This year we celebrated the 10 anniversary of  XP Days Benelux.

I know that being from Belgium and the fact that this was my first agile conference makes me biased. And one thing I know about being biased, is that knowing you are biased, does not help …

Let me tell you a bit about one of the aspects that makes XP days benelux so unique.

OOMPS, or fully “Official One Minute Presentation” (sometimes replaced by OHMP, I let you figure out the difference on your own)

I have no idea who came up with the idea and only a small idea from where she or he stole it. I vaguely think it was a Dutch person, yet does it really matter? (It’s probably a person that will refuse a statue anyway.)

At the start of a day, the organizers ask all participants of the day to come forward an do a one minute sketch. A sketch to promote their session of the day.

Now over the years, at XPday benelux, this has turned into an art itself.

What else can you say about people that:

• light a bomb on top of their head
• use a big hammer to hit their own father
• look like a real walking skeleton
• rip their shirt, like only superman can do..
• wear silly hats
• wear a smelly shirt found in their burned down house

Crazy? probably, so what?

Informative? Year after year, the sessions with the best OOMPs, are sessions I love. (remember I said I was biased)

Serious? Yes, distilling a 1 hour session in 30 seconds of fun is hard work. And yet is wurth it.

Fun? oh yes

If you help organizing a conference, come have a look at xpdays and steal their OOMPS. If you can manage to recreate a similar atmosphere around it, you have just made your conference X times better.