In the interest of trying to move us towards some kind of decision, here's what I've heard and a suggestion for moving forwards.

1. There is a general recognition that we need to do something concrete to get the ball rolling.
2. There is general interest in co-locating a workshop with an existing conference to avoid having to make an additional trip.
3. There is interest in possibly having a workshop somewhere outside North America
4. There is may even be some interest in providing resources to work on this if we could only define what "this" is
   

Here's my suggestion:

Given that we want to do something, sooner is better than later. There's nothing to preclude having a series of workshops in different locations as long as there was some continuity between them. We need to decide on the first event we want to hold a workshop at and get moving on it. We can concurrently start deciding/organizing additional workshops while we wait for the first one to occur.

As for where the first workshop should be, I'll suggest that Citcon Melbourne is probably too soon for anyone who's not already going to plan to be there. Quite a few of us are already committed to being at Agile 2008 in Toronto in August so logistically this is an obvious candidate. But we need to decide go/no-go soon before too many people have locked down their travel dates. (I would attend a workshop if held there before/during/after the conference.)

As to what we would do at this next workshop, in general I agree with Anthony's proposal of "What" we want to accomplish. We need to define the "How" we'll do it. I'd like to see us do an "envisioning session" in which we take a first cut at defining the product we want to build. Naturally, this vision will evolve over time but we need to start with a target for the 1.0 product. Some activities I would propose include:

1. A life-cycle model for the tool -
• When would it be used in the lifecycle of the product it is being used to test?
• Who would be involved in using (roles, responsibilities, skill levels)
  
• Some specific usage scenarios for key points in that lifecycle
  
2. Come up with the Elevator Statement and a Product Box to help us communicate the vision to people after the workshop
3. Maybe some paper prototypes of a few alternate UIs that we could take home and test with real potential users. This would require brainstorming the key features.
4. An initial list of user stories based on the key usage scenarios/features

We can get an online repository for these artifacts set up either before or after the workshop. Subsequent workshops could flesh out the UI and user stories based on whatever feedback we gather post workshop, or provide opportunities to do paired development, etc..

So, if we were to kick off the process at Agile 2008, would you:

a) Would you Attend? (Yes, No)
b) Would you prefer before, during, after?
c) How much time would you be able to spend on this in Toronto (half-day, one day, two days)
d) Where would be the next co-location opportunity(s) that you would be able to take part in (for subsequent workshop continuity)

Cheers,

Gerard


erik petersen wrote:

Why wait till then. Citcon Melbourne is in a month.  Not US, not UK, but Australia!
cheers,
Erik

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 7:48 PM, Steve Freeman <smgfreeman@gmail.com> wrote:

Which is why I've signed up for that one...

On 2 Jun 2008, at 07:09, Jeffrey Fredrick wrote:
>> P.S. I'm in favour of a workshop this side of the Atlantic for a
>> change too
>> :-)
>
> <cough>CITCON Amsterdam?</cough>
>
> :)

S.

Steve Freeman
http://www.mockobjects.com

-- Gerard Meszaros
1-403-827-2967 or me@...
Author of the Jolt Productivity Award winning book "xUnit Test Patterns - Refactoring Test Code". Learn more at http://xunitpatterns.com/index.html