Below are all ideas and suggestions that were proposed. Think about them, we will, when organizing the Camp in 2017. 🙂
Preparation
Was Good / Keep
- Email communication
- Website
- Slack
- Position paper
- Everything OK
- Active people require little info (I knew just time & location, nothing else)
- Kept us interested without requiring active participation
Improve
- More communication channels
- More heartbeat communication – mostly first messages came late
- Complex registration of accommodation
- Clarification of costs ( “General expenses (meeting rooms, material, etc.) are covered from sponsorship” – we collected costs for materials in the end, sponsorship was spent on food and accommodation
- Participants could send photos and we could match them with the position papers -> papers could also be printed and taken to the camp
- Organizers should initiate conversations on Slack channels
- Start discussions before the event
- I did not know to take swimsuit 😦
- Promote communication channels more
- Long waiting time for the website
Execution
Was Good / Keep
- Open Space
- Time slot arrangements
- Topics + games + format + variation + socialising
- Timing
- Warm ups and exercises
- Facilitation
- Just enough facilitation (official talks)
- Session length
- Open Space format
- Number of participants
- Perfect execution – everybody knew how to contribute
- Fun
Improve
- Marketplace negotiations were not working well
- Later start on Friday (20:00?)
- Better summaries of sessions
- Voting for sessions
- before session
- before evening news
- Shorter coffee breaks
- Short breaks between sessions
- Saturday – one longer break for free time and relax
- No attendee moved to Prague < 3 years ago
- Use marketplace to guess the number of attendees (somehow)
- Improve marketplace and indicate if it’s:
- workshop
- sharing
- games
- etc.
- Improve marketplace:
- I offer to share my experience
- I’d like to learn from others
- Evening news were too chaotic and not helping
- 5 minutes breaks between sessions
- Shorter sessions
- Do more sessions
- Arrange some activities for the evening
- There were a lot: sauna, story cubes, throwing, other games, beer etc.
- Separate planning session for morning and afternoon
- More planned agile games
Learning and Contribution
- Setup of life priorities
- New games
- Mental / psy cleanup
- Tragedy of the commons
- “Sticks” game
- Learned that structural change will come
- People were engaged in the conversations
- Described the situation of my team
- Insight to the state of CZ Agile community and market
- Name game
- New, wonderful people
- Agile connection with self-development
- Variation of topics and different experiences
- Confirmation of our approach
- Met people with practical experience – no academics
- Broader point of view
- Less control can bring better results
- Better understanding of how deeply you need to change for adopting agile
- Our situation looks better in comparison with some others 🙂
- I can learn what I want
- Format of (non-)conference attracts active people
- GM testing
- Developers point of view
- Superb people
- Non-IT people attending
Improve
- Session titles unclear
- Only few practical tools/games
- Notes from sessions
- Summary of sessions
Agile Coach Camp CZ 