Exploration Through Example

Artisanal Retro-futurism crossed with Team-scale Anarcho-syndicalism seems a hit. I made upward of 400 stickers, and I have only a handful left. There’s been talk on Twitter about other types of Agile conferences, so let me make a rough proposal for a conference that focuses on solidarity and syndicalism and self-help.

There would be four parts to the conference.

• Chronologically first would be presentations from teams (or team representatives) on problems they’re having adopting Agile. The presentations would be in the LAWST structured-conversation style, or something like it. The goal of each conversation would be to give the team ideas about what to do next and how to do it.

  Teams would have to apply in advance to get their problems discussed. They’d also be expected to later provide a case report (or interviews for a case report) on what worked or didn’t.

  Perhaps toward the end of the conference, we should expect recipients of advice to give something like a lightning talk explaining which advice they’ll be taking.

  A semi-related idea: perhaps participation here is a prerequisite for a visit by the ScrumMaster of Last Resort?

• The second set of presentations would be from teams who’re doing well enough but are nevertheless eager to do better. As an “entry fee”, these teams would have to participate in the first sessions (helping people who’re having trouble getting properly started). The format would be the same.

• In the third sequential session, the scope expands to what can we do about the sorry state of things in general—how can we help all those other teams that aren’t at the conference?

• Throughout, there’ll be short demos or lightning talks about Gosh Wow neat things people have tried. (Too much problem-solving can be depressing, so let’s celebrate the neat and the new in true Retro-Futurist style.)