A friend of mine has been teasing me that I'm always wearing free clothing to work. She suggests that this is how I manage to afford the mortgage on my home in Seattle - I have to wear free clothing like this one I'm wearing today, the 2007 SEPG conference shirt.

Or this VersionOne (aren't they just the coolest guys in our community?) Agile 2006 rugby shirt that I'm wearing while teaching a workshop on Coad domain modeling at Corbis this past winter.

in order to save money. I'm too cheap to buy my own clothes, or so she argues.

What my friend fails to appreciate is the tribal affiliation I feel and how these shirts symbolize and communicate that. It's not that they're free. I'm paid well enough that I can afford to buy shirts if I wanted to. But I love to wear my SEPG and Agile conference shirts and a whole bunch of others that communicate my passion for and affiliation to the software engineering community. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Software+Engineering, Agile