I began planning for this year’s Penguicon with the best of intentions. I put together a handful of panels that I wanted to do and submitted them on time, like a proper planner. Then I agreed to be a panelist on a couple that seemed to be a good fit. Of course, I forgot about the recurring board panel. So now my current load for Penguicon is 6 sessions. I’ve done worse, but, I’ve certainly done better :) I don’t know exactly when they’ll be at the moment, but this is WHAT they’ll be:

• The Narrative Art of Agile Stories – Whenever I run into a backlog owner that struggles with making stories to describe a software feature, I lay out this narrative method. It has reliably helped. It recently occurred to me that this might be beneficial to others as well!
• Code of Conduct: Balancing Between Helpful and Toxic – Making a good Code of Conduct is surprisingly hard (or its difficulty seems to surprise the sort of folk that are offended by the existence of, or lack of existence of, a code). This is a huge panel with great group that I really want to hear from, so hopefully it either thins out some or they get a moderator, because there’s an important conversation to have in here.
• Tech Interviewing Demystified – This was another that I was asked to join, and I’m humbled to be able to sit alongside Nuri and Dave. This is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, and I look forward to the conversation…plus they’re both hilarious, so it’s likely to be entertaining AND informative.
• Leading Questions Live – Yanni Kuznia is joining me in the role of Jer again this year (I will be playing the role of Dawn). Last year was fun and we got some great audience questions. This year we’ll try to get people warmed up and comfortable more quickly.
• What I Learned from a Year of Your Questions – This is one I’m pretty excited about. Due in no small part to the fact that I’m on a podcast where we answer questions about knowledge work and leadership, I now get a ton more walk up questions from friends and acquaintances. The majority of these questions are similar, so a lot of us are spending a lot of time wondering about the same shit. I think it’ll be fun to talk about those things.
• Penguicon Board Meeting – Each year we hold a “bonus” board meeting at the convention so that people can come, meet the board, ask questions, and occasionally ask us to fix their Linux installs.

It’s going to be a busy weekend, but, I’m looking forward to it. What panels are you excited about?