Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cloud Native Live, where we dive into the code behind Cloud Native.  So every week, we bring a new set of presenters to showcase how to work with Cloud Native technology. They will build things, they will break things, and they will answer all of your questions. So you can join us every Wednesday to watch live. This week, we have Thomas here to talk with us about solving conflict drift across environments with SCORE. Very exciting. Today, we're going to take questions and intervals along the presentation and the demo. So whenever you feel like asking a question, just pop it into the chat and we're going to get to it when we have a nice spot within the presentation or a demo where we can have a discussion about it a bit. Perfect. As always, this is an official live stream of the CNCF, and as such, it is subject to the CNCF code of conduct. So please do not add anything to the chat or questions that would be in violation of that code of conduct. Basically, please be respectful of all of your fellow participants as well as centres. And I'll hand it over to Thomas right now to kick off today's presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm excited to be speaking here today. So I'm going to show a couple of slides, and then I'm going to go on to the more interesting stuff, which is the demonstration, okay? So let's get going. Can we see that yet? But there we go. Now we have the screen visible as well. Yeah. One spec to rule them all. Okay. So yeah, I'm Thomas Harris. I work as a customer success engineer, but today I'm going to be speaking about an open source project that I'm involved with called SCORE. Okay. So SCORE is built by developers for developers and aiming to improve the developer experience. Ultimately, it is looking at providing a single source of truth on how a workload should be run on any container orchestration platform, whether that be Docker compose, whether that be Kubernetes, whether that be using tooling like Helm to deploy the Kubernetes. Or maybe if you're using a bespoke platform API, which is now becoming more common. Okay. So let's take a step back and look at some of the problems that SCORE is trying to solve. Okay. The first one is cognitive load. Now cognitive load is a wide subject, and within this, we're specifically looking at context switching. Okay. So developers switching between different tools, different workflows creates high cognitive load and impacts the daily work. Say noticeable problem within the environment. The second is inconsistency between environments. Okay. So if I'm developing locally, I'm using something like Docker compose to verify my workload. Once I'm happy with that, I need to then go and deploy to a production system. I may be using Helm to deploy to Kubernetes. I may be deploying to ECS, Google Cloud Run. This then creates inconsistencies between environments. You get this sort of convict drift and problems with replicating the workload from local development to production development. Then another problem is infrastructure management. I've not spoke to any developers who actually want to manage infrastructure. Okay. They need infrastructure. It's sort of a necessity to run their workloads, but actually managing that infrastructure really requires specific knowledge around cloud providers, around cloud architecture design. And again, it also creates cognitive load when we have to think about managing infrastructure. So score promotes what we are calling a workload-centric development type of development. Versus infrastructure-centric development, which is pretty common today. So what score is looking to do and what we're moving towards is providing a single source of truth for your workload. So it'd be in the definitive reference on how a workload should be run regardless of environment, regardless of platform. It's a spec and the spec is tightly scoped. So it only asks for inputs that the developer is concerned with and shields the developer away from the complexities of infrastructure, away from the complexities of container orchestration. And in regards to infrastructure management, it's very declarative. Score allows you to just define which infrastructure you need, which infrastructure your workload relies on and it's up for the platform and the platform team to implement that infrastructure and that be available to the workload. So at a very high level, this is looking at the implementation of score. We have sort of three components. So you have the score specification, which is really sort of the key thing here. It specifies how a workload should be run. Then you have the score implementation, which is ultimately a CLI tool that actually translates the specification into a platform-specific configuration file. So to be clear, this is a very early project. We only released publicly in November, just at the start of November. So we have a couple of implementations. One of those is Docker compose. One of those is Helm. And it's very extensible. So the community are able to write specific implementations for their platform, whether that be implementations that are available on the public cloud providers or specific platform-specific implementations for your own custom platform API. So I will shall move on to the demonstration and not do any more slides. Is there any questions at this point before I start looking at some code? Not so far, but looking forward to those. So if anyone has any questions, you can send them in. Oh, cool, cool, cool.  So I've been developing locally. I've built a Docker image, a container image. I've tested that locally. I'm happy with it. Now I need to run that on a more production-grade infrastructure. So I could be using Docker locally here. As you can see, I've got nothing running yet. We'll get to that. And then my production infrastructure could be something like GKE. Okay, so I've got access to a GKE cluster as well. Just a single node, this is a demonstration. So as a developer, I need to understand the implementation of Docker compose, write Docker compose files. When I want to transfer that workload to a production-grade infrastructure, I also have to understand how to write helm files as an example. And as an organization that I work for uses more technologies, maybe a platform-specific API, I have to understand how to run that workload on those different platforms. So what SCORE is doing is having a single specification that can translate to any of those platforms, okay? So let's take a quick look at an example SCORE file. And this is a very, an example that just uses a simple image, okay? So it's just for demonstration purposes. But let's take a closer look at this file. So what I'm saying is on line one is that I have an API version. So the SCORE spec is versioned, which is pretty important and pretty standard nowadays as well. And then I am giving it a name, giving the workload a name, specifying a container or a group of containers and a specific image, okay? So all five, yeah, so far so good. Supply some commands line arguments to the workload. This is just something that keeps our workload running in this instance, okay? This is the point where it gets more interesting, right? This is just a definition of I need to run this container image, okay? But I don't know of many actual production grade workflows that don't rely on external resources. So if we just quickly flip down to this sort of resources piece from line 13 and look at sort of line 20 that says DB, okay? So database, but rather than me worrying about the specific implementation of that database where that database runs, whether that be running as a local container if I'm developing locally or whether that runs as a full blown service on Google Clouds under Cloud SQL. I'm not worried about the implementation. I just need an endpoint that is a Postgres database. So I just declare database and type Postgres, okay? And it's up to the platform to actually implement and provide that database. So moving up, just looking at the variables again, I've got this connection string. This workload needs to connect to a database. So it needs a connection string to speak to that database. As you can see, I have not declared anything explicitly. I've built up this connection string that will be resolved at runtime. And this is super important as well, right? So all that, you know because should I know that connection string? Should I hard code that connection string? Absolutely not, shouldn't be hard coded but for me to know it, I need to see. If we could zoom in a bit, there's someone who's wanting to see a bit closer. Okay, I can. It makes it interesting to look at. Is that okay? I think it's better, yeah. Cool. So what we're actually doing rather than explicitly declaring the connection string, we're just putting a placeholder. So we're saying we're referring to the actual database and these will be resolved when the workload actually gets deployed on the relevant platform, okay? So this is something that is part of the platform engineering ideology which we are calling dynamic configuration management. So when the workload is deployed, the configuration gets resolved and then it is dynamically updated as those values change, which they should, you know this is security features. It's likely that a platform team would implement dynamic credentials that rotate on a frequent basis. So the workload specification understands that and is able to resolve that. So this file, this file, this will be consistent across different platforms. So whether I'm in this instance, I'm gonna run it on Docker compose and then I'm actually then gonna move it into production which will be a Kubernetes cluster deployed via help, okay? So the first thing I need to do is translate the files to something that is platform-specific. So I'm gonna translate this backend file. I'm just gonna copy and paste this now. I actually need to be in the correct directory to do this. Okay, so I've translated that file. I've outputted it to a specific, a platform-specific file. That's the backend. I've also got a front-end that is similar to simulate a production type workload. I've got these two files. We take a look at those a bit closer. You can now see that I've got these two files. I've got a backend compose and front-end compose, okay? So the backend compose is translating the score spec to the Docker specification. Now I actually need to bring the workload up. If you're wondering how the database is gonna be built up, typically in production environments, that is down to a platform team to implement. In this instance, I've just run in a database locally, which is fine for a developer. Just bring up a local database. When we move into production, it becomes more difficult for them to define that. It's something that a platform team would implement. Okay, so I'm gonna run the DB, just as a compose file. The backend, which I showed you, and the front-end as well, okay? Now we're actually bringing those workloads up. All I've had to do is specify all of this in a single score file and just translate those files to something platform-specific. So we're just going through the motion of bringing this up now. If we look at the bottom, I know there's a lot going on here, but these are just the sort of the logs from bringing these workloads up. We can see we've got this, hey Jimmy, connecting to the database and we've actually resolved the connection string, okay? So we've got a front-end, a backend, and we're resolving the connection string so we can speak to the database. So on its own, on its own, if I'm just deploying to Docker compose, it might not be very useful. Why would I write a different file when I can write Docker compose explicitly or directly? But in reality, production grade workloads do not run under Docker compose, okay? So we need to actually translate those to a more production grade platform. So in this example here, let me get out of this, I'm going to stop all these workloads. This example here, I'm now going to deploy it to Kubernetes by help. So the same file, exact same file, I'm going to apply to Kubernetes. So I need to do the translation. So rather than using score compose, I'm going to use score help, okay? And it translates the front-end and outputs a Helm values file. So we don't output a Helm chart specifically, but I will show you how that's translated. So I'm going to translate the values file and translate the front-end to a values file then translate the backend to a values file also. So now if we go in here, I've got these backend