Call for Sessions
Welcome to the Call for Sessions Web page for the Agile Tour Toronto 2011 Conference. We are now accepting session proposals for presentations, lectures, interactive sessions, games, and workshops. We have time slots of 45 min., 60 min. and 90 min and are particularly interested in proposals that resonate well with the conference themes below. Our audience will be comprised of those new to agile, practitioners and people in management positions.
Conference Themes
The underlying theme for this year’s conference is Transforming Business through Agile. We hope to provide an excellent opportunity to showcase the most innovative ideas related to the application of Agile concepts to the Business domain.
This year we have four focusing themes to frame the program:
Theme 1: Business and Agile
- Applying Agile concepts to the Business domain
- Addressing questions of risk, return on investment, and accountability
- Agile reporting, metrics and evaluation
- Issues related to Agile and organizational culture
- Agile project management
- Agile business analysis and requirements gathering
- Issues of co-location, scaling, distributed teams, offshoring, and out-sourcing
- Business transformation through Agile
- Case studies showcasing successful improvements as a result of conversion to Agile
Theme 2: New to Agile
- Introducing Agile
- Learning the basics
- Games and simulations the demonstrate the values and principles of Agile
Theme 3: Agile Leadership, Facilitation and Team Building
- Effective retrospectives
- Light-touch leadership, servant-leaders
- Case studies on working with teams in Agile environments
Theme 4: Technical Practices
- Strengthening testing and development practices
- Agile testing strategies, test automation and exploratory testing
- Building continuously and regression testing at scale
- Documentation in an Agile environment
- Executable specifications, DSLs and tools
Lightning Talks and Posters
Do you have a small topic you would like to share with the community but not via the standard presentation or workshop format? This year we will be accepting poster presentations and Lightning Talks on the conference themes and other Agile topics. If you’re not familiar with Lightning Talks, this site provides more details: http://perl.plover.com/lightning-talks.html. A conference session will be set aside as a Lightning Talks session where submitted topics will be presented and discussed in detail. Posters will be displayed in the conference common area and you will have a chance to talk with others interested in your poster.
Enough talk, how do I submit a proposal?
- Send an email to program@torontoagilecommunity.org with a short description of your session.
- After receiving your email, we will send you an account allowing you to create and manage your proposal(s) online. We encourage you to view all of the session submissions, provide constructive feedback, and respond to feedback from other submitters and the selection committee.
Release early and often!
Send in your proposals early and use the feedback to turn it into the best possible session by the extended submission deadline on September 2nd, 2011. Don't wait until the last possible moment to submit it, that's so waterfall. Submitting your session early will give you an opportunity to receive feedback, improve your proposal iteratively and help us create the best possible conference program.
All proposal submitters will be contacted by early September regarding acceptance of their submission(s).
Evaluation and Selection Process
Please see our Program Selection page for details on your session(s) will be evaluated and selected.
FAQ
I use Agile but am not an expert, can I still submit a session?
Yes! As this is a local conference, we feel it is important to provide a stage for local presenters to find a voice and chance to share. We can even help to make it better, just ask for help!
Wow! 45 minutes is too long. What can I do?
There will be a time slot in the program in which participants who want get 5 minutes to share their message in a Lightning talk.
What benefits do I get as speaker?
Up to 2 presenters per session get free admission to the conference.
I want to present in Toronto, but I live elsewhere. How can I pay for the trip?
We welcome you to our conference, but we cannot cover travel or lodging expenses. We opted for a low cost conference, and don't have budget to pay for speakers.
