Starting with XP/Agile Universe in 2003, I have been a participant, presenter, and/or committee member for various incarnations of what is now the Agile20XX conference series sponsored by the Agile Alliance. In fact, I was up to my eyeballs in Agile2007 for some months as the co-chair of the Tutorials track. (Those of you also involved in Agile2007 know that wasn’t my most stellar moment. I made more than my share of mistakes. But that’s not relevant just at the moment. My real point is that I know something about how the conferences were planned in the past.)
So here’s what is absolutely amazing me about Agile2008. I’m not involved in planning the conference at all. I’m not on any committees; I have attended no conference calls; I’m not on any mailing lists. I’m just another person who is planning to attend. And yet I have a much better idea right now about how the Agile2008 is shaping up than I did in any previous year when I was on the conference committee and theoretically had an inside view.
That’s because the Agile2008 conference committee has made some very important, and extremely cool, changes to the submission process this year. Changes that took some serious vision and guts. Specifically:
- Anyone can browse – and express their opinions on – the submissions to date. You just have to make yourself a login.
- Submitters can see feedback as it comes in and revise their proposals accordingly.
- Potential submitters can see what has already been submitted – and what reactions those submissions are getting. So they have the opportunity to learn what representatives in the community are looking for in submissions.
- The browsing and sorting features make it easy to find submissions with particular characteristics. That’s handy for reviewers, submitters, and those who are just plain curious.
This is a huge change from the previous system that involved track chairs assigning reviewers in command-and-control style, and where submitters received anonymous feedback after all the decisions were made, too late to do anything about it.
The result is tremendous visibility, fast feedback, self-organization, and whole team (community) involvement. What a great example of an Agile group walking the talk! Moreover, I believe these changes will make Agile2008 an exceptional conference – one that is truly by the community, for the community.
Rock on.
I encourage everyone with an interest in the conference to check out the Agile2008 submission system, browse the submissions to date, and participate in the emerging conference in whatever way you feel is appropriate, whether that means submitting a proposal, reviewing proposals, or perhaps just basking in the increased transparency and community involvement the new system affords.
Oh, and for those of you who are thinking about submitting a proposal, the deadline for submissions is Feb 25, 2008.
I too think it’s cool, but there is the need for a bit of a thick skin to deal with some of the comments. I suspect that the people doing lots of comments are members of the ‘vocal minority’ and thus has well embedded opinions. Those opinions, if voiced loud enough can skew the rating of a talk.
On the other hand, I’ve already significantly reworked one of my proposals into a much better (potentially) talk, and am still refining it via the comments people have left.
-adam