I’ve been to a lot of conferences and trade shows in my career. Over the years, some of them have faded into oblivion, some of them blur together and hold no distinction in my mind whatsoever, and then – there are the few, the rare events that really stand out. I wasn’t planning to write a blog post about last week’s Mile High Agile Conference in Denver. But, I was truly inspired and wanted to share a bit about why it ranked among the one of the top conferences I’ve ever attended – a regional conference that (in my book) outranks many large-scale, national shows.
Mile High Agile’s website says that this one-day conference was created to further Agile Denver’s mission of creating and sustaining the world’s best agile community. I would assert that it exceed this goal by a long shot – creating opportunities for a national community of agilists to connect, share and learn. Mile High Agile was buzzing about Agile – engaging hallway conversations, great speakers discussing advanced topics, teams of experienced people wanting to take Agile to the next level, along with a very active Twitter stream around the show.
The number and caliber of companies attending and sponsoring Mile High Agile are big signs that Agile has gone mainstream. While the Agile movement may have started slowly with teams of developers starting to use Agile on their own, the example they set and the success they’ve achieved has Agile spreading like wildfire. At the show, I overheard team members from Fortune 100 companies ask advanced questions about best practices for scaling Agile enterprise-wide and extending Agile practices to strategic roadmap levels.
I was also struck by the fact that Mile High Agile 2011 was not only Agile Denver’s first annual conference, but it was a 100% volunteer-run event. The caliber of the conference shows the dedication of Agile Denver to both the local Agile community and the broader Agile community in general. The theme of Mile High Agile 2011 was “Elevating Agility,” and for me – the show did exactly that – extending and elevating Agile thinking, learning and community. Thank you Agile Denver – I’m already looking forward to next year’s event.
Zach Nies is a CTO at Rally Software and a proud member of the Boulder/Denver Agile community for the last ten years.
Last summer, Rally started a video series called “Chalk Talks“.
I was fortunate enough to have filmed several“Chalk Talk” videos about some of the basics of Agile software development (The Agile Manifesto, Scrum Basics, Iteration Demo and Review Meeting, and other topics).
We also tapped into the wisdom of some of our other Agile Coaches: Julie Chickering, Mark Kilby, and Ken Clyne.
Our Rally Chalk Talks are informal videos, typically 3 – 5 minutes long, intended to provide quick, easy introductions to Agile topics.
Filmed in a short, tutorial format, these videos are great to share with your team as they are getting up to speed on Agile.
To get a feel for our latest work, here’s Rally Agile Coach Ronica Roth in her great Chalk Talk on User Stories. ( during which you can find out why a dog would want his own laptop :D)
Be sure to check out our entire catalog of Chalk Talks and subscribe to our YouTube channel if you’d like to be notified when we publish new videos. We already have two more Chalk Talks queued up: “Kanban and Scrum” and “Agile and Lean”.
As you look through our current catalog of talks, be sure to let us know what other topics you’d like us to cover in future talks.
“You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.”-W. Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965)
Filmed at Rally’s Agile Success Tour events, these videos detail the real-life agile implementations of software/IT executives who have taken the enterprise agile journey and are now realizing the benefits of enterprise-scale software Agility.
Our coaching and technical account teams (including Jean and myself) provided guidance to many of these panelists during their initial steps in their journey. It gives me great pleasure to see them now become the teachers and share their expertise with the new generation of practitioners.
Don’t pass up this great opportunity to learn from the experiences of others!
RallyDev.com