values, I've got these front-end values that can be used with help. As mentioned, we don't translate to a Helm chart. What we have is a reference chart that values can be fed into. So we can install that chart. Obviously you have the ability to create your own reference charts, but we have an example here, which is on the score spec, we'll get a help repo. So now that I've done that, I can do a Helm install. So this is going to install directly to the Kubernetes cluster that I just showed you how I have access to, if I cube CTL. Now let's go and look at that deployment. Let's go and verify that deployment exists in case you don't believe me, okay? So there's a lot going on this screen. I appreciate that. If I say get service, I can see that the service is up. If I say get pods, I can see that I have these pods running, okay? And if I just tell the logs as well, we can see the connection string. Okay, so there we are. So in the same way that I deployed my workload before, I used the initial score spec, which is here. Oh, sorry, which is not there, which is here, so that's the backend example. I deployed this workload to Docker compose, and then I deployed to Kubernetes using the same file. And I've got the same outcome. I've got this workload running, it's being to the front end, it's speaking to the backend, they can communicate to each other, and we can speak to the database. If we look at the connection string that we've echoed out, we can see that it has been resolved, the inputs have been passed in, and everything is successful, okay? So this is just a simple example, right? There may be other tooling out there that can translate from to Docker compose, can translate to help in a single file. But what we are looking at really here, and the vision is to support the platform engineer in ideology. The ability for platform engineers to define resources to best practice, or as some may call golden paths, and for developers to take a workload-centric view of their development, which means that they can concentrate on writing code, pushing that code to an environment, and then that same specification being consistent across all environments, okay? So in future, we're looking at many different implementations. We have a very sort of strong implementation system where the community are able to write their own plugins. So we're really excited about the future of score and how that's gonna help developers improve their experience in their day-to-day work. So that's a very quick overview and a quick demo. Are there any questions? Yeah, there was a question, Mo, which was does score have a GitHub repo? It does indeed. Yes, yes. I shall post it in the chat one second. Are there any other questions? Why do that? Not so far, but to the audience, this would be the perfect spot to ask questions. If you have any, so send them in. Cool, I shall post this in the chat now. I think this is just private to yourself, but so there's the score.dev website, and then I will bring up the repo as well. There we go, and attendees in the YouTube side have the link now as well. There we go. So there's the actual specific repository that relates to the spec. And if you look a step back in that repository, you will find the specific implementations that we've developed so far. Yeah, so there we have the link, put it in the chat. And then there's a question, how do you compare config drift between two environments? If I understand the question correctly, config drift happens when a developer uses one type of platform or technology to deploy their workload. And then when they need to deploy to another type of platform, they need to redefine that workload. So they need to resolve and understand the differences between the two specifications or the platform specific implementation. And they probably have the best interests at heart, but naturally understanding many different platforms, many different specifications means that the config becomes different between those environments. And there's also the point of updating the config as well. If I make a change to one environment, I need to represent that in the other environment. So what score is aiming to do, and it's actually achieving in this demo as we've seen, is create a single specification that is consistent across those environments. Hope that answers the question. Please follow up if there's any further questions to that. Yeah, great, perfect. The asker, Rita, if you have any extra questions, just send them in and we can get answers to them as well. Yeah, did you have anything else you wanted to show as far as the demo goes or anything there? I don't have anything specific today, but what I will say is that we are gonna share the link to the sandbox environment that I just showed there to give viewers access. It will only be available for about a week at the moment, so we're gonna keep that up, let people play with it if they're interested, and we're happy to take feedback. So please Eva, reach out if my details are available or just make comments or pull requests on the GitHub repo. Perfect, should I share the link now? Absolutely. There we go, I'm sharing to people here as well, so they can see it within the stream as well. So people can go there and play around themselves and it was available for about a week. Yeah, we'll keep it out for a week initially, yeah. Perfect. And so if they wanna reach out with questions, do you have a Slack channel that people can join or should they reach out in the CNCF Slack or would the GitHub repo be the best store? We do, so there's a specific Slack community dedicated to SCORE, so I will just find that. I'm not prepared to share that, but I will find it right now. Community, join us on Slack. So I think this works for everyone. I mean, if you could test that now, does it take you straight to the Slack community? It works for me at least, so I can post that one as well. Perfect. There we go. Yeah, please join us on Slack. Ask any questions, any suggestions. If you wanna get involved in contributing, if you have any ideas, then reach out there and the SCORE team, yeah, we'll be happy to take those. Perfect. And while we see if anyone else is typing away a question and needs to send them in soon, I have a few questions. The first, the simple one is if someone's now super excited to learn more about the topic, and they're gonna do hopefully something around with the environment and everything, what should do they after that? Like what's the next step? What should they be learning if they wanna do even more of a deep dive into the topic? What do you have any recommendations? Well, I'll say the first thing is, tell us your experience on the SCORE Slack community. Tell us what you need to learn, what you'd like to know more. We'd be happy to provide many more materials on platform engineering in general and some guidance on where to go next. Okay, perfect. So very customized approach, I love it. Yeah, sounds good. And then the one thing that I'm always interested in, so what's gonna be do you have any sneak peeks or any kind of things you can share about the future of SCORE? Is there anything coming up in the future? What's in the roadmap? So we have a very clearly defined vision, okay? So that vision is to provide this sort of single workload specification that's consistent across platforms and solving problems that we set out at the start of the presentation, okay? So that's the vision. There are a few implementations on the sort of internal roadmap that we're speaking of that really would be interested to hear from the wider community what implementations are important to them, which platforms are they using most, where their pain points are and we can see if SCORE can help to alleviate that. Perfect, so clearly I guess the Slack community is the place to be to discuss and then take things further and really kind of see where the future takes SCORE as well. It's perfect. I don't think there's any new questions coming in so we can start wrapping up soon. So Thomas, do you have any final words or anything that you wanna kind of finish off as well? No, I don't know. Just thank you for the people that have joined. Really appreciate you taking your time out of your busy days and yeah, if you've got the chance, test the hands-on sandbox environment and reach out. Perfect, and here is the sandbox environment link again if you didn't catch it the first time and it is also in the chat as well. But perfect, thank you so much for coming in and doing such a great demo and really being very community minded and getting started with discussions with everyone. That's always lovely to see. But thank you everyone for joining the latest episode of Cloud Native Live. It was great to have a session about solving conflict drift across environments with SCORE. Really loved the few questions that we got from the audience as well and I hope everyone jumps in and tries out the environment in the next week as well. In the coming weeks, we would have great sessions coming up but we have a bit of a holiday break now coming up with Cloud Native Live but we will be back in January with more great sessions coming up. Stay tuned for those. Thank you for joining us today and see you in the next Cloud Native Live. Thank you for having me. Take care all.


Middle Passage by Charles Johnson, narrated by Dion Graham. The book begins with the following quote from St. Thomas Aquinas. Homo est quo de modo omnia. And from Robert Hayden's Middle Passage, What port awaits us, Davy Joneses, or home? I've heard of slavers drifting, drifting, play things of wind and storm and chance. Their crews gone blind, the jungle hatred crawling up on deck. And from the Upanishad, who sees variety and not the unity, wanders on from death to death. And now Middle Passage. Lord Dale, Journal of a Voyage Intended by God's Permission in the Republic, African from New Orleans to the Winwood Coast of Africa. Entry, the first, June 14th, 1830. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster I've come to learn is women. In my case, it was a spirited Boston school teacher named Isadora Bailey who led me to become a cook aboard the Republic. Both Isadora and my creditors, I should add, who entered into a conspiracy, a trap, a scheme so cunning that my only choices were prison, a brief stay in the stony oobliette of the Spanish Calabazo, or a long one at the bottom of the Mississippi, or marriage, which was, for a man of my temperament, worse than imprisonment. Especially if you knew Isadora. So I went to sea, sailing from Louisiana on April 14th, 1830. Hoping a quarter year aboard a slave clipper would give this relentless woman time to reconsider, and my bill collectors, time to forget they'd ever heard the name Rutherford Calhoun. But what lay ahead in Africa, then later on the open, endless sea, was, as I shall tell you, far worse than the fortune I'd fled in New Orleans. New Orleans, you should know, was a city tailored to my taste for the excessive exotic fringes of life.  So it seemed those first few months to the country boy with cotton in his hair, a great whore of a city in her glory, a kind of glandular golden age. She was, if not a town devoted to an almost religious pursuit of sin, then at least to a steamy sexuality. To the newcomer, she was an assault of smells, molasses co-mingled with mangoes in the centrally damp air, the stench of slop in a muddy street, and, from the labyrinthine warehouses on the docks, the odor of Brazilian coffee and Mexican oils. And also this, the most exquisitely beautiful women in the world, thoroughbreds of pleasure created two centuries before by the French for their enjoyment, molados colored like magnolia petals, quadrunes with breasts big as melons, women who smelled like roses all year round. Home, brother, for a Randy Illinois boy of two and twenty, accustomed to cornfields, cow plops and handjobs in his master's hayloft, knew Orleans wasn't home, it was heaven. But even paradise must have its backside too, and it is here, alas, that the newcomer comes to rest.  In plain English, I was a petty thief. How I fell into this life of living off others, of being a social parasite, is a long-sworded story, much shortened for those who, like the Greeks, prefer to keep their violence offstage. Naturally, I looked for honest work, but arriving in the city, checking the saloons and negro bars, I found nothing, so I stole. It came a second nature to me. My master, Reverend Peleg Chandler, had noticed this stickiness of my fingers when I was a child, and I... Sample complete. Ready to continue?


