Last year, Chris was on the coordinating committee for Agile Open California, a grassroots Open Space conference for and by the local agile development community. This year, the privilege falls on me. I was bit by the Open Space bug last year, and have now been to several. The format lends itself to surfacing all kinds of ideas and expertise, and fostering the kind of feverish engagement that leads people to revolutions in their thinking. If you're a die-hard agilista, or just curious, please do join us this year on October 15 & 16 at Fort Mason, in San Francisco (there's a SoCal sister conference in September). If you register early (as in now), it's a mere $150, which is a pretty good price for guaranteed transcendental enlightenment.

Here's a blog post by David Carlton about a session called I hate Pair Programming that should give you a fair idea of the kind of content to expect. And below are some images to whet your appetite:

Artist Elizabeth McClellan captured many of the sessions for posterity.

Here people are swarming around the "marketplace," where participants have posted sessions they'd like to lead–or attend.

And here is Chris looking terribly dignified and businesslike.