Building on the success of last year’s metaphor of festival with multiple stages, the Agile Alliance is taking the same approach this year, reducing their number from 17 to 14. The idea behind the stages is to make what has become a large conference a smaller place so that sessions with similar themes will end up on the same stage. For those whose area of interest is focused (i.e. New to Agile/Adopting Agile), they will end up seeing many of the same people throughout the conference, making a 1600+ persons event seem smaller.
This year’s program chair, Ahmed Sidky, says: “We welcome submissions for research papers, experience reports, panels, workshops, tutorials, and activities for any of the above-mentioned stages. You are invited to submit ideas and proposals for sessions via our online submission system, which will be available mid-December”.
Next year’s stages are:
- Agile Adoption Producer: Greg Smith
- Agile & Organizational Culture Producer: Mitch Lacey
- Agile Product Management Producer: Rich Mironov
- Coaching Producer: Chris Sterling
- Customers & Business Value Producer: Greg Goodman
- Developer Jam Producer: Kirk Knoernschild
- Distributed Agile Producer: Tamara Sulaiman
- Leadership & Teams Producer: Pollyanna Pixton
- Main Stage Producer: Robin Dymond
- Manifesting Agility Producer: Dan Mezick
- New to Agile Producer: Steven "Doc" List
- Open Jam Producer: Esther Derby
- Research Producer: Yael Dubinsky
- Telling Our Stories Producer: Steve Adolph
- Testing Producer: Lisa Crispin
- Tools for Agility Producer: Michael Hüttermann
- User Experience Producer: Angela Martin
Changes to the list include the addition of: Agile Adoption, Agile Product Management, Coaching and New to Agile. Missing next year are: Breaking Acts, Chansons Françaises (French language stage), Committing to Quality, Live Aid, Musik Masti and Questioning Agile. Some in the Kanban Community are disappointed at the loss of the Breaking Acts and Questioning Agile Stages. David Anderson says “If there is no "breaking acts" stage, what is the community doing to encourage innovation?”
Like this year, the submission system will utilize “The Wisdom of the Crowds” – all submissions will be open for review and ratings by the public and submitters will have a chance to respond and update their work. While the submission deadline is Feb. 13th, submitting sooner will give one a chance for more feedback.
On InfoQ: Agile 2008 Coverage