Oh, what is up? Oh, what is up? Hey, what is that? The mic was just over here.  I'm not holding the mic. Welcome. It is the 11th of December. Welcome to let there be talk. And it's going to be me today. It's going to be me today. Me and you, you and I welcome to the show. First up, let's give the Patreon or some big love. If you have not heard the Patreon bonus episodes of let there be talk. There is 2,500 of them. And you can get it at patreon.com slash Dean Dale Ray. Let me give the shout out to the new Patriots. It's Tim Porter. What is going on, Tim Porter. Kelsey Olson. Kelsey Olson is in the house. Ben Lynn Brooklyn double B. What is up double B. And then just D somebody named the letter D. Those are the new patriots. Thank you. Also shout out to my great sponsor. Standard and strange. The one stop shop for all of the best denim leather and boots. All the planet, all Japanese goods you can get at standard and strange one stop shop.  If you don't know what that is, I dove deep into the rabbit hole many times and I've talked about it. It's the best leather design ever. I love the jacket with the D pocket.   You can catch them in New York City, Berkeley slash Oakland and New Mexico. All right. What is happening everybody. My voice is absolutely trash today, which is not a good thing when you're podcasting. And after all these years of using my voice for a professional type of situation, I can tell when it's trashed and I know exactly when to rest it and know how to rest it, which usually means lots of throat coat, sleep and no talking, which is not going to happen today because I got to do the podcast.    Just old. When you say anything like that, the music's way too loud. I can't talk over it, but it is true.   The speaker would be here. Music crank him. And then I would move way over to the other side of the room.  I don't know what it was just drawing you over there. Like all of a sudden you're just in the corner by the speaker again.   I don't know. So it's tired. I went to the comedy store last night, Christmas party.  All kinds of good friends there. Holtzman was in the house. My good man Holtzman who I don't get to see as much because he spends half his time out there in Texas. Ian Edwards, Eric Griffin. Just, you know, Polly shore. Just no place I'd rather be during the holidays than around my comedy store friends and family. It's just great. Great vibe. There was some karaoke. No way was I going to sing karaoke voice was already trashed.  If you do it cool.  And it's mostly because of the system. That people bring for the karaoke.   I cannot believe that's not in the karaoke machines yet. So just, you know, anyway, anyway, there's some people singing karaoke. And they, my voice was trashed and still trashed. And I was just feeling for him.  One guy was doing like a cookie monster version of you ought to know by Alanis Morissette. And I was, I kept thinking it was like, Oh, that guy's not going to be able to talk tomorrow.  I'm talking a lot about my voice. Because over all the years, I've been lucky enough to been able to use it to make a, kind of make a living. And podcasting, singing, comedy, all of it, like massive amounts of voice usage. And speaking of that, I announced on Thursday. That we are doing the bond Scott bash. And it's rescheduled last year. My mom passed away. Rest in peace. The great Vicky. And we're going to dedicate this one to her. Since she was the person that took me to see bond Scott in 1978. So, you know, it's all about the cool parents. Be a cool parent. If you're a parent out there, be cool. It goes a long way.  Let him try some soccer. They want to be trans. Let him try being trans. You know, I was thinking about it when I was young. I almost was trans maybe I dressed like a woman most of the time in those rock outfits. That was, that was almost trans. It just didn't stick. But uh, you know what I mean?   Anyway, um, yeah, be a cool parent.  And she took me to see that the great day on the green number five in 1978 on the power age tour. And that was it hooked on bond Scott every sense. And when he passed away in 1980. I got a group of friends together and started doing the bond tribute. Back then it was called the church of bond Scott. That's what we called it or I called it. And uh, it started. You know, what's it been over 40 years now. And it started with Bay Area bands like death angel or jet boy or, uh, you know, vain, all these Bay Area bands. Who else exodus guys. Time to Paul Gilbert and played it. I played drums. Tons of people would get together and we would do a record.  And, uh, and each band would get like two songs. Like death angel. I think they were called the organization by then when we were trying it. I don't know it might have been death angel at the time.  But they were these incredible nights very festive. They usually fell on my birthday because bond died on February 16th. My birthday was February 3rd. So we thought, well, let's do it right around then.  And we did it for many, many years. And then, uh, of course, the stone closed and, um, and then Josh Z and myself, Josh Z who is one of the greatest guitar players I've ever seen in my life. And, uh, early on wanted to do a band with Josh Z. If you have not heard my podcast with Josh Z who was in a band called protein that was signed to Sony records, I believe. They were big in San Francisco, three piece, very, very outside the box, cool, fun music. Uh, Josh Z and I, uh, you know, he was in a band called midnight lightning. He was a kid in Marin County, like 16, 17 or 18 or something.  He had a white strat and, uh, he was like a skater looking kid and tried to do a band with him many times, just didn't work. Josh had his own vision. I had my own vision, but we, uh, bonded and remained very close friends over the group AC DC. So once the kind of bands, uh, format went away, I put together just, uh, uh, one band and it was me and Josh Z. Billy row always from Jet Boy on rhythm.  He also played with, uh, that, that girl. What was her name? You say had that Lisa love. When he, uh, when he was recommended for my band, they're like, yeah, you should check him out, man. He played Lisa love like a Lisa love.  I didn't play metal either.  And to this day, I feel that he's one of the greatest drummers I've ever played with. So I put together a band and we started doing it at the bottom of the hill, which is one of the greatest venues in San Francisco, still open. One of the only few venues open in San Fran still to this day. All of them are gone. Slams, paradise slams, the stone, the Mabuhay, uh, coca tree, uh, uh, I beam. Uh, uh, what was that one called? Night break.  And, uh, so we started doing it there. Then eventually I moved to Los Angeles and it didn't happen for many, many years. Then I was turning 50. And I decided to fire it up and I was like, what better way to do it than have Bill Burr on some drums? Cause he's, he loved AC DC. And we'd become really, really good friends. And, uh, and I said, let's do Delray at the L. Ray for my 50th. So that was seven years ago. And, uh, we did that one. And it was fun. And we've been doing it every sense again.  You know, also, which is really wild as I do comedy now. If you dig, if you guys didn't know, I do standup comedy. For 14 straight years now, as of last week, December 6th, I am on my 15th year right now. Standup comedy.  I'll be in San Francisco this Sunday, the 17th at the chapel. And I'll be at Irvine improv December 20th, both headlining shows, San Fran show up. Orange County show up.  Doing the mummy. You gotta do the mummy. Anyway, so we fired it back up. And here we are. We're doing it. January night at the Avalon, which is, I believe, probably the best theater in LA to do a gig. It's not too big and it's not too small.  Incredible sight lines. Amazing digital screens. Hold on.  My voice is trash. There we go. Yeah. And the Avalon has so much history. They were the palace back in the day. You know, I believe James addiction did their record release there. G and R played there back in the 80s. You know, all the great, great concerts would go down in the palace. They had a, an amazing nightclub above it for years called the spider lounge. I think it was spider room spider club. Great. That's where I met.   He was standing in the spider club. Me and my buddy Nico. And he was standing there and he was talking to a girl in front of us. And we were all just chilling and he goes, Hey, what's that?   I still don't know how I did it because the cheek was moving. Like, you know, when you're pulling something like a string and it's stuck and it pulled this string out of her cheek.   Now, I don't know if he just had her, you know, somewhere and said here, put the string in here and we'll do this and we'll blow people's minds. I don't know how it happened.    Anyway, back to the club. I can get sidetracked like a motherfucker. So it's coming up. And let me give you the players. It's going to be Billy Rowe as the Malcolm, Scott Ian as a Malcolm. And then Steve Gorman, one of the greatest drummers ever for the black crows, formerly of the black crows.  And man, I tell you what, how he didn't get that audition for AC DC. I'll never know.  Perfect. Josh Zee Lee guitar. Ler from Primus on some lead guitar. Dave Lombardo on some drums. Josh freeze on some drums. Who else better get this right? Oh, Scott holiday and J. Buchanan of the rival sons.  Oh my God.  Let me get the other players here. Mike Inez, Allison chains.  Mike Inez on the drums. On the drums. On the bass.  Delray. And who else we got here? We got some more. I can't announce yet.  I don't think you're going to be able to see it. Let's see here. Nah. Oh, there it is. We're doing a limited edition poster. And we're going to show you a little bit of what we've got here. Hi, Aaron's who I had on the podcast a couple months ago. Incredible artists. He's done a lot of art for Divo.  A amazing poster. And I'll post that up. You can see it. So if you're coming to the show, bring a poster to. There's only a hundred of these posters. And they are unreal. They have a limited edition shirt too. I don't want to talk about that yet.  Now, tickets are available to VIP. I think there's only 10 tickets left on the VIP. And I think there's only a couple hundred tickets left for the show. Do yourself a favor. Get the tickets now. Do not miss this. I each year don't know if I'll do it again. But it was the last one a few years ago. And then I decided to do it one more time because the people that couldn't make it because of COVID. Our last show was the last night LA was open. March 10th. And then the whole city and the whole. The whole planet shut down. So it was like the last rock concert. In Los Angeles. So I decided to do it again. Then my mom passed away. And so here we are a few years later. And, you know, like I said, I don't know how, how if I can do it again, this is a farewell tour for the bond Scott tribute farewell tour. Really though, you know, you just never know. You don't know if you're going to be here a year from now.  Also, I never know each year if I can even sing it. I don't know until the couple of days before if I'll be able to sing. I don't sing for a living anymore. And I can do it.    Better get up. Better get up. That's not an ad for Rikola. I've been rocking Rikola's. Since they fucking. I don't know. They're probably some company that's been around 200 years. I was going to say since they came out. But who knows. Rikola's.  That sounds gross. Hey, keep your throat lubed.  So like I said, I never know if I can even sing this thing.  God tribute. A lot of times people go, man, you should be the singer for AC DC. And I talked about it before. The amount of training. And preparation it takes. To sing AC DC is insane. I'll be getting ready for it now for the next four weeks. Lots of gym. Lots of cardio. You have to have a lot of, uh, breathing exercises.  You went out there.  When you're young. You're bulletproof.  