Agile Australia: A Retrospective
Last week I was a panellist at the Agile Australia conference, talking about
hiring people for agile teams, and whilst that was fun the conference overall
left me feeling cold, frustrated and disappointed. Anyone who saw my tweet
stream during the conference would have probably felt some of that and now that
I’ve calmed down a little and thought about things some more, I think it’s time
to get to the heart of what really annoyed me and offer some suggestions as to
what to do next time. Consider this constructive criticism.
Firstly, it felt like conference sponsors were given slots based on the
amount of sponsorship they paid. The title sponsor had the largest number of
slots and each of the gold sponsors also appeared to have the option to take
slots. The problem I have with this is that a staff member from the title
sponsor was also part of the advisory panel, as were staff from their major
customers. Conflict of interest anyone? What we saw in the conference were
“case study” sessions presented by large corporates who just happened to be
customers of the sponsor or sessions from colleagues of other advisory board
members. It meant that the event became largely a marketing exercise targeting
other large corporates wrapped in conference clothing with very little to offer
for anyone working in small organisations or who is already practicing agile and
looking for ways to improve through learning from others. The worst session was
one where the presenter decided to slowly read a carefully prepared, PR laden,
speech. No slides, no audience engagement, just fluff. That sort of thing is
simply unforgivable, and even now still gets by blood boiling!
Given one of the key principles of being agile is having the courage to be
open and visible with the process I can safely say that this was not an approach
followed by the conference. What I would like to see? Community voting on
topics, with all submitted sessions available and open for the public/attendees
to vote on. If sponsors are getting a number of slots then indicate how many by
blanking out their sessions on the schedule, that way we can also see just how
much non-sponsor content we may get.
Next on my gripe list. Most sessions were targeted at beginners with content
rarely reaching the ‘200-level’ let along going beyond that into more advanced
and deeper topics. I’m fine with a number of sessions being beginners based,
but to have most of the conference aimed at that level? Urgh! At least mark the
sessions with some sort of required knowledge levelling system. It’s important
to have sessions marked as “best for beginners”, but please, not the whole
conference!
Moving on from that, there was also very little opportunity for ad-hoc
discussion with other attendees. The “Individuals and Interactions” aspect of
agile should apply to conferences too. Now there were a number of panel
sessions, but a panel is nowhere near as interactive as an open space, and
asking questions in a room of 200 is much harder for most people than in a group
of 20-30. The only open space time in the conference was a 45 minute session at
the back end of day 2. This, for me, was far and away the best part of the
conference as it meant I could finally sit down and discuss problems and issues
with other people and bounce some ideas around, but because of time limitations
we really only had 15 minutes per topic. This is just enough time to really get
started in on a topic but not enough to get far beyond the shallows.
Frustrating! I’d like to see an entire day put aside for open space topics.
Make day 1 a “fixed content” day and day 2 an open spaces and workshop day so
that we can really dig into things and learn from each other.
Finally, let’s talk about the keynotes. 2 of the 4 were keynotes were good,
though the content was unfortunately recycled. The other 2 sessions were
terrible. One featured 40 minutes of name dropping, self promotion, marketing
and trite stories without any real content at all, and the other was a
cliché-ridden, pandering, hippy themed “lets all love each other because we’re
all geniuses!” farce. Why a 2 day conference needs 3 keynotes and 2 lock notes
is beyond me. I want less of that nonsense and more content next time, just not
more toddlers level content!
And if you’re wondering if I would recommend you attend next years Agile
Australia conference, and things don’t improve dramatically, then here’s my
answer: If you work in a large corporate, are new to agile and you’re still
trying to figure out how to make it work for you then yes, but take your
marketing proof earmuffs with you. If that’s not you, then stay well away.
It’s a complete and utter waste of time.
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