So the next XP conference is less than a month away. (It's not too late to register, if you haven't already...) This year the conference is organized in Oulu, Finland.

Yours truly will be co-hosting an activity with Markus Hjort, a colleague from Reaktor. We've prominently titled the activity as The Coding Tournament. It's essentially a hands-on learning exercise for XP engineering practices, masquerading as a friendly bot competition between teams formed from the participants.

What we're going to develop remains a well-kept secret until the beginning of the session but you won't be needing any super-advanced hacker skills in order to get the most out of the opportunity -- basic knowledge of the Java or Ruby language will do!

Paraphrasing Mike Clark: (I think. I can't find the quote anymore)
"Brain required, laptop optional" (although highly recommended).