I'd like to conduct a group Kata session, to get my software developer group to pick up the practice.
I'm thinking of giving some of the sample problems out there, and splitting the group into two teams. The solutions may be developed in different languages.
Would it be more fun and educational to structure this as a contest?
What are your experiences with group Katas?
Aren't Katas basically practicing the same procedure over and over again?
So a true code Kata would be something like implementing "Reverse string()" every morning.
I fail to see the benefit in that. It's not like muscle-memory helps code better...
Steve Yegge has some advice on this in his article, Practicing Programming.
Also see Pragmatic Dave's 21 Code Katas.
I went ahead with the group activity. The teams were setup according to their administrative groups here at work. I made some simple problems that were fun (I hope!) to answer. After an hour and a half, I asked participants to share their experience.
Thus it was part coding exercise, and part team building.
There's a Paper that talks about implementing a Coding Dojo and the things that the authors learnt during that time. Here's the link to the Paper: Coding Dojo: an environment for learning and sharing Agile practices