At conferences, I definitely prefer technical sessions over any other kind of session. That's partly because I want to walk away from a conference with new libraries and APIs to play with, such as the AT&T ARO tool that I've been blogging about over the past few days thanks to being introduced to it in a great session by Doug Sillars at Oredev, in Malmo, Sweden.
I only say the above to set the scene. And the scene is that I avoid sessions that deal with "agile topics" or whatever that means. I mean those sessions where you're meant to reflect on some way you're developing nothing in particular and then come away with new ways of doing that. I avoid those. Not because I don't necessarily like those or think I have nothing to learn, both of which I don't (or do, depending on how you read double negatives), but because there are so many sessions to attend that I focus on those that actually give me more technical knowledge that I can do something with immediately.
Having said all that, here's two absolutely wonderful sessions (and probably many more but I really liked these two) presented at Oredev over the last few days, one by JB Rainsberger and the other by Woody Zuill, both very nice people who I met for the first time during the last few days, and who aren't paying me to promote them, and who're still struggling to figure out how to say my name.
Whether you're a developer or manager or whatever you are, take this on trust, and simply watch these screencasts, hey, at most you're going to lose two hours of your life that you would've spent doing something else:
Speaking for myself, I'm going to be watching both these presentations again several times in my life, that's for sure.
