Last year, after a few years as a reviewer and track co-chair for various Agile20xx conferences, I got to help launch the experimental "Audacious Salon" stage for Agile2016 with the inestimable George Dinwiddie. Then, in early October of this year, Tricia Broderick announced the Agile2017 Program Team and I am absolutely honored to have been selected to serve as the Technical Program Chair for Agile2017. I have the further honor of managing the return of the Audacious Salon after its successful inaugural year.
My first significant duty as Technical Program Chair was to assemble a Technical Program Team. For each track in my assign, I needed to identify a chair and co-chair to help define the track, recruit a review team, and ultimately select the track content.
This selection process is not easy. There are a number of qualified people who are interested in helping out each year. The challenge is not in finding qualified people, it is in making a selection from the candidates. Fortunately for me and the other Program Chairs, as Conference Chair, Tricia takes on the unfortunate responsibility of informing those who were not selected. Should I ever serve in this role, I hope I can handle it as well as she.
To get the right mix, I looked at a few different criteria:
- Prior experience as a track chair and/or reviewer (required)
- Recommendations and feedback from prior Program/Conference Chairs
- Ensuring we had a good mix of both returning and new people
- Ensuring diversity on the program and as best as possible for each track
It took a couple of weeks to pull the team together, but I am happy with the results and believe we have an excellent line-up.
The Technical Program Team for Agile2017 is:
Audacious Salon
George Dinwiddie
Lyssa Adkins
DevOps
Nayan Hajratwala
David Starr
Development Practices & Craftsmanship
Cheryl M Hammond
Kevin Stevens
And now the real work begins. Over the course of time between now and the conference in early August 2017, these wonderful people will recruit an army of reviewers and coaches to help them pour through hundreds of submissions. And through careful consideration, discussion, some debate and much consternation, select from those hundreds of submissions a mere fraction of the presentations to fill their respective tracks.
Please join me in welcoming these fine folks to the team!