You get up the next day. Ah, here are the dog. Quick shot of Yeager. Boom. That's your mouthwash. Yeager. Switch it around. Let's go. You're ready. Not when you're 57. Look at voices trash just from talking at a Christmas party. That's how fragile I am. Anyway, I want to address something. Something. And, um, I don't think people really understand what this takes to put together. I put it all together myself.  There's no ticket master. There's no promoters. It's all me. Which means I rent the room. All right. I rent the chairs. There's no chairs in the venue. I rent the chairs. I rent the equipment. I rent the rehearsal room. I get the artwork together. I, uh, I get the players together. And then we, uh, we rehearsed one day, the day before, and then we do the show.  You know, and it's a lot of work, man. And so look, I, I, um, I appreciate your, um, enthusiasm. When you hit me and say, you should do it in New York. You should do it in San Francisco. You should do it in, uh, you know, wherever, Chicago. It's not just some janky players and, uh, a thrown together thing. It's impossible to tour. It's superstar players. You know, that play in real huge bands for a living. Scott Ian anthrax, he's an anthrax and Mr. Bungle constantly touring Dave Lombardo, Misfits, Bungle, uh, all kinds of groups, Fantamos, everything. Uh, Steve Gorman, he's got his band and he does a morning radio show. My guy Ness is in Alice in chains. They tour all the time. And Billy Rose and Buck Cherry, they've been on the road for the last three years. Bill Burr is a goddamn superstar arena, he's a comedian with a directing career now and a number one movie in the United States, old dad. So as much as, uh, you know, I would love to tour this like five days or something. It's impossible.  To get this December 9th date, the one date where everyone was like, Oh, I'm home is almost impossible.  Can't do that date. I got this going on. I got that going on. And then you zero it down. You have like 20 people on the list that are going to play. And it zeroes down to 10 people that can make it on this one day.  And it's almost impossible to have people to help you because as soon as you do, there's people that lose interest real quick. Hey, I'll help out with that.  Oh man. You know, I forgot, man. So it's me.  When we walk on the stage. That one night, that's what makes it magic. One night. And you see those faces out there.     It's all worth it. It's all worth it. So as much as I appreciate you suggesting. I bring it somewhere else. It is absolutely impossible. Also. People are like, Hey, put this on a pay per view. Stream this. It's not about that. This is about old school. Rock and roll. Where people go to a room. And they get together.  In a venue with humans. Not on your couch.  This is in a room like it was supposed to be. And it's always been meant to be. And loud, very loud.  So anyway, I just wanted to get that out there. And I hope you guys get tickets. Tindale ray.com. The tickets are there. Ready to go. There's only a couple of hundred left. And. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Bond bash has been talked about. Check that out. I want to. I want to talk a little bit about. A legend we lost a couple of days ago. And it was not tragic. Because the man lived to be a hundred and one. Now it was sad for sure. But only sad for a minute because then. You can dig in to the work that he has left behind. And just have an incredible smile. I'm talking about Norman Lear. Who was an old school. You know, producer. Meaning he only wanted to put out stuff. That he felt was great. But he didn't want to put out stuff. Not what was going to make money. And if you have not read Norman Lear's book, I highly recommend it. It is fantastic. And it made me dive down the all in the family. And of course, Sanford and son, but mostly all in the family. Rabbit hole on a Pluto. I got Pluto. Pluto is great. It's great. It's great how it operates. But it's got all the classic TV shows. And you just watch them for free. There's commercials. But when they're on, I go like old school commercials. I get up, get something to drink. Take a piss. Look at my phone. And then the commercials are over. I don't see one commercial. So thank you, Pluto. I've created the incredible all in the family. And so on Pluto, they've got them all on there. And I started watching them.  This show. The first thing that hits me. If I watch all in the family. And then about, I think 15 years later, I watch Spike Lee's film do the right thing. I realize something that is very sad about humans. And that is we have not progressed at all. We've digressed. Is that the right word? We have stayed in the same spot or even gone backwards. And it is insane. Here you are. You're watching all in the family. They're coming home. They're covering. They're coming. They're coming. They're covering homophobia. Religion. Racism.  And politics. All of that in 1972, three, four. And it is exactly what is going on in 2024. I've often said this many times until we can watch all in the family. And Spike Lee's do the right thing until we can watch them. And say, God, this shows dated, huh? We have not done anything to move forward. The only thing that's moved forward is the ability to get out your homophobia and your racism and your political views on a social platform. The armchair warriors, the people in the basement have a place now to spew their insane negativity.    Am I homophobic? Am I racist? Am I, you know, somebody that doesn't care about anything but myself? It's nuts.  As I watched all in the family. I watched about 25 of them in a row.  It's exactly what's going on right now.  So, wow, man. It is interesting.  And, and I see it daily in the comments on anything.    Oh, yeah, you can.   So it was interesting to watch all in the family. Also, what an incredible show. The actors, Carol O'Connor. Oh my God. And Edith Bunker has got to be one of the greatest characters ever.   Unbelievable. Meathead. Oh, Sally Struthers.  You got Lionel, you got the neighbors, the Jeffersons. It's all good, man. This is some of the most intense heartfelt TV of all time. I truly do not believe there's anything better that shows what kind of people we are in America than that show. It was just unreal to watch it and just go, God, this is fucking, this is brutal. Anyway, Norman Lear, thank you for all of your amazing TV that you put out. There has not been anything that good since, which is crazy. You know when people go, there's no good music anymore. I don't believe that at all. I've said that many times. There's so much good music, but there is no good TV anymore. I will agree on that. I don't even watch TV. You know, Breaking Bad, Fantastic, Sopranos, The Wire.  Isn't that crazy? And I know you're going to DM me and go, well, man, you ought to check out blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I get it. I get it.  You know, there's Prince, Sign of the Time level shows. And, you know, The Wire being one of them. A lot of people didn't even watch The Wire. It was so good. They didn't understand it. Imagine that. You make something so good that are people like, I don't get it. Twin Peaks. Unbelievable.  Anyway, there's Gertie over there snoring. I see you, Gertie. Anyway, Norma Lear. Pour one out for that, man. Read his book if you've not read it. It is unbelievable. A couple of things here. What do we got here? Sorry. Crunching on this goddamn. Recorder. Remember that commercial?  Get to Recorder. Next thing you know, he's up. Rec. Man, I am nuts today. I am nuts. I'm also pretty jacked up on the, the Bond Scott announcement. Pretty fired up. Oh, by the way, I'm going to be head nine and four Collins, Colorado at the comedy for March eight and nine, I think it is. So that's another cool show coming up. And January 22nd through the 28th, I believe I'll be at the cellar in Las Vegas. At the real hotel. I'm going to go to Vegas to, to the sphere finally. And see you too on my birthday, February 3rd. I'm going to be 58. Take a handful of mushrooms, like I said before, and watch you too. I did get some rumblings from a, a good source that dead and Co is going to play the sphere. And that's, now look, I'm just saying, I don't know if it's true, but it came from a good source. Also, I heard Beyonce. So it looks like you're going to have fish coming up, then maybe dead and Co, then maybe Beyonce.  Just imagine the dead heads in there, just on acid. Just fucking. Steely face. Steely is flying all over in there.   There's going to be a lot of fucking, uh, psychedelic meltdowns in the sphere over the next. Two, three years. They're going to have probably warnings on the ticket warning. Acid heads. Be careful.  This isn't your average fucking, you know, six by nine video screens.  You know, like when you watch a fear and loathing in Las Vegas, that movie, and you know, he's all, we walked into the casino and there was lizards coming out of the carpet.  I was on 14 milligrams of mescaline, 18 grams of cocaine and five bottles of smear it off. Lizards and dragons were flying. I mean, bats were coming everywhere. Ah, bats.  Bats. Bats were everywhere. The bats were biting me.   Johnny Depp. God damn. He was so good at one time. Right. I don't know what happened to him.  I'm fucking, I'm Keith Richards on a movie. And then Leo, Leo just passed him up. See you buddy.  I'm going to do real movies still. You took the dollar, Johnny. You took the Hollywood dollar. I'm not knocking him.   Am I a pirate? What am I? Anyway, I told you guys, right? I saw killers of Flower Moon. It's good. I like Oppenheimer better. Way better, actually. And Barbie, all these movies got, got up some golden globe nominees today. Barbie was great. I recommend Barbie. Definitely on some psychedelics, man.  I got to go see the Godzilla film. My buddy told me that the Godzilla film was amazing.  Best one since the first Godzilla. I love Godzilla. I love Ultraman. You know, Godzilla to me is way better than King Kong.  So he's, he's going on and on. You got to see Godzilla dude. I'm like, all right, he's all, it is the best. And I was like, all right, I'm going to see it.  So, you know, I don't, I don't know if I should take his recommendation, but I'll go see it. I want to see Godzilla still.  Willem, I was doing that joke. I've been doing that joke for about a year. Willem, I've been calling him William for years. Sometimes it gets laughs. Sometimes it doesn't. Oh, by the way, I'll be in La Jolla this weekend. Thursday night for the toys for tots. Bring a toy down. We're going to give it to the Marines. They're going to hand out the toys to the kids. And you'll get some free comedy. Down at La Jolla comedy store this Thursday. So come on out. Bring a toy.  Speaking of that, I went to the Rose Bowl flea market yesterday.  Maybe six years ago. I used to go like crazy. I used to come down from San Francisco like twice a year to go. That's how much I love it. If you have not been to the Rose Bowl flea market, it is the greatest of all time.   So we can us fatties. Fatty America. Fatty America. Can get zero exercise and just cruise the flea market in about 27 minutes. On the bird scooters. Just crashing into each other.  And I'm in good shape.  I go to the gym. But concrete. And the sun. It was 81 yesterday in December. There ain't no global warming men.   What about that tornado yesterday in Tennessee?  That's all that is God's take care of it. Getting rid of these sinners. A sinner, sinner swing. Anyway, I went to the Rose Bowl flea market. The first thing I thought was I want everything here in my full minimalist mode.  I had those. I need them now. I need them back on the shell so I can look at them twice and then never look at them again while they collect dust. Here's 400 for your kiss dolls.  The bonanza lunchbox with Haas. I need another lunchbox next to my bionic man. I don't look at.   I got a new thing now. I go to the flea market and right when I think I want to buy it, I just take a picture and then I just look at the picture a few times a year and I'm good.      Oh yeah. Here it is.  The one where they're on top of the Empire State Building.  Here comes another fish. Oh yeah. I got a vintage course light shirt. That's two cores light shout outs on here.    Poor cop course. Anyway, it's crazy to think about how fast.  