1. Laurent Bossavit and Brian Marick have just gone live with www.WeVouchFor.org - a website where people in the agile community can add concrete testimonials about people they've worked with. I reckon they have earned a big virtual hug and an even bigger round of applause for this.
The key to making something like this work is that people are putting their own reputations on the line transparently, in a public place - and that's not something that people will do lightly.
2. Now, I'm going to go one step further. While Kevin Rutherford and I were preparing the latest NakedAgilists.com mini-conference he mentioned that he'd recently worked himself out of a job and he is currently "available" for contract work. He's putting his downtime to good use writing an agile book he'll be publishing in 2009. I know Kevin personally and professionally (although I've never worked with him on a project) and I am willing to put my reputation on the line, transparently and in public, and recommend that if you're looking for a contract Agile Coach or Scrum Master (or even Software Developer) within 90 minutes commute of Maccelsfield, in the UK, then I'm promising you that he will do a fantastic job for you.
In fact, even if you are not looking for someone like Kevin, do you know someone who might be?
In either case, contact Kevin via his website or me if you'd like to know a little more about him.
Note: Kevin and I have no commercial ties. None. I asked Kevin if he'd mind if I post this and he said that being English he found it all horribly embarrassing but he gave me his permission, nonetheless. Speaking as a Kiwi, who lives in Scotland and has an Irish wife, I'd be more embarrassed about being English ... :)
Do you know of a project which is missing out because they don't know that Kevin is "available".
