Notes from the Conference Retrospective

This is the participant retrospective held on the last day.
See also: OrganizerRetrospective2008

Diversity:

FYI: here are some diversity stats we collected. Total count was 55 people on Saturday morning.





Diversity Stats Summary:
20% local people
31% women
51% bloggers
51% work inside companies
53% write code
53% Certified ScrumMasters
3 Certified Scrum Product Owners
Approx. 12 self-identified as "not coaches" (see 3rd image, below)

Worked Well

• Lightning Talks
• Weather was pleasant
• Facilities (Venue)
• Location of the conference (close by to airport, hotel, etc)
• Food (serving full breakfast was great idea)
• Open Space Format for the conference
• Sponsors who made it possible to make this a free conference
• Volunteers who helped us make this event possible
• Free beer
• Timing - Weekend
• Participation was great. It was the right size of the group (about 70 ish)
• Right people - Great diversity, everyone was willing to share respectful
• Sticky walls were great (Thanks to John Engle for getting them)
• No cloth bags
• Nice T-Shirts (no company logos)
• No Marketing
• Representation from Sponsors
• Sessions length of 75 mins
• WiFi connection at the venue
• No Cell Phone Coverage at the venue was kind of a boon in disguise
• John as a facilitator
• Public Position Papers was great. It also helped us to know who else is coming.
• Option to keep position papers anonymous
• Session space outside in the open
• Free conference
• Quite place available at the venue to take a break during the sessions
• Conference retrospective gave great feedback

Needs Improvement

• Soap was missing from the restrooms
• Could not attend more sessions, may be we should reduce the session lengths so that one could attend more sessions
• No Summary of what happened at each sessions. This could help people who could not attend other sessions
• More options for lodging (may be place closer to restaurants and bars)
• Larger cups for water
• Process we used to come up with the session topics felt very rushed
• Theme did not match what went on
• Acoustics in the room
• Market place - did not see a lot of sessions merging and sessions being moved around
• No cell phone coverage
• Need better wiki (Steep learning curve)
• Conference timing - We should have full day Friday and full day Sunday. If people want to leave they could leave but for those who want to stay, the conference can be for 3 days. For some people its a big investment to come to the conference and more conference time means higher ROI.
• Actions items session did not feel like action items. It felt just like yet another session.
• More Lightening talks
• Did not have a full list of participants with picture. Position papers page turned into participants list. It would be nice to keep them separate
• Position Papers did not have a title. They had people's name. We could use a title instead
• Break out rooms need to be close by
• The break out rooms need to be re-configurable. Fixed desks don't work well for Open Space sessions

Things to try next time

• Have an opening of open space every day in the morning and closing same day. Which means if people miss the first day, they don't feel left out for the rest of the conference. Also run the conference from Friday morning to Sunday evening. 3 full days
• Instead of all open space may be have one track on the lines of Writters or PLOP style workshop
• When participants register for the conference at the registration desk, have a laptop to take their picture so that we can print their head shots and use them to identify their topics on the topics wall.

The story of the conference:

Here are the postits from the timeline we collected during the conference:

Legend
This Rocked!	Here's a story	This needs improvement

Friday	Saturday				Sunday	after-->
Mongolian BBQ	Belgian Waffle Incident	Cleaning iron with a plastic fork	came away with a great idea for an article or book	people don't agree on what SHU-HA-RI means	COOL JAZZ	Agile2008 + Coach Training Weekend
$3.50 25ox Refills	International Incident caused by Sweden against Belgian Waffles on US Soil	Breakfast was good! Coffee. too	met lots of really cool people	Agile Games Awesome	No aspirin @ buffet	Will run some games @ company meeting
Traffic Delay - got here late	US Federal Gov't Mediator resolves issue . All the world rejoices.	Fan Noisy	Lunch :-P	CHAIR WARS! :->	4 martinis + good conversation	Off to Orlando for TechEd2008
Lightning Talks!	Mmm, hearty breakfast!	Days Inn is BAAAAD!	Agile in the Enterprise	Appears to be a gap between ScrumMasters & ProductOwners	Denny's @ 3:30 AM FTW
BJ just registered!	Good Breakfast!	No coffee in afternoon	Understood Kanban	learned some cool new games	had to leave too early
WHERE are we all going for dinner?	Nice location for conference	Learned 2 new (illegible) techniques	Zero cell phone coverage inside	Met *great* people!	Roast Beef!
I got drunk :-P	Great food	NO coffee in afternoon	I'm tired...	Pool & Jacuzzi	Lunch was good!
Perry Cave Trip! ;->

How did people hear about AgileCoachCamp?

from the list at the retro