There are a lot of parallels between the open source development world and Improv communities. The goal of this workshop is to expose the similarities and directly apply the core principles from the stagecraft of improv to get better code, smoother projects and ultimately happier customers.
At the end the audience will be able to take practical examples and very simple exercises back to their organizations to better communicate with customers and internal stakeholders alike as well as techniques to get ‘unstuck’ when hitting major blockages in creativity needed for elegant code.
Takeaways:
One of the hardest set of skills for any developer (or anyone for that matter) to learn are the soft skills. Basically, how to be human and better communicate with our clients and peers. Fortunately there is an entire art form that centers on exactly this skill set: IMPROV. I have been doing improv a lot longer than I have been involved with Drupal or WordPress and I see a very clear path to helping any team improve productivity and happiness by using those skills. This is an intro with many simple exercises people can take back to their teams.