A gathering of XP proponents organized by kent-beck at the Rogue River Lodge in Oregon, in the spring or summer of 2000 (approximate date), that served as an incubator for the snowbird-meeting-2001 the following year.
Context
By 2000, extreme-programming had established itself as the most prominent lightweight methodology following the publication of xp-explained-first-edition in 1999. The XP proponents around kent-beck were aware of parallel developments in other traditions — scrum (ken-schwaber, jeff-sutherland), crystal (alistair-cockburn), dsdm — and were beginning to discuss whether these traditions shared enough common ground for a unified statement.
The Rogue River meeting brought together a subset of what would become the Snowbird group. It was less formal and less diverse than Snowbird — primarily XP-aligned — but the conversations there helped clarify what a broader gathering might look like and what common ground existed.
Significance
The Rogue River meeting is less well documented than snowbird-meeting-2001 and does not have the same public profile. Its primary historical significance is as the intermediate step between the parallel evolution of lightweight methods and the convergence at Snowbird. It is the meeting where the idea of the Snowbird gathering was developed.
martin-fowler and kent-beck are identified as key organizers of the path from Rogue River to Snowbird. The decision to invite practitioners from non-XP traditions (ken-schwaber, jeff-sutherland, alistair-cockburn, etc.) to Snowbird was a conscious choice to make the resulting statement more than just an XP manifesto.
Gap
The exact date (approximate: spring/summer 2000), exact attendees, and detailed proceedings of the Rogue River meeting are not well documented in public sources. The meeting is referenced in retrospective accounts by participants but was not documented in real time in the way Snowbird was. This entry reflects what is generally accepted in movement history.