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Retiring from the Bonn Agile Meetup

Yesterday I organized my final meetup.

Back in February 2011, I invited to the first meetup, back then under the "XP" banner, renaming to be Bonn Agile a few months later.

So, wow, that makes it nearly 5 years, or 50 meetups after a rough count.

Most of these meetups were not organized by me though. I want to use this post for thanking the people who were around in the begining, co-organizing or just giving great feedback on how to get the meetup rolling.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some names, but +Patrick Cornelißen, +Kurt Häusler,  +Frederic Hemberger, +Christoph Pater and +Jan Ehrhardt  took their share of the load back then until they moved from Bonn to other places. +Simon Tiffert and +Matthias Lübken provided valuable advice when starting up. As companies go, +tarent solutions GmbH, +doo and, most of all +Data in Transit GmbH (big thanks to +Jutta Horstmann!) have been supporting the meetup since the very beginning, with +Viaboxx (my employer) hosting the annual Sommerfest/BBQ.

Also from the beginning and up unto the latest meetups were +Jan Nonnen, +Christoph Baudson, with later on help from +Andreas Kluth and +Michael Kutz. +Stefan Walter and +Daniel Westheide should also be mentioned.

And finally all of you who just kept showing up and contributing to all the awesome discussions.

Thank you all.

I started the meetup at a point where I was feeling pretty lonely in a professional sense, and it has been such an uplifting ride, making many new good friends on the way. It has been a really important part of my life here in Germany, and it's going to be weird not to be organizing anymore.

The meetup yesterday was an attempt of figuring out what to do with the meetup, as we all felt it has run out of steem recently. While I feel bad for jumping ship, I think it might be good to let someone else pick up the reins and transform the meetup into what it needs to be today in order to attract new people, topics and discussion. I think most agreed yesterday that changing from the "agile meetup" into something different was a good idea. Stay tuned to the mailing list to see what happens next. I know that there will be a last regular meetup on the 1st of December, and after that there will be some sort of relaunch at some point, with a new name and a new form of activities and organization.

For my own sake, I'll be diverting my "community energy" into some personal projects, perhaps more on the podcasting side, but of course there's not so much time left after taking care of the kids, house and all that. One thing we concluded yesterday is that a meetup needs young blood to keep really active, or perhaps old blood with fewer commitments than I have.

So here's to the Bonn Agile Meetup. May it rise again under a different banner and attract an ever larger and active community.
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