Organizing an Agile gathering in 5 simple steps

January 27, 2009 by Artem Marchenko

Last week a second Agile Dinner was held in Tampere. It eventually made me find time to publish photos and my lighting talk presentation from the first dinner that was held in Tampere on December 4 2008 and had a great success.

To make this post at least a bit useful to the people who haven’t been present on the dinner, let me share with you how easy it is to get an Agile community started. The plan consists of five steps:

1. Get to know the local agile mailing list. It’s ok if there isn’t too much traffic.
2. Prepare a lighting talk to serve as a discussion starter. 5 minutes max
3. Create a wiki page for self registration couple of weeks in advance. Post announcement on the mailing list. Tentatively book a room in the local beer restaurant or bar (just for an hour or two)
4. A week later after seeing how many people register, book tables in the bar
5. Come, talk and drink.Or eat.

In our case the whole process tool less than a month from the original idea posted by yours truly in the beginning of November, to the finding of a courageous organizer Antti Tarvainen in mid-November to the actual dinner  in the beginning of December.

If you ever took part in organizing similar lightweight gatherings, please, share your experience in the comments.

Materials from the Dinner:

• Some photos (see more on flickr)
  
• Presentation from my lighting talk on the misapplied Scrum pattern inspired by the Decline and Fall of Agile by James Shore

• Link to the Dinner’s wiki

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