Software is as close as humans are ever going to come to actual magic. You type arcane incantations using cryptic symbols, crafting messages incomprehensible to most mortals and communicating them to vast, unknowable systems, to be executed blindly by idiot machine gods who follow our instructions to the very character. We're an elite class of human, chosen through intense courses of secluded study, or simply by the winds of chance, to engage with this symbolic and mystic realm. But while we're comparing ourselves to wizards, witches, and sorcerers, we're actually leaving one of their most powerful tools on the table: rituals.

Let's learn what our brain does when we do an activity repeatedly, with other humans, or simply by ourselves. You'll learn the difference between a ritual and a routine, you'll discover why ritual practices are an important part of being a group, and you'll get an overview of when, where, and how to employ these powerful tools. You'll complete your magical arsenal, and you'll never look at a retrospective the same way again.

This talk covers routines and habits, but leans more towards the ritual side of things, using the psychology and anthropology of ritual to talk about how we work, and especially how we work together, with some pretty pointed opinions in the middle about how we should be approaching meetings.

When developing this talk, I was worried nobody would show up for it, but I've gotten great attendance at it, and had a lot of very good conversations after the fact.