Organizing the agile conference is a huge undertaking, you can’t make everyone happy. Reducing the stages is imperative to allowing attendees to be able to absorb the content. Stay focused on this.

The experience reports were bad experiences (maybe I picked the wrong ones?), I’m guessing that’s why they withered.

Keep up the good work. As long as you follow the feedback you received at Agile 2008, you are supporting the “main voice” for the conference.

I would also suggest, however, that a conference where none of the sessions fail isn’t trying hard enough. Over my years of organising conferences, I’ve tried to ensure that they include some outliers, which may collapse or be surprisingly successful. These days there are commercial event organisers that can provide a reliable product, our job should include furthering the state of the art.

It seems it is time for the iteration retrospective, project is not failed yet… ;)

Adding a fringe does not necessarily require an extra stage. integrate experience reports in all stages, so like in 2008 actual experience is present everywhere. That leaves space for e.g. a fringe stage.

The many stages were indeed confusing. Keith Ray’s suggestion above looks promising.

And yes (Ahmeds suggestion mentioned in Davids post), Open Space provides space for new ideas. I would be the last to discount that, being a big proponent of open space and all.

However, ‘we’ usually reward presenters with free entrance and hotel rooms, and the current system favours (and even rewards) the (late?) status quo over new ideas.

The submission system does seem to favour existing stuff over new stuff (I had even difficulty to sneak in a breaking acts session with a new presenter, the topic of which has proven to be useful in client situations… without breaking acts, it would not have made the program at all, I’m sure).

In 2009 it looks like we’ll need new ideas more than ever… critical thinking and doing is key (and what agile is about to me). let’s be inviting :). Having a fringe will show this, and we can compensate the rebels with or without a cause same as the establishment (some consider yours truly to be part of that ;) ).

I have one minor desire, perhaps for this conference, perhaps for another. I’d love to see a stage “Anything BUT Agile”, where we could invite other communities to participate in our community. I’m suggesting this because I find that when I read new magazines (like IDSA and Taste of Home instead of IEEE Computer and CACM) I gain valuable insights that actually help me be a better agilist. I’ve found that inviting people like Preston Smith to join our community produces interesting results, like his marvelous involvement in the APLN. So, in the spirit of planting seeds for our collective future, I wonder what others might think of an “Anything But Agile” stage.

Chris Matts, pile on!

Luke
http://www.buyafeature.com: The seriously FUN way to prioritize serious — and not so serious — stuff.

stage 1:
Agile Adoption
Manifesting Agility
New to Agile

stage 2:
Agile & Organizational Culture
Customers & Business Value
User Experience

stage 3:
Agile Product Management
Leadership & Teams
Coaching

stage 4:
Developer Jam
Open Jam
Live Aid

stage 5:
Telling Our Stories
Research

stage 6:
Tools for Agility
Testing
Distributed Agile

And “main stage” could have a few sessions from each of these stages.

I’m well aware of the open space options that the conference provides but there is a gap that needs to be filled.

For example, kanban was a single open space session in 2007. At Agile 2008 there were 6 sessions on kanban but almost all of them appeared on the Breaking Acts stage. If you take that stage away then it is very hard for those emerging new ideas to break out from the open space in to the main program.