A weekend with Jeff Patton in Pondicherry
I was really privileged to spend a weekend with Jeff Patton in Pondicherry. I invited Jeff as the keynote speaker for the Agile Chennai 2007 conference. Jeff readily agreed to come down to India and speak at/support the conference. Initially we talked about him using his Pask award for the travel. Later we felt it would be better if we asked Agile Alliance to sponsor his trip under the Speaker Reimbursement program. Agile Alliance speaker reimbursement committee headed by Jutta Eckstein readily agreed to pay $1000 for Jeff’s travel. Jeff volunteered to pitch in the rest of the amount. Long story short, with the great support from Jeff and Agile Alliance, we were able to get Jeff to India. This was his second trip.
Jeff helped with the logistics planning on Wednesday. We finished the conference on Thursday and Friday and then we hired a cab [with a driver] and drove down to Pondicherry. Thanks to Sid for organizing the cab. We had 2 days to ourselves to talk about various things. I had a great time talking with Jeff. As always, I learned a million things [million posts to follow about them].
Jeff got an opportunity to see some new aspects of India [and about me] that he was not exposed to earlier. I think he enjoyed this shoestring budget travel and will have great stories to share with people.