Yo yo the butterfly. Oh man. Here's the bendable buddies from Berg or Jack in a box. Here's a stretch Armstrong. I need a stretch Armstrong.  You meet some woman of your dreams. You think this is the one I'm going to marry.  She's like, dude, you're 57. And just walks out. Vagina dry up.  Then a set of kiss dolls on your fucking. Mantle. In your bedroom.  Do you hear that sound when your lady friend comes in the house.   Garbage man. Com man.   Anyway, had a great time at the flea market went with Shailen, my good friend Shailen.   You know, plants. Oh God, here's a good deal on a plant. Eight bucks.  Mid-century furniture. Art. Wow. Here's a good painting. Some granny did in the 60s. You know, they got something for everybody out there. And over the years, my taste has changed. I'm just going, I'm going to 80s. Yeah, late 80s. I've drive down and you could buy an early bird ticket and go in at 5am.  And they're just digging through people's Levi's looking for big E Levi's.   And then years later, it became vintage cowboy boots. Oh, look at these.  Vintage cowboy boots. And then it became all about, you know, a kiss belt buckles or those rock belt buckles and, and rock memorabilia, rock t-shirts.  Here's Judas Priest, Cal Palace Screamin' for Vengeance Tour. All those years, you always have something myself. It keeps me going. Something I'm into finding and collecting.  It's not as good. It's a lot like those people that want me to stream the Bond Scott Bash. eBay is like that.  Mingle with people like the old days. I was talking to a friend over the weekend. He's doing a digital detox.    It's just a phone.  Mingle with people.   I did see a guy yesterday. Oh my God. I've said it for years. I love the dead now. And the reason I hated him early on was mostly because of their fans. And there were these two dead heads there yesterday. And we're talking 81 degrees crusty black asphalt.   In this time of fentanyl and possible syringes, anything, just no shoes.  Anyway, had a great time. I think it's once a month. I don't know. It's second Sunday or something. But go to the Rose Bowl and check it out. 12 bucks to get in.  They got food there too. You can walk around and have a goddamn chiro.  Anyway, before I get out of here, I want to tell everybody that I have been on a heavy Christie McVie Fleetwood Mac binge. And Stevie, cool. Stevie next. Cool. But Christie McVie to me is truly a genius. Rest in peace. We lost her a while ago, but I have been so into Christie McVie era Fleetwood Mac. She is unbelievable. And I truly believe. Crazy underrated. Just amazing voice. Great, great, great voice. And great player. Christie McVie era Fleetwood Mac. I can't get enough of it. That. And you know, that's been my Sunday. Of course, always for my mom, the great Carol King tapestry. And still rocking John Mayor born and raised on Sundays, but also reliving the newest John Mayor record. So Brock back on that again, man, Sunday music. It's nothing better. Get up early. Get a good breakfast on a coffee, hit the flea market, come home, rest your dogs and listen to some Fleetwood Mac. Some Carol King, some Miles Davis, some John Mayor sob rock. It is Sunday is just beautiful. Sunday is a beautiful day. Ian Edwards was telling me, he goes, man, you cannot beat a Sunday in LA. And he is right.  It is just beautiful Sundays, man. And I don't go to church and I'm not into that shit, but my religion is truly just some good music, good food, some friends and laughs on a Sunday during the day. I've missed so many. I'm back in the day being all high all night, just sleeping all day. Getting ready to go swing a hammer on Monday. Like, fuck, I got to get it together. A Domino's call. Domino's, yeah, a large pepperoni. Thanks. Yeah. I don't know why I went into Stephen right there. Yeah. Domino's, a lot of people like it. I love you guys. Get your tickets. December 17th. Chapel San Francisco. December 20th. Irvine improv. Orange County, California. January 9th. Let there be rock. The bond Scott bash. All available. Dean Delray dot com. Patreon dot com slash Dean Delray. I love you guys. Keep the candles lit. And I will see you. Oh, La Jolla Thursday night. Toys for Tots. G I Joe with kung fu. Grip. Candles lit. See ya.


McGuire's M57 Vinyl and Rubber Cleaner and Protectin is formulated to clean, shine and protect in one easy step. Safely deep clean vinyl and rubber surfaces to leave behind a rich natural sheen. Specialized conditioners also help to prevent surfaces from drying, cracking and fading. Protect the rubber and vinyl on your boat or RV so you can keep it looking newer longer.


I think we're going to get started for real this time.  He came all the way from New Zealand to share with us better agile through studio. So let's hear from John. Thanks Andrew. Am I coming through alright? Yep, good. Okay cool. So here as the big picture says, I flew a long way into Dave's video and it's really great to actually be in a group of people here in the States. So we want to come over and come to one of these conferences for a long time and I saw this one, I thought it was the one I want to go to because I think the themes of it, the routes and shoots thing is really important. So how I want to hopefully contribute to this routes and shoots thing today is to talk about ideas that we can steal from various other fields from business, psychology, economics, those sort of things to help us both with the routes, the foundations of agile so perhaps with some of the shoots, some of the new things that we can build on. Now I'm going to structure the talk today around the four points from the agile manifesto which Alister took us through earlier except I'm not going to talk about one of them, the working software one. Oops that was meant to cross out, let's try that again. Working software one, I'm not going to be talking about that one today just because I haven't got anything to say and I haven't got enough time to say it even if I had something. So we're going to rip into the other ones and we're going to try and tie it back a little bit to what we were talking about this morning as I was sitting there especially in the panel discussion I was thinking hey you know it relates a little bit to this thing and that thing and the other thing. So without further ado let's have a look at how one of the areas that I've discovered that I think really helps us with responding to change over following a plan or as what was the term for Alister? Attend to current reality. Attend to current reality which is a great term but I've never got around to it, quickly putting it on my side. So, one of the things that I've stumbled across and this presentation is essentially a bunch of things I've stumbled across over the past four or five years when I go man that's relevant to our job that could be helpful. And one of the things that really helps here is this thing called evidence-based management. Now, evidence-based management it's the name of it is inspired by a thing called evidence-based medicine. If you were a doctor it was called it was mine, you might have mentioned it to you. And the evidence-based medicine one basically starts off like this we're not going to treat this particular illness the same way it's been treated for the past 50 years just because that's the way it's always been done. Instead we're going to say is the traditional treatment actually better than doing nothing? Is the traditional treatment better than new treatments? And so evidence-based management comes and applies some of that to business management and it also takes it much further. We're only going to be able to scratch the surface of it today and we're going to talk about how it's relevant to responding change over following a plan. So they in the evidence-based management community they have a manifesto that is a little bit like ours but it's a bit more wordy. This is copy and pasted right off their website and we're not going to talk about all of it today. I guess I wanted to put it up there in part to draw the parallel with our own manifesto and in part to illustrate that I'm only going to really talk today about these two here in the middle and I would have liked to have talked about some of the others because there's lots of relevance and lots of different parts of it. The first one there, number two that I'd like to talk about is getting the best evidence and using it to guide actions and we can see that on two levels in our child. We see it within a project which we'll talk about some more in a minute but we also see it in the sense that Alice was talking about this morning when he went round, when he was waiting for IBM and looked at all those different project teams and said what is in Disney working here and that's one of the really appealing things about agile is to know that we've got this evidence, we've got that research behind it and what the evidence-based management people are saying is that too much of what goes on in the business community doesn't have that behind it. It's fads, it's doing things because it's trendy and you know there's a lesson in there for the business community and there's a lesson in there for us and the good news is that we really do have the solid stuff behind what we're doing in agile particularly if we look in the right places and we remind ourselves of what this conference is about which is indeed to go and to drill back behind the supervision and things of our use of peers if you don't write any documents and actually get back to some of the heart of what the Roots of Agile is about. I should mention that this evidence-based management stuff that comes out of primarily a couple of guys who are at Stanford University very high-playing academics who also spend a lot of time in the real world which probably explains why the quality of their stuff is so high and the other reason that this interest to me that I should mention is because I think it gives us a way to sell what we're doing to business people. We had some questions earlier on on how do you get businesses to buy into this kind of thing and here is something that comes out of the business community. Here is a bunch of business people who, being evidence-based, actually improve these things, these five things on the slide, really, really matter. The first one is basically our trust or our personal safety, should I say, as the Crystal and so there's all these things that are relevant to us that these people are already pitching to the business community and it's already gaining traction in the end and we've got to be able to use that and leverage that when we're selling essentially the same idea with different words into the business community. So I think this is a real help. Someone mentioned the phrase earlier, talking of women, you know, if you're trying to sell agile, how much influence can you really do and here is this whole field of study and research and writing and practical experience that is already selling this to business people. So let's tap into that and use that as we sell the same ideas. The other one I wanted to talk about, the second one here, sorry, the third one, is treat your organisation as an unfinished prototype, learn by doing. And again, there's this complete independent discovery of our notion of feedback, our notion of learning as we go and in fact I really like the way they phrase it. They phrase it with this bit in the middle here which I really, really like. It says, best organisations have the courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change course will find better evidence and that really connected with me. When I read that I thought, hey, that's responding to change over following a plan and really, really eloquent language and so to me that's really, really important thing. I've also seen it phrased as act on your knowledge while doubting what you know and it captures in a way the real tension that we have when we try and pitch agile to business people because we're effectively asking them to do this and we're asking them to get started on a project when they do not have a 3,000 page speed, when we're telling them that we're going