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by Mark Levison.
Original Post: Agile 2009 Roundup
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I’ve been home for a few days and have some time to digest what I learned. More of sessions were interactive this year so I’ve fewer notes and can write fewer articles than last year (Agile 2008 Post Roundup).
The Good:
I found only one bad session
I saw a lot of old friends and made some new ones (Kari, Mike S, Gerry, Xavier, Rachel, Liz, Doc, among many)
The food was a bit better than last year. Although as Rachel Davies explained its very difficult to get good quality nutritious food from a hotel at a price the conference can afford.
Open space – I made some use of it to join random sessions, but mostly I just networked.
Free one-on-one consulting – I managed to help one free client over the course of an hour.
It was easy to find stuff
Most of the sessions were in rooms big enough to accommodate their audiences.
The hotel bar was open and easy to get to. I spent a few hours hanging out with friends there. Its openness made it easy to survey for friends before you entered.
The wider scope of the conference was interesting – its good that people are recognizing that our biggest challenges aren’t always technical/process but frequently people. To that end I liked the Manifesting stage with its coverage of cognition etc. Caveat I was a reviewer and also presented on that stage. I also like the idea of the Frontiers stage.
The Cyrus Innovation’s Party – good food, good drinks, great friends.
The openness of the community – I met several of the “big” names this year and discovered they’re friendly and still have their feet firmly planted on terra firma.
Needs Improvement
If it can be believed wireless access was worse this year than last. Next year please give us decent access and don’t require a login as it means phone users will have to login again every time their phone sleeps (remember Canadians and Europeans don’t have sanely priced data access in the US).
Internet access in the hotel rooms was usurious.
Coffee - I've got insanely high expectations here
Overlap between three hour and ninety minute sessions - many long sessions lost half their attendees after the break. Net result the quality of the conversation suffered. Repeat from last year – my solution I didn’t attend any three hour sessions this year.
On a few occasions rooms were not a good match for the session and we got blocked.
Move the “Free one-on-one consulting” to the open jam.
It was clear to me where the stage boundaries were, there didn’t seem to be a place for scaling agile etc.
Suggestions
We need wireless access that can handle ~2000 simultaneous connections spread through the facility (1500 people, some people have 2 connections).
More of the conference rooms in one area
Film every session and make them accessible via the web after the fact. Make access to that part of our conference fees. If you didn't attend the conference then you can buy access to the sessions for $200-300 after the fact. Obviously I write for InfoQ so I have a conflict here – but Floyd and co would be the ideal people to pull this off.
Establish better boundaries between stages. Make it clear what stages topics belong on, perhaps by providing examples.
Don’t tie stages to rooms – many sessions on stage might be small, but you need to recognize that sessions will be very popular. Example: Chris Matts had a presentation that was stuck in the Toronto room, needless to say the rooms capacity of 48 people was quickly exceeded. I and many others were turned away (> 20 people).
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate – we’re more forgiving of problems and issues if someone tells what up early on.
Give every speaker links to some basic presentation skills material i.e. Garr Reynolds and Bert Decker. Also provide information on the importance of interactive material. There is alot of good information about making our teaching/training sticker, please share with potential presenters. Even if it only sticks with a few it will still raise the game.
Sessions I attended
Here are the rough notes on the sessions I attended
Monday
The Agile Playground (Tobias Mayer) – Its tough to summarize Tobias’s sessions in a text format. For this session we used static forms (i.e. mimes/role plays) to model power and then power in relationship to teams. After modeling each we were asked how to take power away from a person. Each section was followed by a debrief. A great learning experience but hard too explain in a blog. Suffice to say next you have a chance to attend a session run by Tobias do. Dave Nicolette has a longer write up.
Coaching Workshop (Rachel Davies and Liz Sedly) - I’ve written about this session previously:
I tried to attend: Risk and Risk Management – Theory and Practice – but got bounced because of the small room. After trying my one bad session I went to Rachel and Liz’s next session: Top Ten Coaching Tips will be written up for InfoQ shortly.
Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns (Steven “Doc” List) – Doc introduced us to a number of anti-patterns, my favorites: Gladiator, Dominator, Prima Donna and Terrible Tweeter. We did a role playing game using a deck of cards. Each participant was a given a card saying what antipattern to exhibit and then we discussed an interesting topic. After the discussion we tried to guess what roles our compatriots played. After the initial presentation I thought it would be very easy to spot the problem behaviours, but once I was part of the discussion I realized just how tough it was. I think that we could have some fun with this game at Agile Ottawa.
Wednesday the day for our presentation – net result I wasn’t as focused as I would have liked.
The Elephant in the Room: Using Brain Science to Enhance Working Relationships (Sharon Buckmaster, Diana Larsen) – examined some of the differences between the brains of men and women, they went onto explain how these differences might manifest in terms of perception and behaviour. I anticipate that InfoQ will have their paper up shortly.
Help me to see... corporate culture (Tobias Mayer, Lyssa Adkins) – Trying to describe Tobias’s games is tough, I’m hoping that he provides me a better description.
Sit in a circle
The first person asks a question (open ended): Describe an ideal Agile Developer; …
Each successive person adds something else to it
At any time if someone else in the group doesn’t see how it fits they say “Help me see that” Notice how its not confrontational and saying no. Instead its constructive and allows bridges to be built.
Everytime the question is asked the next person in the circle tries to explain how it fits in.
After three tries at explaining if the question still has been satisfied then start again at the beginning.
Learning: the Best Approaches for Your Brain (Linda Rising and I) – I was surprised at how well this session went. We managed to attract an audience of 65-75 people and most seemed engaged. We asked the audience to produce a play that represented something they learned. The idea being that planning and acting out a play would help integrate the information and make the attendees own. According to the feedback forms at least two people were intimidated and didn’t understand the intent. Most of the rest of the audience got into, so much so that we had two very good skits performed at the end including JR Jenks playing on a banjo.
Thursday
The Agile CTO (James Shore, Diana Larsen) – A workshop for finding patterns for Agile Executives to use. Since it was a workshop there is little to say except I look forward to seeing the results published.
Set-Based Design: Anti-Agile or Agile's Future? (Bill Wake, Jean Tabaka) – An interesting look at what set based design is, what its benefits are and how to apply it. I always make a point of attending at least one of Jean’s sessions at each conference and this was another solid one.
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