Agile2008 Call for Submissions

Posted by Kurt Christensen on Dec 18, 2007

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The call for submissions has gone out to those interested in presenting at Agile 2008, which will be at the Sheraton Hotel in Toronto from August 4th to August 8th. Grigori Melnik, Program Chair of the Agile 2008 Conference, described the new submission process in this video.

The submission process was summarized this way in a press release from the Agile Alliance:

Following core agile principles, this year's program selection will incorporate an iterative feedback process for those submitting session proposals. All proposals will be made available for review by the Agile community, enabling presenters to receive feedback and modify their abstracts based on suggested improvements until the final deadline of Feb. 25, 2008.

The submissions site (requires free registration) enables users to submit proposals, as well as review, rate and comment on others' proposals. The site contains descriptions of the various session types; Grigori elaborated on this for InfoQ, describing the different categories of submissions that the conference is seeking:

Tutorials

Tutorials are instructor-led interactive 90 or 180 minute classes designed to provide participants with practical knowledge they can use right away on Agile projects. Tutorials have clear learning objectives that focus on teaching specific skills or techniques.

Research Papers

Papers of two types are invited: a) original, finished scholarly research papers with significant portion of the content being new (these papers will undergo a scientifically rigorous peer-review and accepted papers are published in the proceedings), b) position papers to share research in progress (different criteria are used for reviewing and the papers are published in the companion).

Experience Reports

An experience report captures the story of a real agile project, summarizing what happened on the project and the key learning points. These reports allow practitioners to share their practical advice and guidance with other teams. They are published in the proceedings and contribute to the collective body of knowledge on agile methods. Experience report presentations are typically 30 min long.

Workshops

A workshop is an opportunity for conference attendees to learn from each other about a relevant topic, generate ideas that expand a new technique or practice, or brainstorm ideas for the next new "thing". The format might be a workshop, a peer-to-peer session, a goldfish bowl, a think tank, a simulation, or whatever creative idea you have to get people thinking and discussing. In a workshop, participants learn from each other, as well as from the session leader. Resulting knowledge is transferred to the larger community. Workshop summaries are published as post-proceedings on the conference site. Could be hands-on.

Talks

Presentations on non-commercial agile topics that do not fit into the categories of tutorial, workshop, experience report, or research.

Panels

A panel is a moderated discussion, in which small groups of experts present their positions and discuss them with each other and with the audience. Great panels engage panelists with contrasting opinions.

Demonstration

Showing a tool or technique.

Other

We will have a wildcard session type for other types of sessions. This is the place for experimenting with new ideas.

Vendor Presentation

Sponsored session.

In keeping with this year's music festival metaphor, each submission must not only specify their type (above) but must be submitted to the appropriate "stage," whose "directors" and reviewers will decide the finalists after the Feb. 25th cutoff date, taking into account the public reviews. Here are the stages, with links to their descriptions:
 

Main Stage Agile and Organizational Culture Counterpoint Breaking Acts User Experience Open Jam Commiting to Quality Developer Jam

Chansons françaises Customers & Business Value  Live Aid Distributed Agile Tools for Agility Research Leadership and Teams Designing, Testing, and Thinking with Examples

What better way to spend a few hours during the holidays than exploring the wacky or brilliant ideas of your peers? Especially if you were disappointed with the results of last year's submission system: be sure to check in and voice your opinion. There will be lots of proposals, but reviewers can use tags to find interesting submissions, or review submissions to a particular stage. Of course, it's frowned upon to review your own submission!

Here is a random sampling of interesting tags from the submission system:

Learning & Education scenarios change organizational culture organizational learning cutting edge

user centered design Visual Studio gui java testing prototypes BDD

benefit context JBehave outcome RSpec stakeholder

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   Clarification on a couple of points

   by Rachel Davies

   A couple of clarifications on the above text.
   1. Where it says "submission site(requires free registration)" this is simply go to submissions.agile2008.org/ and click on Create New Account.
   2. Where it says "it's frowned upon to review your own submission!" - it's not actually possible to frown on this because the submission system does not allow people to submit reviews on their own submissions - however, they can make comments on reviews and edit their submission in response to the review.
   
   Hoping to get lots of session proposals from InfoQ members.
   
   Best regards,
   Rachel Davies
   Agile2008 conference chair

   Reply