XP Denver's August meeting is scheduled for Monday, August 25th at the Qwest
Auditorium in Downtown Denver. Doors open early at 6:00pm for networking and
refreshments. Guest speaker Zach Nies, a lead architect at Creo and former
Chief Software Architect at Quark, will present an experience report based
on nearly two years of development embracing Extreme Programming's values
and adopting (and adapting) it's practices.

Creo, Inc. is based in Vancouver, BC with over 3,000 people worldwide. They
sell hardware and software to the Graphic Arts market. Most magazines are
printed and prepressed on Creo hardware and software. Zach and three
colleagues founded a startup in 2000 that sold its IP to Creo, leading to
the formation of a Denver product development group later that year. They
grew this into a distributed team with additional members in Vancouver and
Halifax to develop a new software product called Six Degrees.

Creo's Six Degrees team has been successfully using eXtreme Programming for
38 iterations with an average team size of 13 engineers. Six Degrees manages
projects by linking e-mail messages, word processing documents, and contact
information. It won a Macworld Best of Show award in 2002, and also runs on
Windows 2000/XP. Version 1.5 was released this year and additional info can
be found at http://www.creo.com/sixdegrees.

Zach's talk will cover:
- The problems leading to their decision to improve the team's software
development process
- How they initially identified and chose XP as their solution
- Leveraging compatible values between corporate/team cultures and processes
- Their first planning game, iteration, and wrap ups
- Stories of adopting and adapting the XP practices for success
- What they have learned using XP
- How they are using this knowledge to continue to succeed

This will be a great talk for software development professionals at all
levels of experience with agile methods. While not an XP 101 tutorial, there
will be valuable content for professionals unfamiliar with XP's details.
Like last month's excellent presentation by Qwest CIO Al-Noor Ramji, we
encourage the invitation of managers and technical leads given Zach's
management perspective.

Be sure to also mark September 22nd on your calendar when special guest Ken
Schwaber, co-author of "Agile Software Development with Scrum" will present
at XP Denver.

AGENDA:

6:00 - 6:30 PM Networking and refreshments

6:30 - 6:35 PM Announcements and door prize giveaways

6:35 - 8:00 PM Zach Nies' presentation

SPEAKERS:

Zach Nies is a lead architect at Creo and one of the founding members of
their innovative product Six Degrees. Prior to working at Creo, Zach was the
Chief Software Architect at Quark. He has over 12 years of experience
developing software, with 8 of those years as a team lead or division lead.
He has also served on the W3C HTML working group and was one of the authors
of the XHTML standard.

DIRECTIONS:

The Qwest auditorium is at their building on the corner of 17th and Curtis
at 1005 17th Street. At street level, to the right of the escalators, are
doors leading to elevators. Take an elevator to the "A" level (Auditorium).
If those doors are locked, you can take the exterior escalators to Level 1
and enter via doors to the right of the escalator landing. If these doors
are locked, go to the main building lobby which is on Level 1 if you walk
straight from the escalator landing.

In addition to street parking, there is an outside parking lot on the East
side of the Qwest building that costs a flat $5 after 4pm. Several other
lots are within a few blocks and covered parking can be found in the Tabor
Center for $4.

SPONSORS:

The August meeting sponsors are to be announced. Thanks go out to our
regular XP Denver sponsors for their support:
- Qwest (www.qwest.com)
- Object Mentor (www.objectmentor.com)
- Fowler Software Design (www.fowlersoftware.com)
- Clarkware Consulting (www.clarkware.com)
- Softpro Books (www.softpro.com)
- Addison-Wesley (www.awl.com)
- O'Reilly & Associates (www.oreilly.com)

If your company is interested in sponsoring XP Denver meetings or events,
please email info@....

Thanks,
- Alex Viggio

x X P D E N V E R
p www.xpdenver.org
d info@...