Sarah Rainsberger sent me a link to a great picture from the Agile 2007 conference that is posted on Willem van den Ende's blog. I'll admit that I don't know Willem, although his picture sure does look familiar (I must have met him at the conference).

I remember exactly when the picture was taken (although I don't remember the actual camera). I was sitting on the couch, doing some stuff in Ruby that I wasn't totally sure how to do, and, as happens at the Agile conferences, it only took about 2-3 minutes before someone comes over (in this case, it was Joe Rainsberger) and says, "hey, what are you working on?" He knows Ruby better than I do (I'm very much at the "still a beginner" stage), so he sat and we started looking at what I wanted to do. Next thing I knew, we had a few people looking at it. Good times.

At the Denver conference in 2005, when Joe won the Gordon Pask award, he said that the Agile conference had become for him a sort of family reunion. Since then, I've quoted him often when talking about the feeling that I get during the week. I love the first day, before the sessions have started, when everyone sees each other again (a lot of people only see each other this one time a year) and gets caught up. For example, I distinctly remember standing in the lobby of the hotel this year (I actually have a picture in my mind of exactly where I was standing), when up walked the other Agile Cor(e)y (he doesn't have an e). I hadn't really spoken to him since the previous year, so it was great to catch up in person. I actually don't spend a tremendous amount of time in the sessions at the conference, as I get a lot more out of the side conversations, where I can share experiences with people.

A friend of mine grew up going to camp every summer, and she speaks about it very fondly; it really does seem like it is a huge part of her life. I've mentioned to her that the Agile conference is like my camp. I proudly have said to people that it is one of the personal and professional highlights of my year. I go to my share of other conferences, such as Codemash, SDTConf and XPDay, but I do love the Agile conference for the opportunity to spend a week with a fantastic group of people.