Why Haven't You Submitted to Agile09

This year, Agile09 is in the beautiful city of Chicago in August. The deadline for submitting sessions is coming up quickly—Feb 13th and the User Experience track is in need of submissions. You might be asking why in the world should you submit something to an Agile conference. You might even be asking what in the world is Agile.

Well, here’s some info on the Agile UX stage.

As to why you should submit? Because Agile is a growing movement. Because the Agile community is hungry for, frustrated with, and a bit frightened of UX.

Why? Well, frankly, the UX community hasn’t done a good job at reaching out to the Agile community. Spare me the “They should reach out to us speech.” This has often left the community feeling like we’re “one of those people,” or even an unnecessary middleman. You can change that.

Queue some patriotic theme music….

Right now, the UX stage is in need of 90 minute interactive workshops and 45 minute Experience Reports.

An interactive workshop is something that demonstrates UX techniques, like cluster analysis, mental models, creating/implementing a pattern library, crafting personas, prototyping—you get the idea.

An experience report is a kind of like a case study on an actual experience, discussing what the project was, what happened, and 3-5 points on what you learned.

Now, you don’t actually have to be doing Agile to participate in the Agile conference. You just have to have UX experience and be able to communicate how a technique might apply in a rapid, iterative environment—think 3-6 week product development cycles.

I’m sending you this request to submit something, because the Agile UX stage is in need of submissions—they need to show the Agile community that UX people care and that our methods can be used within their framework and provide real value. We need to show this community that UX methods make a difference.

Last year, the Agile conference had around 1600 attendees. It’s HUGE.

So, get off your bum, put something together, and submit it to the Agile conference.

Why are you still reading this? Go register to submit your interactive workshop or experience report already.

I’ll see you in Chicago.