This last Sunday we held the seminar How to walk the long road: Apprenticeship Patterns in the real world at the workshop.

In the seminar Ade gave advice on how to approach apprenticeship when you live in a world where this programs are not so accessible to you. His talk was engaging with the audience and very enlightening.

After Ade’s talk Dave Hoover (Obtiva) joined in. Well, actually Dave could not join in as he had family duties to do, but we recorded his talk the night before. In his talk Dave shows a very impressive example of how you can walk the road starting from any point in your career (Dave was a family therapist before he jumped into software development). His talk was full of anecdotes and references to the patterns of Ade’s and Dave’s book. The nice touch was that he introduced them referring to moments in his career.

Corey Haines joined live from Florida a little while later giving us a little bit of an insight of his life on the road and his thoughts about the Software Craftsmanship movement. With his usual humorous self he entertained the audience with his anecdotes and ideas.

Last but not least Paul Pagel (8thLight) showed the audience that there are places in the world where apprenticeship as described in Pete McBreen’s book, and very close to the apprenticeship that we know from the middle ages, are possible. He related from his life story, how he apprenticed under Unclebob and Micah Martin. Then he told us how 8thLight embraces apprenticeship programs.

After the talks we had a short Q&A session with Paul and stormed into conversations about Software Craftsmanship and Apprenticeship.

I really enjoyed the seminar and was delighted by both the audience and our speakers. We had a fabulous time and learned a lot from each other. I am looking forward for another event similar to this in the workshop!

On the downside is that someone promised me to record the seminar on video but didn’t turn up at the end. I could record a small fraction from it, but sadly not the whole event. Next time I will make sure I buy a camera myself so that everything runs smoothly.

Ade took some pictures during the seminar which you can watch in his flickr set.

Now, to all of you who where present; Thank you!

And for those who could not make it I am quite sure we will repeat similar events in the very near future!

I am preparing the video recordings I could make so…

Stay Tuned!