[AgileScotland] Rocks into Gold - free

Hi everyone,

I forgot to mention that my first book Rocks Into Gold is now finished.  It'll be on sale with amazon shortly but you can read it for free on slideshare: www.tinyurl.com/rocksintogold.  It's a short book and it's really easy to read on slideshare.  Take a look at the reviews first.  It's already been viewed by over 4000 people in the last month.

That said, let me tell you why I think you should block out 20 - 30 minutes in your diary to read it:

• It's a book about a programmer who saves his job, his colleagues' jobs, and perhaps even his company by using just one agile principle.  His project was about to be cancelled due to the recession/credit-crunch and he figured out how agile could help.  That said, he'd never heard of the word agile and it doesn't involve any coding.  It's all about understanding why the credit crunch is causing IT people to lose their jobs (and it's not quite what you think it is).
• If you're already sold on Agile then you'll be delightfully surprised that what you already know may help save your job and business in the recession.  Don't look down, but you're sitting on a gold-mine!  What I suggest is that you read Rocks Into Gold, say "oh yeah - I never thought of it quite like that before",  then pass it on to your boss or customer and let them read it. 
  
• A few of my favourite agile coaches have already bought copies to give to their customers.
• For instance, Nancy Van Schooenderwoert, who has spoken at AgileScotland a couple of times, wrote "Clarke - You've got real skill at *saying* the simplest thing that could possibly work to get people's thinking shifted over to more fundamental ideas that can't help but inspire action. Thanks so much - I will recommend this little book!". 
  
• I've even had one very respected manufacturing consultant contact me to say that he's thinking about how he can use the idea in the book to change his own business model. Oh, and I've been told by one respected blogger that his son - a landscape gardner - has done the same.  Those two surprised me...
  
• If you're not into Agile .. then read the book and you'll discover that you can very quickly get many of the benefits of Agile without even using the word Agile.

I've put a lot of my own time into writing this book.  I'm giving it away for free because it might help save jobs.  Please forward it on.

thanks,
Clarke

[AgileScotland] Scotland on Rails. March 26 to 28

From: Paul Wilson <paul.wilson@merecomplexities.com>

Conference
=========

This year's Scotland on Rails is taking place on 27-28 March (Friday,
Saturday) at Pollock Halls in Edinburgh.

Of course Ruby (and Rails)  are  know as "Agile" technologies, but
speakers  of particular Agile interest are Mike Feathers (long-term
TDDer, XP Coach, and author of "Working Effectively with Legacy Code")
and Dave Thomas (aka Pragmatic Dave).

Of course we have many more world-class speakers, including Scott
Chacon (talking about Git), Jim Weirch, Yehuda Katz, and Marcel
Molina.  You can check out the schedule at

http://scotlandonrails.com/schedule

Tickets are £150 until the end of Feb 8th, when the price rises to
£175.  Though I'm pretty sure that we're actually going to sell out
way before then.  A lot of people came to last year's conference
through this group, and Clarke's contacts.  Sorry for not posting this
earlier.

http://scotlandonrails.com/registration

Tutorial
======

We are running the tutorial again on Thursday 26 March.  If you went
to last year's you will remember that things didn't go quite to plan.
This year we have Chad Fowler, Pragmatic Studio Ruby and Rails
instructor, and Rails Core team alumnus Marcel Molina teaching "The
Secret Ingredients of Ruby", " an excellent grounding for those just
getting started, or those looking to delve a little deeper into Ruby".

We are suggesting(*) a minimum donation of £75 to CHAS (Children's
Hospice Association Scotland), which you can make at the link below

http://scotlandonrails.com/schedule/26-march/all-day-charity-tutorial/

---

[Clarke here: Paul tells me that the conference is nearly sold out so if you're keen you better act very quickly.  

If you're sitting there wishing your boss would pay for this then my advice would be to pull out your credit card and pay for it yourself.  It's extraordinary value, especially if you live locally and don't have to pay for transportation and accomodation. Good work Paul.]