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)
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:
- suggest predictions & vote for the best ones
- 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.
If you want to the gritty details, I have a picture of the full spreadsheet.
