Predictions for CITCON Europe 2009

Last year, at CITCON Amsterdam 2008, a few of us stayed late into the night, drinking beer and discussing the state of the world.

And what to do when you have 21 geeks with time on their hands? Why, predictions, of course! (I want to do it again this year, check out the Google Moderator page I’ve started)

Bar at the Marriott Hotel

We decided to come up with a number of predictions (and bet on them), some serious, some not, that would be verified at CITCON Europe 2009, the price being beer points. And, the losers will be named and shamed, while the winners will be glorified (at least until new predictions are made, and for no more than a year, whichever is earliest).

Here are the predictions, and the actual outcome (a couple of them were settled by votes at the closing session):

Prediction Votes Actual
CITCON Europe has more than 120 attendees (I had voted against!!) YES YES
more .NET developers than Java developers NO NO
CITCON will take place in Paris YES YES
at least 5% of attendees are female (I personally did vote in favor) yes NO
at least 20% of participants do Ruby draw NO
Java closures are considered too complex NO NO
IBM buys ThoughtWorks NO NO
IBM buys Valtech NO NO
there is a Maven.NET coded in Java, with MS Tools integration NO NO
Ivan Moore gives up on build-o-matic NO NO
McCain wins the election draw NO
CITCON Europe takes place in Frankfurt NO NO
Jeffrey Fredrick XOR Tom Sulston (that is, either Jeffrey or Tom, but not both) have short hair YES YES
Fewer Agile Consultancies NO NO

So, out of 14 predictions, we got 11 right, 1 wrong, and 2 undecided.
Now, you may think that the answers were straightforward. But you need to realize that, for each one of them, someone was willing to bet a beer against the consensus. In other words, at the time when the predictions were made, it was not clear cut.

In the interest of the bets, I shall now reveal the names.
Winners (Glory to Them All!)

  • Andrew Parker (8 rights, 1 wrong)
  • Eric Lefevre (that’s me) (10 rights, 2 wrongs)
  • Guillaume Tardif (6 rights, no wrongs)
  • Jean-Michel Bea (8 rights, 2 wrongs)
  • Pekka Pietikäinen (7 rights, 2 wrongs)

Losers (Boo to Them All!)

  • Julian Simpson (3 rights, 4 wrongs)
  • Jeffrey Fredrick (3 rights, 6 wrongs)
  • Paul Julius (5 rights, 2 wrongs) — PJ is still a loser, ‘cos he has been right on bets with small payoffs
  • Tom Sulston (4 rights, 4 wrongs)

I have started a new series of predictions for CITCON Europe 2010. There are two steps:

  1. suggest predictions & vote for the best ones
  2. when predictions have been selected, vote

To actually win your beers, you’ll have to come to CITCON Europe 2010 (still unannounced).
Please check out the Google Moderator page to propose your own predictions.

Sorting out the bets from 2008If you want to the gritty details, I have a picture of the full spreadsheet.

About Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Independent technical consultant.
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