Some folks have asked me “Why 3 submissions”?  The typical strategy for the Agile20xx conference is to get in more than one with the hope that one will be accepted.  That wasn’t my plan at all.  I had one story in mind and it ended up expanding into three.

For the last few years, I’ve been working more and more with distributed agile teams.  This last year, I went “all in” by going “off road” as a consulting agile coach and again becoming a full-time employee for a completely distributed company of open source experts.  Seriously, we all work out of our houses.  It reminded me of the first time I read XP Explained: it’s crazy enough it might work.

Much has happened since that time.  We’ve made great strides with distributed agile and I’ve started connecting with others doing the same.  So here is a brief synopsis of the stories I hope to share at Agile2015:

  1. Can you be remotely agile?– Tells the story of how we are agile in many forms as a distributed company (Sonatype) making very cool solutions to manage open source. (30 min experience report with 6-8 page paper if accepted)
  2. Remote is the new Agile– Jesse Fewell and I team up to share some our experience of  20+ years working with various types of distributed teams.  Jesse read my first proposal and offered to pair up.  So this is not a rehash of the first proposal, but a workshop where we hope to share principles and techniques we have both learned.  (75 min workshop if accepted)
  3. User group dying? Time to build a state-wide learning network!– Some of  you know I’ve been rebuilding AgileOrlando.com over the last three years and part of our success is from reaching out to other user groups within Central Florida and across the state.  This group has become its own distributed agile team.  So this is the story of building that agile network we call AgileFlorida.com (30 min experience report with 6-8 page paper if accepted)

Each story is unique and has some unique twists.  As I mentioned earlier, I had only planned one submission and it blossomed into three after I talked to folks in December and January and received feedback on early proposals.  I’m deeply grateful to Jesse Fewell to offer to pair on one of these submissions.  I’m grateful to others who have encouraged me to tell all the stories.  taking notes - lightstock_150776_medium_user_1230963If you’ve read this far and you like one or more of these stories, please comment within the submission system. It only takes a moment to sign up and if you are an Agile Alliance member.