“I’m Going to Chicago; I’m sorry but I can’t take you”, wails Robert Plant, as the music fades out of Led Zeppelin’s 1971 hit When the Levee Breaks. That lyric was a reference to the great (oxymoronic?) Mississippi floods of 1927, and the many poor refugees who were forced to flee the flooded area to the cities of the Midwest at the time. The song was originally written by Kansas Joe and Minnie McCoy in 1929, although that particular Chicago reference comes from the “Going to Chicago Blues” by Jimmy Rushing and The Count Basie Orchestra. But I digress.
Today I flew to Chicago for three very important reasons: Firstly, Chicago is a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time, to sample some of its colourful musical history (Blues and Jazz) and architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright!). Secondly, two extremely interesting software conferences are happening in the same week on the same street in Chicago: Agile 2009 and Software Craftsmanship North America. Thirdly, I’ve booked in three days of training with one of Chicago’s most influential local software craftsman shops, Obtiva, and respected software developer Joe “JB” Rainsberger.
In the coming days I’ll be meeting with, picking the brains of, learning from and probably drinking with some of the most respected and influential people in the software industry. Not to mention many, many interesting people I follow and exchange tweets with but have yet to actually meet face-to-face. It’s a fantastic opportunity and I can’t wait for it all to kick off on Monday!
My hotel room (suite?) is unexpectedly massive: I’ve never had a choice of doors by which to enter a hotel room. From the thirty-third floor of the Regency Hyatt hotel, I have a somewhat tantalising view of the city streets that peak out between several of the tall buildings nearby.
Today is Sunday and my wayward luggage and I have been reunited after our unfortunate separation in LA. This little hiccup meant that I missed dinner tonight with some of the agile testers. I expect to catch up with them all tomorrow night at the Icebreaker event.
There were several analogies and threads in my mind when I started writing this post; something about The Blues artists being craftsmen, the new software craftsmanship renaissance and the Chicago connection came in somehow. In the end I couldn’t work them into the narrative effectively and the jet-lag has now almost entirely befuddled my brain, so I’ll sign off instead.
