[Baypiggies] BayPIGgies meeting Thursday August 27, 2009: NEW: Managing Software Developers

[Alex Martelli]

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Ned Deily<nad at acm.org> wrote:
> In article <1251332895.9073.10.camel at jim-laptop>,
>  jim <jim at well.com> wrote:
>> There's a last minute change in the BayPIGgies meeting: Alex Martelli
>> will present his thoughts on managing a software development team.
>
> I'd like to throw out a big thanks to Alex for stepping in at the last
> minute prior to Thursday evening's meeting and presenting another
> (typically) compelling talk.  I found myself repeatedly nodding in
> agreement as so many of his observations jibed with my experiences on
> both sides of the management/leadership fence.  And his talk contains a
> boatload of references to books worth reading even if you won't agree
> with all of the authors' conclusions.

Hey, thank YOU for these kudos -- and for giving me one more chance to
present ideas that are very important to me.  This was the second time
I've had a chance to give a presentation about management since I last
switched back from the management track to the individual-contributor
track (in October '08), and I think that "refreshing" my experience on
"this side of the fence" (after managing for about 4 years this time)
also "refreshed" and rekindled my enthusiasm for the subject and
refined some of my ideas about it.

I'd like to make this a standing offer (though not a commitment on my
part;-): if Baypiggies or another grassroot group finds itself in a
pickle by missing a speaker, and I can have 2-3 days' notice, I can
probably arrange to come give a decent talk (at least if I get a nice
dinner out of it, as it seems I'm due to get this time;-).  Most
subjects I can easily wax lyrical about are probably of interest only
to hard-core Python fans (see the list of the ones I haven't yet
presented at Baypiggies that I posted a few days ago on the list as we
were trying to pick a subject), but not all (intros to Python,
technical management, abstraction, ...).


> I hope Alex won't mind if I mention the URL for the presentation:
>
> http://www.aleax.it/bayp_html.pdf

On the contrary, THANKS for posting this URL!

> If you are at all interested in the topic, it's a very worthwhile read.

...and again thanks for the kudos!-)


Alex