You heard it here:

http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2012/programme.php

Keynotes from Dan North and Dave Snowden.

30 sessions from experienced practitioners.

I’ve just launched the Call for Speakers for this year’s Agile Cambridge conference.

As is usual accepted speakers pay no fees.

CALL FOR SPEAKERS -
Submission Deadline Friday 15th June 2012

We are seeking high-quality session proposals covering any aspect of agile software development.

Hands-on sessions, experience reports, tutorials, panels and other interactive sessions are particularly encouraged although more theoretical sessions are also welcome.

In addition to free entry for the conference, being a speaker gives you a unique opportunity to present your viewpoint to our audience and get noticed.

Visit the Agile Cambridge website for more information.

We’ve just announced Dan North and Dave Snowden as conference keynote speakers for this year’s Agile Cambridge conference.

Dan North writes software and coaches teams and organisations in Agile and Lean methods. He believes in putting people first and writing simple, pragmatic software. He believes most software problems come back to communication and feedback, which is why he puts so much emphasis on “getting the words right”, and why he is so fascinated by systems thinking, communication and how people learn. He has been working in the IT industry for over 20 years, and he occasionally blogs at dannorth.net.

Dave Snowden is the founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making. He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style. His paper with Boone on Leadership was the cover article for the Harvard Business Review in November 2007 and also won the Academy of Management award for the best practitioner paper in the same year. He has previously won a special award from the Academy for originality in his work on knowledge managment.

The conference takes place September 27-28 at Churchill College. Cambridge. Visit the Agile Cambridge event website for more information.

With its lack of up-front activity, short iterations and emphasis on minimum-viable products, Agile approaches can seem to be the antithesis of a considered approach to User Experience.

However, the Agile Manifesto does value qualities that UX practitioners also value: an emphasis on customer collaboration, individuals & interactions and uncovering better ways of developing software. So, is a perceived problem with Agile and UX more to do with the way either is implemented in practice, more to do with the personalities involved or is the problem organisational?

I’m helping put together a new 1 day workshop to explore how Agile and UX can best co-exist.

The workshop will draw together people from the Agile and UX communities to share experiences, problems and solutions to enable UX to have a happy marriage with Agile approaches. The workshop will be facilitated but participants should come prepared to play an active role in the session and to discuss their particular context.

Visit http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/workshops.php#agileux for more information.

I’m running a new event for the East of England User Experience, Design and Web communities.

UX Cambridge 2011 will run from 10-11 November at Clare College, Cambridge.

An open Call for Speakers is now available. Accepted Speakers pay no conference fees.

The submission process is straightforward, just asking for enough information to enable us to judge whether your session is suitable for our audience. The deadline for submissions is Friday 2nd September 2011.

We’re trying an experiment at this year’s Agile Cambridge conference by running a bunch of pre-conference tutorials.

Kanban – Successful evolutionary change for your technology business – with David J. Anderson 27-28th September:
http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/tutorials.php#kanban

Mastering the Product Backlog – with Roman Pichler 28th September
http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/tutorials.php#backlog

Hands-On : TDD at the System Scale – with Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce 28th September:
http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/tutorials.php#tdd

Visit the Agile Cambridge 2011 website at:
http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/index.php

Early-bird booking discounts now available.

Super advance warning really…

We’re launching a new conference for User Experience professionals.

UX Cambridge 2011 will be held from Novermber 10-11 in Cambridge, UK.

Follow @UXCambridge or join the UX Cambridge mailing list for updates.

The Call for Speakers for September’s Agile Cambridge 2011 conference has now been launched.

The submission deadline is Friday June 17th.

We are seeking high-quality session proposals covering any aspect of agile software development. If your session proposal is drawn from practical experience we’ll consider it.

Suggested topics:

• Adopting and evolving agile approaches
• Agile product management
• Agile software development
• Software testing
• User experience and design in an agile world
• Agile technical communications
• Coaching, mentoring or otherwise supporting agile teams
• Leadership and Management
• Tool and technology adoption
• Distributed agile teams

Case studies and interactive sessions (hands-on, workshops, games…) based on any aspect of these and related topics are particularly encouraged.

In addition to paying no conference fees, being a speaker gives you a unique opportunity to share your experience and knowledge with our audience.

SPEAKER EXPENSES

Although the general policy is not to cover speaker expenses the organisers do have some money to help speakers who are personally funding their own way to Agile Cambridge – but please don’t take the piss, we would strongly prefer to direct this money to those who most need this support.

Visit the Agile Cambridge 2011 website for more information.