to change our minds later and effectively what this is saying is this is what those very same businesses should be doing, not just in software but in everything they do. So certainly really encourage us to tap into that both in terms of informing our own understanding of this and in terms of selling what we're doing in agile. The other main point, this is one that I think connected a lot with some of what we were talking about earlier was individuals and their interactions and some of the stuff that feeds into this from all sorts of other fields. Now my own journey on this has been an interesting one. I started off as the sort of stereotypical kind of shy nerd when I entered the industry about 39 years ago and I had this realisation that if I carried on like that it wasn't going to be very good for my career and so I said to myself, look, you've got to do something about this and the starting point, to give you an idea of what a low level I was starting from, one of the things I remember doing is forcing myself every morning to say hello to the receptionist and that felt like a challenge for me. So I hope most people in the room are starting from a somewhat less challenged starting point but the big thing that I've learned from my personal journey and that now as I've started looking into some of these fields we're going to talk about today is the level of change that you can undergo personally in your skills and your enjoyment of this side of work. There's a very similar story to mine of a university professor who had the same realisation that I did of this is going to hold back my career and he said basically he was essentially a real introvert he said this is going to get in my way and so he basically got into the habit of acting in an extroverted way and I don't mean telling jokes and all but I mean engaging with people, we've talked about engagement before and it can seem like an effort, it certainly has been my experience it can seem like an effort to engage but in my experience you get used to it and you actually realise to your surprise that you kind of like it and this story of this guy he went on to become indistinguishable from an extrovert now on the inside maybe he still felt like if he did still feel like he hadn't completely changed but for practical purposes he had and we have this notion in terms of individuals and interactions that so much of what happens in this area is simply ingrained in people that either you have soft skills or you don't have people skills or you don't we have so much talking like this we have personality profile which kind of again encourages this thought that either you have these skills or you don't and my experience and my is that you can change this stuff so much through practice now it's not going to happen overnight we'll get to that in a minute and so what I wanted to discover as I started to move into some of these fields that Alan mentioned earlier being psychology and as best I can as someone with a full-time job as a nerd I have tried to study some of these things in my spare time and I've been really encouraged to find this notion of these key skills and aspects of our personality I'm really pleased to discover that they are far more changeable than I had ever thought they were and probably even most people in the IT probably don't realise how changeable these things are there's one of the fields that touches on this is this thing called positive psychology which is this really seriously cool thing which I don't have a lot of time to talk about today but one of the foundation books and that is the thing called learned optimism how you can permanently change your level of optimism and you're like wow who thought you could do that before that book was written who thought that was a valid and useful thing for a person to do and so the level of change in this is potentially very large and you can't change everything the corresponding thing on happiness out of positive psychology is you can change about 40% of the happiness that you have in life the other 60% you probably can't believe about so the other analogy I've heard on this is that it's a bit like dieting if you're naturally skinny as I am you can be skinny without a lot of effort if you're naturally a larger person that takes more effort and can achieve it and I think that's what it's like with some of these interpersonal skills that maybe don't come naturally to those of us who are geeks we may require more effort than you know our buddy who's you know I don't know I can't even notice the background you know in sales you know we may require more effort to become good and become sensible of these things so it's just like someone who maybe requires a bit more effort in dieting they can still achieve the result so that's essentially the central theme of what I've got here the central theme number one is the level of change and learning that we can undergo as individuals and we'll come back to some of the other key themes shortly I just wanted on this slide just to take you through some of the new areas that I've found that relate to this when I first started looking into this another part of my personal journey is that not only have I had to learn this stuff I've just been talking about but I've had some real ups and downs in terms of the successes of my interactions with people who work some of them have been very successful and some of them have been just complete train wrecks because it's about individuals and their interactions surely this age-old movement can tell me how to do this stuff so I jumped on Google and I found this wonderful collaboration page and nothing else you know there are thousands of things on tools and processes you know thousands of things that tell me how to do TDD, various factions of TDD the moccasters versus the classists and the factions of the moccasters and but when the manifesto was put together on the hills up there years ago it was saying that this stuff here this stuff right here is more important than processes and tools and I definitely agree with the person who said earlier who was Mike that is agile broken and in this sense I think it is broken we're not putting emphasis in the right place here we're talking and talking and talking about processes and tools when this is the thing that makes the difference and we've always said it was the thing that made the difference so I started to look elsewhere and I discovered this thing called organizational behaviour which defines itself like this and I read that definition and I thought man this thing is people and their interactions at work that's the thing, that's the thing I'm looking for that's the thing that agile is not telling me about and this is this whole area of study with you know academic stuff from practical stuff again that same academic practical mix that I mentioned earlier which is so successful and I was like man this is the thing I've been looking for and so I looked around a bit more and I discovered organizational psychology and the difference between the two is basically that one is taught in business schools and one is taught in psychology departments and so I and there's positive psychology and this is very new thing where the two meet, two come together in this thing called positive organizational psychology and there's not a lot of stuff out here but it's touching on some of what I've talked about today these notions that you can learn all sorts of stuff that is relevant to your ability to have a successful interpersonal relationship with work and we were talking earlier about trust and is trust the right word for this thing that we're trying to do and to me I was thinking whatever it is, it's this thing that particularly this bit is about and some of these other things here, political skill it's about interacting successfully with people around it so sometimes it is building trust sometimes it's influencing them before we've had a chance to build trust and it's all these combinations of things and so this political skill at work is a fascinating thing normally political has some kind of negative connotation to it but basically what these guys are talking about is kind of the good side of the force so to speak and the idea that you can learn how to influence people for good at work and the interesting thing that they teach and I was relieved to find it because I wanted to tell you guys this is true so I had to find out whether it was the business of being able to influence colleagues or managers more successfully than you do now to sell an idea or to interact is by and large a learnable skill and yet so much of the industry including the part of the industry that we're in is not necessarily investing enough effort in this you know it's perfectly normal for gigs to talk about doing the Microsoft certifications or the Java certifications but whoever talks about learning this stuff who even knows that you can learn this stuff you know if you don't think you can learn that of course you're not going to talk about it of course you're not going to try and so one of the things that I'd hope comes out of this talk here today is that when we go back to our various places of work you know there will be people sitting on adjacent desks to you who are like I was 10 or 15 years ago gigs who think they can't do this and who don't know it's learnable and if we can take some of this message back to them I think that could be a really really powerful thing they don't go up to someone and say if I talked about individuals and their interactions you should learn that you know I have got far enough to learn that the full frontal assault dissuasion has seldom been successful but you know what does work is gentle nudges over a long period of time and I think we as a group I'd love to see us giving some of those nudges to try and introduce this idea that this stuff is learnable and try as a group to understand some of the ways that it can be learnt this was my sort of summary slide for this area and I've talked about it would be important and it's obvious there is a lot of research from outside our field that again backs up how important this is it was a case study done in a pharmaceutical company of which teams were the most successful ones and the one that stood out they said well what's the difference about this team and it was the richness of their connections both to each other and to people outside their team and outside their organisation so this stuff has a provable effect on outcomes it's learnable as we said so I want to talk briefly about the ways of learning it so I'm just going to figure out when I'm supposed to be stopping talking because I've lost track of it cool there's this guy who's done a lot of research on the expertise what does it become what does it take to become an expert in tennis some other sport and you know computer programming or in interpersonal interaction and what he's found is this several key notions the one I'm going to single out today is a thing called deliberate practice that means not just accumulating a lot of years of experience but learning so if I go down to a tennis court and I do the same bad serve 20 times in a row I haven't learned but if I do my bad serve the first time and I reflect on how I can do it better and I do it slightly better and I keep doing that cycle that's deliberate practice and the thing he finds with this is that it does take time the same research says it takes 10 years to become an expert and I've talked a bit about my journey with this as an expert on this, you'd assume it's taken me a number of years so none of this this is not a thing you take away it's wonderful this is a process you take away and you start to put into place and it will be approved over the course of months and years I sort of want to say about deliberate practice there's something else in there if I could hold on and ask me a question at the end the other thing that really appealed to me and this was the notion of what's called authentic leadership a lot of what I've been looking at actually comes out of the leadership field people don't seem to be talking as if ordinary people, people