Talking and listening to others helps ground your ideas and assumptions.
Last weekend was Play4Agile 2025. It was another wonderful gathering of people at the Seminar Zentrum Rueckersbach in Germany. We had 80 participants from all ages: 11-63 leading sessions.
This conference is my happy place. I enjoy hanging out with old friends, a few days before the event, plus seeing others at the event too, and then meeting new people. Seeing the wonderful staff again each year is also good. This is the only conference where I know staff on a first name basis, and we share hugs on arrival and departure. It’s like a home from home during the event.
Use your happy place conference to test ideas
I use the event as a way to test the assumptions on whatever I’m working on at the time. This year I was able to talk to people about a mobile app that I’m helping to build, and to discuss security processes for apps with relevant people. These were informal sessions over beer, and hanging out in a hallway. They have lots of experience and I could ask questions plus discuss issues and find out if I’m doing the right things, or on the wrong path. There were also lots of informal discussions over meals.
The best thing about p4a is that it is an open space event. That means topics can come up as needed by the people, who have ideas to share, or questions in search of content and answers.
In formal sessions I could also explore and discuss ideas too and find out more, as well as offer my thoughts on issues. As an open space event the schedule and sessions are created each morning. This means you can opt to do a session based on what you talked about the day, or evening before.
A few people pulled a thread that interested them from the pre-event. One conversation led to a session on Friday, and another one on Saturday, with someone picking it up a bit more on Sunday. This is the beauty of play4agile. It is long enough for people to take a deep-dive on a topic and find enough time to iterate on the idea so they leave with enough basics to go further at home. This is where a few games started and no doubt others will start here too in the future.
You should consider coming next year
Look at your calendar and start working out how you can attend 10-13 September 2026. We had academics from Ethiopia two years ago, and someone from Columbia this year. Both use games and playful scenarios in their classroom to teach development concepts. I’m not the only one. You can too.
This is the sort of place to experience and try different facilitation techniques, as well as more ways of involving people in experiential activities. You learn more than software development, you learn how to work with people and guide them.
If you can’t make it to play4agile, then look at conferences you’ve been too in the past. Which ones worked well for you? Would you, could you go back again to learn more, or would you learn more elsewhere?
This post is part of a project pulling together my materials and ideas about Teaching Team Collaboration: the Human-Side of Software Development for software development to students.
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The ideas above are from my book 101+ Ideas to Improve Team Collaboration, which covers all of these little things that students can do to improve their collaboration. Also available via Kindle.