Hi everyone,
Clarke Ching typing from Scotland.
I run the Agile Scotland special interest group. We meet in Edinburgh once each month and generally we get a good turnout – between 10 and 30 people attend each evening. We have had a number of well known and respected Agile speakers over the last few years – David Anderson, Mary and Tom Poppendieck, Tim Bacon, Rachel Davies, Martin Fowler, Charlie Poole, Ken Schwaber to name just a few – plus we’ve had a good number of excellent presentations from the locals input. I happily admit that I’ve enjoyed and learnt from every single AgileScotland event that I’ve attended.
My objectives with the group are to (a) build a community of agile practitioners in Scotland (b) spread knowledge within the community and (c) spread the word about Agile within Scotland.
But currently I have two problems with running AgileScotland:
- Although it hasn’t happened yet, I’m concerned that one day I’ll run out of ideas for new sessions. We are starting to recover topics that we’ve already covered – for instance, we’ve just had our 2nd DSDM session in 3 years and we’ve had a few TDD demonstrations – but thats not really bothering me. But, I would like to maybe consider different topics, different formats, … but it’s a little nerve racking experimenting like this.
- I’m failing on my third objective – to spread the agile word. We get a few new faces each month but … not many. I also get a bit of interest from newbies (strangely, most of them work for my former employer) but many of them don’t come to our evening events.
So … The purpose of this note is to ask for advice and suggestions.
I know that a number of AgileScotland members read my blog. Any advice? Email me at agile.Scotland@gmail.com.
I know that there are a lot of similar groups around the world. Any advice? Are you in the same position of me?
Many thanks,
Clarke