by myself who are not managers ordinary people would want to learn this stuff and so you have to read leadership books and then think how you apply it yourself even though you're not officially a leader and that's what I think is failing of not just the algorithm but industry at large but also for agile we say empower the team let them make decisions and then we reserve the leadership training for the managers to help people having empowered them to make decisions how do they work together more successfully to actually come to those decisions you put three architects in a room you get five possible decisions and no one can agree and you know ego is getting away and this sort of thing and so much of this learnable skill is how to take those intentional conflicts lading things those things with egos in the way and turn them into successful interactions so I was mentioning authenticity which comes from the leadership stuff when I first started trying to learn this some time ago I read a book on you know how to be a leader in a technical field and I felt like it was saying John you're like this and good technical leaders will play like that and I'm like well you know it was sort of most offensive to suggest I should have to have some kind of personality transplant and it seemed unlikely to succeed and it really put me off and I actually said well I don't want to be a technical leader then and the interesting thing that comes out management research completely independent from agile is that the best managers managers in general are not trying to conform to some stereotype of who a manager is they are being themselves more skillfully and this again is this learnable skill I think the leadership and it takes the pressure off this whole notion that we can learn to do this stuff better if you save yourself and it's true to simply be a more skillful version of myself the pressure is off you're not trying to give yourself a personality transplant you're not trying to conform to something that's completely different you're actually trying to do the thing that will work for you and happens to be the best way to lead and motivate anyway the other interesting thing about this authenticity is because you're being yourself it's very consistent with building trust there's this really interesting relationship between political skill which is you know influencing the circulation for good causes in nice ways and how that relates to authenticity so the political skill can help you get a quick win in terms of influencing people but if they work with you for six months and they realize that you were not being honest with them when you're influencing them you've undermined your authenticity if you have both you have this incredibly good combination for building the trust early and sustaining it going forward and so that's a really interesting discussion which we probably don't have to do for a matter of time to get into today one thing I should stress on this stuff and I've sort of touched on a little bit this is not about the colour in that this is not about the people who are on your all chart this is about the stuff that happens to the people who are not even on the all chart the people who sit cutting code the people who sit at their desks and don't talk to their developers the people who sit at their desks and talk too much and push their opinions around both those camps and I'm trying to learn to step out of them into a more positive territory so this is not all chart management stuff this is about empowering the teams this is not also necessarily about training courses the great thing about this is the live practice stuff is that you can learn it by yourself it's great to have a buddy in your organization you can go to and say man that being really bad can you give me some hints on how I might do better but it can be intimidating and I know I was too scared to do that but the great thing is that you can apply the live practice by yourself one of the interesting stories I came across was a CEO 35 years old in charge of this big company and he got there on the back of his in the personal skills and they said how did you do that and he said and how did you build those skills and he said every meeting when I came out of the meeting I go back to my desk I get a notebook and I write down essentially reasons learned from that meeting in terms of personal interaction and basically I never read this notebook but it was a mini personal kind of retrospective thing like we do in Agile you know the Intel operations this was his little thing after each meeting and that took him to a point where he was in this very important successful position on the back of his in the personal skills which he had built that way and certainly for me I've not gone down the notebook but I've certainly found that deliberate practice even without a mentor or a buddy is a powerful thing so you can learn this people in the team can learn this individuals can learn this you don't need you know high flying consultants you don't need you know team building courses with ropes and swings over bridges and stuff so and the other thing is that it does take time in this notion of building expertise there's an element of time and patience involved but there's a great great payoff at the end so in the interest of time what I'm going to do on the remaining point which I want to talk about so we're going to move on from that now to the question to the end because I think it was very relevant to the panel discussion earlier I'm going to talk briefly very very briefly about some stuff that relate to contracts and collaboration and I'm going to go very quickly through these three things because they're each written up on my website so I can cheat and not tell you today and you can google them and get everything that I would say if I had more time first one is this thing called principal negotiation has anyone read the book getting the yes cool not a lot of hands went up you haven't read that book you should really really really read it it's transformed my thinking in terms of interacting with customers and colleagues not just about contracts welcome one more time getting the yes yeah I don't have references for all this stuff in the presentation because I've been busy so what I'm going to suggest later on is that if you want this stuff you email me and I will eventually post on my blog references for all of this because what's important to me in this is not to just speak from my own experience not to just have some wild idea here but to be able to have this backed up with research and stuff so I assume you do want to make available to you the stuff that I found backs this up so I will show you details principal negotiation is this wonderful tool for turning negotiation about anything from an adversarial thing into a productive thing the kind of thing we want on an agile project and it can apply to contracts, it can apply to scope and it can apply to choosing your process Alice mentioned earlier situationally specific process is part of the declaration of independence for me my mental framework on how to do a situationally specific process comes out of the work on principal negotiation and all that stuff I've just mentioned is on my site the book is better it's got a whole lot more too QBS quality based selection otherwise known as qualification based selection I work in a company that builds software for other companies and we have this ongoing challenge of pricing being decided upon early and being involved and making choices as the company gets to do the work and I did a bit of googling and I came across something from here in the United States it was fascinating to me if I work in a federal government agency and I want to get an engineer or an architect to do some design work for me I can make that a competitive tent I can put it out to lots of different firms I can ask them whatever I like except the price I have to choose them on their quality they have to complete on their quality and only once I've found my preferred one and my DNA allowed to start negotiating price if we can't agree on price I can go to my second choice what an incredible idea and it seems so relevant to software I have no idea how to affect the kind of industry change but out of the panel this morning we were saying contracts are a big issue here's the thing that's working right here in the United States and it's insanely popular both for the purchases and the sellers because it works so if anyone's got any ideas on how we can try and get some leverage on that do contact me please finally the last one as I said I don't work in an environment enlightened enough to use Qubes unfortunately not yet anyway and so you get the situation there's a little vibe about competitors and software estimation being what it is some people bit high, some people bit low not because you're intentionally doing that but because software estimation is inherently uncertain and so what happens is if we bit too high we don't get to do the project some other sucker who bit low gets to do it we only get to do the work when we are the sucker and so I was having a discussion with this who is quite justifiably a world expert in software and we were talking about this idea but we couldn't nail it down we couldn't assure ourselves whether it was a real phenomenon or not and after a few months of thinking there's got to be an answer to this I had another try in Google and eventually I found this thing called the Winner's Curse and it's been known in economics for I think it's 205 years and here's this thing that is so relevant to so much pain in software development it's been known for 205 years and we haven't by and large reached out and grabbed it there's one excellent paper from the similar research lab in Norway on this wonderful experiment demonstrating it applying exactly through software but apart from that, nothing so one of the reasons I'm using that is it illustrates my broader point of reaching out to the various things around all these different things that exist in all these different fields reaching out and doing them and this idea that was this relevant thing that for 205 years we've missed it really reinforces the point of value of reaching out and looking at incidents and particularly for me around this point here I think there's some real realnesses we can do in that space a couple of bonus points from today we've mentioned how evidence-based management applies to the history of crystal and it's also essentially telling businesses that they should be situationally specific which is exactly what we're telling them through the declaration of interdependence. Something I've actually cut from my presentation was some stuff about the longer-term view I've got involved with in various ways collaborating with people who come out of the Defence Department here in the United States on a thing called earned value and come up with this kind of hybrid thing which is as much of a rigor as I could stand in an Angeles and as much of our likenesses I could shove in there and it turned out to be a very light thing that's still backed by some some rigor and stuff. So again that's completely written up on my website I've got the version for Agilists and the version for people from the traditional DOD background are essentially presenting the same topic and that's a great way to do some of the longer-term view stuff that Alice was talking about earlier. Finally, this point popped into my head during the during the panel discussion we're talking about how do we build this thing called trust or whatever it is that it's not trust this thing that we want, we know what it is and to me those are the ingredients build political skill be authentic and it takes time and I've essentially covered that earlier but for me that's this wonderful formula that helps to answer some of this this thing and if you can get the early version of it the bit where they actually don't trust you yet but you're influencing them to act in a trusting way you can get the later version of it when you've been authentic for six months so they know you're brilliant and they love you and that kind of combination in there I think is really powerful. So to wrap up I guess I want to issue a bit of a call to action here. I'm very, very interested in seeing us both as a group and agile community at large start to make some connections with the outside when I was doing the union value stuff you know, I'm interacting with people from outside out here who work really, really well so if you are interested in that please, please, in touch with me I'm really interested in people who have either new fields or interests in these fields other thing we need to be doing is influencing inside the agile community you know, there was only 17 people eight years ago when we made the Agile Manifesto and that spread out in terms of other people we've got I don't know what it is, 100 in a room or something today the potential for us to influence and to sell some of these ideas is huge so I'd really like to see us do that I have basically no idea how but great faith in the value of community and in the agile community so if you would like to get into that the simplest thing that could possibly work is email me and I'll try to keep us in touch I'm not sure that my email address is the right long term communication mechanism for talking about these topics but it's the easiest thing that we can do right now and I really want to hear from you both because I think this is really important and because I live 8,000 miles away and it gets a bit lonely over there so I don't think we've really got too much time for questions although of course you know, this in my mind at least raises a lot of questions to talk to people afterwards I'm just going to check time when you're coming on Lee, now, right? 