A review of Agile 2008
I must admit to some bias in reviewing Agile 2008, because they held it in Toronto, where I lived from 1996 to 2007. I grew up in a Toronto suburb. I can’t account for what portion of my positive review depends on my great familiarity and comfort with the city. Even so, I can’t remember having as enjoyable a time at the Agile 200x conference since Agile 2005 in Denver when I received the Gordon Pask Award.
I FELT CONNECTED. I have been particularly concerned about how much the conference has grown in the past few years. Large conventions like Java One do not hold my interest, which explains why I don’t attend them. As attendance at Agile 200x grew from Denver to Minneapolis to DC I became concerned that I would find myself increasingly lost among the sea of people. I felt deeply connected to people in Toronto and managed even to make a handful of new connections. Even though I believe the conference consists of “600 of my closest friends and 1000 people I will never meet”, I must admit that I felt much more connected to the people than I did in Minneapolis and DC. I attribute much of this to the space: there were more open spaces for gathering, and I spent less time in long, narrow hallways. Granted, I found it difficult to navigate through some of the winding paths inside the Sheraton Centre, but overall I felt like I could find people I needed to find and bumped into enough people to keep it interesting. I hope I can feel this way again in Chicago in 2009.
I REALLY LEARNED. I have had some doubt about how much of the program would excite me, and I must say that while none of the sessions intrigued me enough to draw me there, I dropped in to a handful of sessions and the presenters welcomed me in and allowed me to participate even though I sometimes tend to try to take over. I learned from those sessions and even more from hallway conversations with my peers. I hadn’t felt like I’d learned much from the last few years, but rather that I’d spent most of my time teaching. This time I found a good balance. I don’t know how much of that to attribute to my mindset, to the program, to the people the conference drew and to random chance. No matter: I love the result. I should thank Arlo Belshee for putting the thought in my head that cost estimates might not always matter much. That one will stick with me for a while, I imagine.
I PUSHED THE ENVELOPE OF EXHAUSTION. I measure the success of a conference experience by my energy level on the last day. When I find myself exhausted, I imagine I rushed too much, committed to too much and wasted too much time getting around. When I find myself lethargic, I imagine I didn’t care much, didn’t see the people I wanted to see, didn’t find much of interest in the program and didn’t learn anything worthwhile. This time, I felt energized at the tipping point of exhaustion. Perfect! In the words of the great Calvin (the modern one), the days were just packed! I kept my schedule fluid and managed never to spend a moment bored. I imagine my fluid schedule make it difficult for other people to co-ordinate with me, so I apologize to my wife and my friends for their difficulties reaching me throughout the week, but I enjoyed it immensely. By the end, I felt ready for week two of the conference, but it abruptly ended. I call that a success.
REVIEW IN A BOX. We stayed at the Hilton across the street, mostly because I forgot to book our room until two weeks ago.
| Program | B |
| Open Jam | B |
| Location | A |
| Attendees | A |
| Amenities | B |
| Expense | B |
| Hotel | B |
| Overall | A- |
I had a few minor nits to pick: I didn’t like the breakfast, which featured cost-cutting pastry over energy-boosting protein and berries; I found it difficult to carry around the large program book, so I would have preferred schedule-on-one-page on a day-by-day basis; I have become a coffee snob, so I never like the coffee anywhere, and the Sheraton fit that pattern.
As I like to say, if you have no bigger problems than these, then you deserve a vacation. Thank you to Rachel Davies and her crew for doing an excellent job organizing and running this conference. Good luck to Johanna Rothman, as you have big shoes to fill. I feel confident in the result.