The Agile 2011 conference was held in Salt Lake City from 8-12 August this year. The conference is run every year by the Agile Alliance, and as this year is the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Agile Manifesto the conference organisers decided to go back to where the agile movement started in 2001.
The conference attracted over 1600 attendees from 43 countries, 968 proposals were received out of which 268 sessions were selected.
The conference was structured into 16 "stages", each with a different theme and focus. The breadth of tocpis covered by the various stages is an indicator of how pervasive agile techniques have become in industry. The stages covered every area from agile for imbedded systems to project management to UX design to research to working with customers. This breadth meant there was something for everyone, and the mood among the conference attendees was upbeat and positive. A general theme this reported picked up from talking to attendees is that agile has become "the way we work" in many organisations, it's no longer unusual or considered different it's just the way software is built in their organisations.
There were a number of special stages/spaces in the conference space:
- Agile Alliance Lounge - Agile Alliance board members and candidates were available to answer questions and talk about the work of the alliance with interested conference attendees
- Open Jam - a space where people could share questions and ideas, either by running a brief presentation/talk or just by hosting a short discussion. This space was open all day and late into the evening and seemed to be well used. A valuable part of the Open Jam was "Coaches Corner" where experienced Agile coaches were available to answer questions and share ideas on an ad-hoc basis.
- Continuing the philanthropic theme from previous conferences Bob Payne from AgilePhilanthropy ran the "Live Aid" stage raising funds for Mano a Mano International. A silent auction ran over the duration of the conference which raised over US$3000 for the charity.
Running in parallel to the first day of the conference was an Executive Forum, an invitation only day long event hosted by Jim Highsmith and Pat Reed targeted at senior executives. This forum attracted over 60 CXX level executives from large organisations around the world.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto, a "Big Park Bench" event was held with 15 of the original 17 signatories recounting their thoughts on the original gathering and answering questions from the audience. Lively discussion and much good-natured bantering was complimented by serious thoughts about the future of the agile movement.
On the Tuesday evening an Industry Analyst Panel was held with four analysts discussing their understanding of the current and future state of agile development. The panel consisted of
- Dave West, Forrester Research
- Michael Cote, RedMonk
- Melinda Ballou, IDC
- Michael Azoff, Ovum
Wednesday evening was the Agile Alliance Annual General Meeting. Board elections were held via electronic ballot with new board members announced at the keynote on Friday morning. (Full disclosure - this reporter has been elected to the Agile Alliance board for 2011-2012).
There were three keynote sessions:
- Dr. Barbara Fredrickson - Why Care about Positive Emotions?
- Kevlin Henney - Code
- Linda Rising - The Power of an Agile Mindset
The keynotes will be the subject of InfoQ articles over the next few weeks. In addition a number of the speakers have been interviewed by InfoQ and those video sessions will be released as they become available.
Certification was a topic of discussion in the hallways, with Alistair Cockburn promoting ICAgile, the PMI promoting their new certification and the Scrum Alliance sponsorng the Coaches Corner.
Overall the event was considered highly successful and valuable by the attendees this reporter spoke to, and from the Agile Alliance perspective was a great celebration of ten years of the agile movement.
Some commentators have posted their own summaries of the conference:
http://www.thekua.com/atwork/2011/08/reflecting-on-agile-2011/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/socaldevgal/archive/2011/08/17/a-technical-conference-filled-with-women.aspx
http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/08/agile-2011-starts-off-spritely.php
http://blogs.forbes.com/stevedenning/?p=3780
Please add your own thoughts about the conference in the comments, along with summary links.