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Mastering Meetings: a Developer's Guide to Professional Meeting Attendance

Trainer(s): Ramon Wieleman, Bert Jan Schrijver, duration: 5 days (5x 8 hours)

Introduction

Are you tired of actually building software? Do you feel like your calendar has too much free time? This 5-day immersive training will transform you from someone who ships code into someone who schedules follow-ups about shipping code.

Detailed description

As of April 1, 2026, OpenValue Training launches a brand new training: “Mastering Meetings: a Developer’s Guide to Professional Meeting Attendance.” This 5-day immersive training will transform you from someone who ships code into someone who schedules follow-ups about shipping code.

Training outline

Day 1: Foundations of saying nothing Master the art of rephrasing what someone just said, but much slower. Learn to open every meeting with “before we dive in” and close with “let’s take this offline.” Become the master of pointing out that someone is still muted as the first person in the call. After that, you can practice the power move of unmuting yourself just to say “I agree with what was said before.”

Day 2: Postponing like a professional Master the ancient art of “parking” things. Learn to say “let’s park that for now” with such confidence that nobody ever asks about it again. Practice saying the sentence “let’s think about that over the weekend” without laughing. And of course without any intention of thinking about it over the weekend. Discover 15 different ways to say “let’s circle back on that next sprint”. We’ll practice these alternatives with a real actor. Some examples: “let’s revisit this when we have more data,” “I think this deserves its own deep-dive session,” and the undefeated champion: “can you put that in a Confluence page and we’ll async on it?”

Day 3: From bean collector to meeting coffee You used to drink coffee to write Java. Now you drink coffee to survive standups. Understand the coffee hierarchy: black coffee means you still code, cappuccino means you manage, oat milk latte means you’re in product. Master the art of sipping thoughtfully while someone else explains what they’ve been building. Advanced module: learn to make a special cold brew with cat-digested coffee beans.

Day 4: Remote presence engineering The absolute summum of modern meeting culture. Learn to set up a looping video of yourself nodding thoughtfully so you can attend any meeting without actually being there. Install a mouse jiggler that keeps your status permanently green. Bonus: how to add fake typing sounds to your microphone background noise.

Day 5: Talking about work instead of working Deliver a 20-minute presentation about a Jira ticket you haven’t read. Practice saying “I’ll follow up on that” and never following up. Learn to reference “the bigger picture” when you don’t understand the details. Final exam: survive a full day of back-to-back meetings and bilaterals. Bonus points if you are able to convince everyone you’re the busiest person in every meeting.

Target audience

This training is suitable for any developer who has ever thought “this meeting could have been an email” but never had the courage to say it out loud. Also recommended for tech leads who want to understand why their team never has time to code.

Learning goals

• Say “let’s take this offline” with conviction
• Block your calendar so effectively that nobody can reach you
• Survive an entire day of back-to-back meetings without contributing anything
• Configure remote meeting automation tools for permanent green status
• Establish beverage-based authority in any meeting room
• Reference “the bigger picture” when you don’t understand the details

Skills acquired in this training

• Professional-grade postponement and parking techniques
• Remote presence engineering including looping video and mouse jiggling
• Automated Git commit scheduling for simulated productivity
• Advanced Jira ticket presentation without prior reading
• Beverage hierarchy awareness and strategic ordering
• The ability to schedule a meeting to prepare for a meeting

Certification

Participants will receive the official OpenValue “Certified Meeting Professional” certificate. Show your Scrum Master what you’re really made of. Register now at openvalue.training, at least if you can find an empty slot in your agenda.

Prerequisites

• At least 3 years of experience attending meetings you didn’t need to be in
• A calendar that is at least 60% blocked with recurring meetings
• The ability to say “good question” while thinking of something else entirely

Provided training material

A curated collection of 47 ways to say “let’s circle back,” a mouse jiggler device, a pre-recorded nodding video template, and a lifetime supply of excuses for not having read the pre-read.

About the trainers

Ramon Wieleman is Group Director at OpenValue and has attended more meetings than lines of code he has ever written. His calendar is a masterpiece of strategic blocking and he still drinks black coffee even though he’s not coding.

Bert Jan Schrijver is CTO at OpenValue, Java Champion, and has perfected the art of saying “I’ll follow up on that” at international conferences across 40+ countries.

Practical details