The
interaction was light, easy-going, and usually accompanied by
laughter. SharedLanguage was strongly evident. When meetings were
about to begin, self-described group "den mother" Linda Rising would
shout, "Group sneeze!" Everyone would stop in their tracks, shout
"Hishi," "Hashi," or "Hoshi," and then there would be silence. (9P)
HillsideGroup felt like a community with QWAN. This was not totally
unexpected, given that HillsideGroup is one of the few communities
that are familiar with the term "QWAN." In addition to being a
valuable repository of knowledge about pattern languages in general,
HillsideGroup is a community worth studying. (9Q)
Odds and Ends (9R)
A topic that came up throughout the meeting was how to better leverage
asynchronous tools for collaboration. The consensus was that the
face-to-face meetings were extremely important and valuable, but that
they could be made more efficient with the right tools. One of the
key problems raised was that face-to-face meetings often generated a
great amount of energy that promptly dissipated once the meetings
adjourned and people went back to their busy lives. I think about
this problem constantly. I've touched on it briefly in a
previous
blog entry, and hope to discuss it more soon. (9S)
A tool idea that came out of this discussion was "CyberShepherd?."
Inspired by CyberChair?, a tool for managing the conference submissions
and review process, CyberShepherd? would be a tool for managing the
pattern language submission and shepherding process. (9T)
Husband and wife team TracyBialik? and RussRufer? introduced the
Silicon Valley
Patterns Group, which meets twice (!) a week to discuss software
patterns. The group has been going on strong for five (!) years. I
plan on attending one of their meetings when I return to the Bay Area,
but it already seems to be a very good candidate for studying
sustainable grassroots communities. (9U)
HanyudaEiiti?, a leading Japanese advocate of software patterns,
entertained the group with his "Pattern Dance," a live enactment of
the MVC pattern. (9V)
I got a chance to chat for a bit with RalphJohnson, one of the
GangOfFour, who explained how the DesignPatterns? book came about, and
how ChristopherAlexander's ideas began seeping into this community.
I'll post tidbits of that story here when the opportunity arises, and
I hope to write a full-length article about this at some point. (9W)
/events |
Posted at 9:54am
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