Presenting social patterns to patternistas at PLoP

Last week I was in Chicago for PLoP (Pattern Languages of Programs) 2009, co-located with the Agile conference. PLoP is a unique conference, in some ways more like a funky academic confab than a typical tech industry conference. Most of the time is spent in workshops, revising papers about patterns and reviewing small pattern collections. The rest of the time is spent debating fascinating philosophical questions and playing excellent ice-break games.

This year (my second PLoP) I presented an update on the social design patterns project geared towards people more familiar with the computer programming (aka “Gang of Four” or “Hillside”) design patterns, and then we workshopped chapter 3 of the book (the engagement design patterns).