Last week saw the fourth UK Agile Awards. Once again it was a wonderful night, and great to see such worthy winners. The night’s compere was Sally Phillips. She had clearly spent an awful lot of time genning up on her subject for the evening, and even arrived with packets of PostIt notes (“I’ve seen pictures of you people at work”) as well as box of chocolates (“This is my personal award to any winner who can muster up tears”). Putting the serious stuff aside, here are some of the more memorable words of the evening:

Chris Matts, winner of Most Valuable Innovation, with Olav Maassen and Chris Geary for Commitment:

Our book has lots of pictures, so buy it with a packet of crayons and it makes the perfect Christmas present for a CEO.

(Someone said to me afterwards, “Actually, I think it will do very well in that market.”)

Michael Azoff, on the pig and chicken story:

The business owners live with what we produce. We are all pigs.

Much from Sally Phillips:

So you’re the programmers with social skills

And:

I can’t believe you folks needed a manifesto to tell you to stop programming and start talking to each other.

And:

As I understand it, you guys are the ones who work regular hours in rooms with windows.

And:

I call it relentless. You call it iterative.

And finally:

You can follow the evening on Twitter. Or by putting your phone down and looking.

I’m already thinking about next year’s event.