Noel Wurst's blog

I sat and thought a long time about the choice for the first keynote at this year’s STARWEST conference. People come from all over the world to attend these conferences, and every seat is guaranteed to be filled—especially at the first keynote. I tend to be drawn to “exciting” topics like “How to Break Software,” “The Google Hacking Database,” and “Test Automation Challenges in the Gaming Community.” By the way, all of these are actual session titles from this year’s program.

I woke up on Thursday and headed downstairs to the last morning keynote speech of the 2013 Agile Development/Better Software Conference West feeling pretty great. I managed to get an elusive good night’s sleep (not always an easy feat in Las Vegas), and I was in a calm, relaxed mood—fully ready for the keynote to remind me about the zen-like nature of agile and the culture of compassion that can flourish in software development, like Dale Emery’s speech had done the day before.

One of my favorite parts about attending these software conferences is getting to sit in on some of the keynote speeches in the mornings. The content typically is a little lighter, though certainly no less impactful, as most of the attendees are still waking up and in need of a motivational message to start their day.

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