Thursday, July 28, 2011

Coming soon: a review on NetBeans IDE 7 Cookbook

NetBeans users (and curious) stay tuned, I'll be soon reviewing the "NetBeans IDE 7 Cookbook" by Rhawi Dantas published by Packt.

I received it yesterday and the first impression is good, there are many clear images and it seems very easily readable, with nice and untiring fonts - as you can easily verify taking a peek at the free chapter on EJB (which only has the little annoyance of being distributed in black and white while my e-book comes in full color). Yet, it's a little bit too early to say something about the content :-)

This is the first book on the subject I read since NetBeans IDE Field Guide was published in far 2006, so a comparison seems due. You may freely skip the rest of my rants and check for updates in about three weeks.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Our submissions for Italian Agile Day 2011

After breaking the ice at WhyMCA Paolo and I decided to submit a talk for the 8th Italian Agile Day which will be held in Rome on november 19, 2011. Then we lost a bit of control of the situation and submitted three :-)

Unlike most of the presentations we have seen delivered in the previous editions, mainly about technology and methods, which are the expected core subjects of the conference, we have submitted a proposal for a talk about business aspects.

We still don't know whether one or more of our presentations will be accepted; at the moment they're in for the perfection game, in which other submitters and the organizers can give their feedback on the title and the abstract of our talk to help us improve them (or to rule us out).

The abstract so far:

Startup without falldown: strategic planning beyond wishful thinking

Creating an app, even if successful, does not mean creating a startup. A startup serves the purpose of discovering and validating a sustainable business model, so the first thing your financial backers ask you is a business plan.

The best way to create one is to dice a little (the best dice are the multi-sided ones used in D&D as they add a nice variance to the results) and put the outcomes on an Excel file, possibly coupled with a presentation filled with bullet points, incomprehensible charts and never ending description blended with bad quality images.

And then? then you clash with the market.

Luckily there are alternative tools: together we'll see how to combine customer development and the business model canvas to analyze the business and to validate the chosen model.

Read all about our other proposals on Paolo's blog.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

A little bit of customer development

After having a great fun at WhyMCA, Paolo and I are thinking of submitting a proposal for a speech for the 8th Italian Agile Day. Up to now we have two or three ideas, but, eating our own food, we should "get out of the building" and test the market to verify our hypotheses.

Up to now, we're interested in a business oriented talk and in prototyping. Maybe Alessandro will join us as well on the latter.

More on this will follow, but if there are any subjects you'd like us to speak about please let us know. If once was enough, or even too much, please let us know as well :-)

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Italian Agile Day 2011!

Even an earlier bird than I was last year, I'm happy to announce that the 8th Italian Agile Day will be held in Rome on November 19, 2011.


It is a one day free conference on Lean Development and Agile methods for developing and managing software project aimed at developers, project leaders, IT managers, testers, architects and coaches with experiences to share or that are just beginning to dip into these themes.

Its declared aim is to share practical knowledge, experiences on the field and achieve an active involvement by all the participants.

Free access upon registration, limited seats. For the fifth time running, the event will be self-financed.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Fat

And the whole world knows I'm fat and I'm proud
Just tell me once again who's fat

There are only two kinds of people

Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data