Background

The art of coaching teams toward excellence and productivity is tricky business. Daily we make recommendations in increasingly complex contexts... and too often, as coaches, we work in isolation from other coaches. This is our opportunity to share stories and practices and to wrestle with the direction in which this discipline is going, or should go. 

Growing a Community of Practice

Agile Coach Camp is about creating a network of practitioners who are striving to push the limits in guiding software development teams, while staying true to the values and principles at the core of the Agile movement. We've invited practitioners who, like you, are passionate about their work, active in the field and willing to share what they've learned.

Do you have a technique or practice worth sharing with your peers? Or an idea you'd like to test out with some leaders in the community? Are you facing challenges and want to get some perspective from other practitioners, or hear how they do things? If you feel you’d benefit from connecting with 70-75 Open Agile Process Facilitators, ScrumMasters, XP Coaches, Trainers, Change Agents, and Mentors to talk, draw, debate, and explore ideas, then this unconference is for you.

What's the Agenda?

Agile Coach Camp is a practitioner-run conference for peer-to-peer learning and exploration; to help guide your thoughts, our theme this year is "Get Some S'mores!", this makes a play on that fantastic campifire treat.  So come Get S'more Learning, Get S'more Connections, and Have S'more Fun!   Like a good campout, you will deepen your understanding and connections with other Agile coaches. It’s your conference, so there will be no agenda until you arrive! We will create it collaboratively. If you prefer a conference where you can sit and listen to expert lectures, this isn't it. As at BarCamp, so at AgileCoachCamp there are no speakers, only participants.

We use the OpenSpace meeting format, which means you, the participant, determine the topics and questions that you want to talk about. We’ll create our agenda Saturday morning and people will then join the small group discussions that interest them. Open Space is very complimentary to Agile & Lean thought processes, and actually shares some of the same principles. Open Space is all about self-organizing and empowered teams. Open Space will allow YOU and other participants to bring to the conference the issues and opportunities that are emerging for you in real time. For some of you this will also be a first opportunity to experience Open Space, yet another effective tool you should know about, for cultivating communities of practice in your region.

You don’t have to be an expert to propose a topic or ask a question at AgileCoachCamp. You are simply inviting people into a conversation with you - other people who are also passionate about your topic or question. These conversations can build knowledge, and often lead to future collaborations; Open Space is great for networking! It has the feel of a good coffee break, where people are free to come and go from conversations as they please, yet it has a structure that helps you to know what conversations are happening so that you can join up with people interested in the same things as you.

What Does It Cost? 

Our intention is for it cost a negligible amount.    BUT you must also register some form of "position", an item you are passionate to discuss in context with the conference.  In the registration process we will ask for a title and textual abstract for this position.   If you do not submit a position, as we get closer to the conference, you could get "bumped" (with refund) by those that have something passionate to discuss.  We also highly encourage you to post your background and details about this "position" on the AgileCoachCamp wiki site, to which you will be directed at the end of the registration process. 

Any monies we receive in excess of  what we need to fund the event, whether it be from sponsors or attendee tickets, will be given to charity. Specifically Mano a Mano, which provides assistance to the impoverished in Latin America (see http://www.manoenmano.org/Who_We_Are.html), and Haiti Partners, which helps with Haitian educational and democratic institutions and since Dec 2009, rebuilding post-earthquake Haiti (see http://www.haitipartners.org/who-we-are/).