5 minutes let's take a little bit of brainstorm questions I'm going to jot them down here and answer them all in one go it's a question backlog I'll introduce this by way of a very brief story many decades ago when I was in high school they had a literary magazine and two, I had to come up with an alternative to it called The Chrome Magnet Journal and one of the papers they published in The Chrome Magnet Journal was The Chrome Magnet Scientific Method and it went something like this draw your conclusion and then look around for enough evidence to support it and I'm curious as to how evidence-based management and its role in agile differs from The Chrome Magnet Scientific Method the question is phrasing the notion of looking around for have I looked around for evidence to support my father's school I will answer that straight away I know he says you're right I'll answer that straight away otherwise I'll forget on one sense it's a really helpful thing no matter how we found it on the other sense as it happens I was looking at the guy one of the key guys behind it in the other field they had on my other slide and I actually found through that so it's like I just stumbled across this thing I thought what is this thing I thought gee I recognise those ideas so I guess I didn't set out to put together a presentation on this and essentially I had most of the personal stuff I was a bit like before I thought man this might make me an agile read stuff presentation but the other stuff particularly the ones I cut a bit short waiting over quite a few years so I don't think we need to be afraid that we are being shallow here in scrambling around for things to prove a point I think we, instead we need to see this as being open minded enough to learn from it and opportunistic enough to leverage the stuff particularly in the people in the interactions we would have had a gap I'll answer the question can you tie up space management with just a little bit more of an agile it doesn't say be agile right it says get started and learn as you go it says change and evolve it says promote what else it calls personal safety which is essentially the ability to bring bad news to your manager so in other words create a culture where it's not just the brave people in this room as someone was saying earlier who are able to say hey manager this project create a culture where everyone can say that so even space management sees these things and they overlap with what we're saying that's essentially the linkage thank you I was thinking about what you said about individuals and their actions thinking about some of the practices that are really common part of what we're having like scannops and retrospectives and things that work high issue level because but then now what you're kind of getting to say I don't think you realize a whole lot of other things in the interest of the latter the question was is standard agile things like stand ups essentially giving us a factor way to do some of these things that I've been hearing about in the interaction stuff maybe sometimes I think the thing that struck me is a whole lot more that we want to know in that agile couldn't tell me how to have a successful whiteboard discussion with an architect to completely disagree with me and successful is not like it my way it's part of the thing success is we get a good outcome and so to me almost in a way the latter is more interesting I don't see huge linkages between our standard practices and what this is teaching I suspect there's some but it doesn't jump out and grab me yep that's it okay so I'm sorry we didn't get much of a question but please do catch up later and please do email me I think I'd love to get involved in more of your discussion on this thank you


I'm Aaron, I'm 27 and I'm a model from Manchester. My relationship history so far has not been that successful. I seem to meet girls and I like them but I just like more than one flavour and I can't seem to keep my hands out of the cookie jar. Most of my exes would probably describe me as a bit of a knobbid. They'd say I'm nice to begin with but I always end up going elsewhere. Maybe I've just not found the right girl yet. I could describe myself in three words. I'd say top bantor, shredded and a bit of a joker. The dirtiest thought I've ever had. I can't really think of one because I've pretty much done everything. I mean, I've banged my mate's mum. That's pretty bad, right? I'd say my biggest social media fail was leaving my phone unlocked and accidentally posting a nude on my Instagram story. Luckily, my mate managed to let me know within five minutes and I deleted it. God knows who's screenwashed it though. I'd say the best way you can get revenge on an ex is shagging a best mate. And I must say I've done it before, not once, not twice, but three times and I'd definitely do it again.  I was like, mum, it's a pop-up, mum, it's a pop-up. She just laughed and rolled her eyes. I'd say the weirdest thing I do when I'm on my own. I've got this weird obsession where I cream my hands like 10 times a day. A-cheek, you're not what you're thinking. I mean, moisturising cream. I'd say personality-wise, the thing I like the most about myself is definitely my A-grade bantor.  It's pretty much everything. I mean, I'm tall, dark, handsome, shredded, just what every bird wants right here.  The one sexy thing I'd like to try is banging a school teacher in a classroom, glasses on the lot, bendering over the desk, whipping him with a ruler.  I'm looking to meet an ex on the beach. Just some good-looking girls. Fingers crossed there's some in here and if I connect with one of them, who knows what might happen? This big dog could be tame. I'm an ex on the beach to absolutely tear it up.  My name's Bobby. I'm an art dealer from Essex and I'm 23. In terms of my relationship history, it just shambles so far. You know, I've messed around a lot and I've never been really looking for anything too serious.  I would describe myself in three words and I'd probably say straight up G. My biggest ever thought would probably be three fifth birds, some handcuffs, some whips, a couple of blindfolds, why not? My biggest social media foul is probably when my mates got hold of my phone. I sabotaged it. Put a picture of me naked that they found I sent to a girl. I actually got quite a few likes. The best way to get revenge on an ex would be to sleep with one of her best mates or even if you had a sister. You know, I'd do that as well. The most embarrassing thing that my parents see would probably be they walked in my room with me and two other girls at it, so they weren't too good. The weirdest thing I do when I'm alone, I have pretty bad OCD so I'm just tidy and stuff, talking to myself a lot. When my mates have called me doing it, I think I'm a bit of a freak. The thing I like most about myself is I'm pretty confident. I'm always on the ball. Always make sure that I'm on my toes and ready for any situation. If I was to say physically, I do get a few compliments on the old combi. The thing I'd like at least about myself would probably be my legs. There is no squat rack in the world that's going to help me pick up these bad boys. The one sexual thing I'd like to try would be a good looking bird, a mom both in my bed. Why not? I'm hoping to be your next on the beach. I'm a good salt, big ass, big tits, nice brunette bird, someone I've got connection with and click with straight away. I'm on my next on the beach to meet a few new people. More for the experience, the enjoyment, have a laugh, get me in the way. Hi, I'm Josiah. I'm 20 years old. I'm from Blackpool. My relationship history has always been a little bit rocky. I just seem to be picking the wrong girls. Megs would describe me as the best thing that she ever had, but she's never going to get this again. If I had to describe myself in three words, I would say I'm fun, I'm cheeky and I'm very smooth. My biggest social media fail, I don't have one. I always use protection, even when I'm lying. The best way to get revenge on the next is to find a fit of bird, start cracking on, do it right in front of them. The most embarrassing thing that my mum has ever caught me doing is having a cheeky out pop when I was about 15 years old. I'm always careful to make sure that they never worry and they never see anything. The weirdest thing that I do when I'm alone is just crank some music up and have a little groove. You know. The thing I like the most about myself is my cheesy grin. It always wins over the girls.  Going on a plane, getting a fit hostess and doing it in the toilet. I'm hoping to find on X on the beach my own Angelina Jolie. If any girl walks in here looking like that, I'll be all over it. I've come into X on the beach just to have a bit of fun, play the field. But if someone catches my eye, then who knows? I might even fall in love. My name is Zane. I'm 25. I'm from Chelsea and I host the best parties at the most exclusive clubs in London. My relationship history has been colourful, to say the least. A lot of emotions involved. Emotional. I'd say most of my exes would describe me as a bit of an enigma. So many layers, so much substance. If I could describe myself in three words, I'd say confident, charismatic and smart.  Faring my, they have to be really hot. My biggest social media fail of all time is when I left my Facebook on and then my friends would be funny to come in and download a bunch of unnecessary, unsolicited material all over my newsfeed for everyone to see and obviously I didn't realise until two days later. The best way to get back at an ex is to throw all their valuable possessions out of the window. I termed quite a good boy so my parents haven't actually called me out for anything. I'm a bit of an angel. The weirdest thing I do when I'm alone is I have a chocolate obsession. I'm 24 seven snacking on chocolate, cake, ice cream, all sorts of unhealthy food. My friends don't believe me. They think I eat a really, really, really healthy diet of celery sticks but that's not true at all.  She's just so sexy. Everything about her is just... I'm hoping to find on this island a Taylor Hill lookalike with a brain. It's going to be very hard to find but if I do see her I will sail away in a ship very far away from no one else just us two on our own island. I'm on X on the beach to have some fun get a tan and if there's anyone that I vibe with then we'll see how it goes so happy days.