Australian Scrum Community

Is anyone in Sydney interested in a Scrum community get together? My employer has moved into a nice new office and it would be a shame that it went to waste.

I was thinking an evening and maybe even have a brief presentation by someone and then a few drinks. (Or a few drinks then brief presentation, or a brief presentation with a few drinks.)

Anyone up for it? If we have a few interested parties I’ll put a notice on the yahoo group.

Lachlan

This year’s Gathering will be held in Stockholm, Sweden on 20-22 October 2008. The blurb sent by the Scrum Alliance reads:

“Transforming the World of Work” will be the focus of the upcoming Scrum Gathering October 20-22, 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden. The Scrum Alliance co-founders Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland are scheduled to lead Scrum Gathering participants in an in-depth look at all things Scrum. Experience first-hand practical and interactive sessions led by key industry experts and Scrum practitioners.

Concurrent multiple sessions are scheduled with topics designed for participants with any level of Scrum knowledge. Additionally, open space sessions will provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information in a progressive, interactive experience. Peer-networking and social sessions are featured daily as part of the Scrum Gathering.

More information, conference schedules and registration details are available at the Scrum Alliance website.

In case you missed it, Tobias Mayer recently posted a message on ScrumDevelopment about a presentation from the recent Scrum Gathering called “The Road from Project Manager to Agile Coach”, by Lyssa Adkins. It’s an excellent presentation and Lyssa has taken the time to put it on YouTube. I’d encourage you to watch it.

Here’s Tobias’ original message and here are links to the YouTube videos: Part 1 and Part 2

In mid-March, a Scrum Trainers’ Gathering was held in Boston. About 25 Certified Scrum Trainers (CSTs) from all over the world gathered for a great two-day event, discussing training exercises, different approaches to training, and other related issues.

There were a number of sessions that I found to be of particular interest. Pete Behrens had an excellent presentation call Enterprise Agile Organization patterns which discussed the implications of Conway’s Law on software architecture.

Several interesting team exercises and games were also presented. Boris presented his “Ball Point Game”, Jens lead us through his “Specification Exercise”, and Lowell introduced us to “Affinity Estimating”. I’ve written up each of these here , here and here

An agile gathering is planned for Sydney on Thursday night with Alistair Cockburn. He’s in town for one night only.

Here is the current plan:

Note: Alistair will be arriving about 8:30pm.

Please email me* if you are planning to attend (please let me know if you’re interested in dinner as well) and I’ll keep you up to date and provide contact details.