The Agile India 2012 conference, Bengaluru was a grand success with over 750 participants from all over the world, 125 speakers, 146 sessions, 12 stages, and 7 parallel tracks. There were positive vibes all around as attendees networked and gained from attending various sessions. The post-conference feedback has been very positive with 74% attendees wanting to attend Agile India in the future and 20% maybes.
Photos from the Research Stage, Agile India 2012 Conference, Bengaluru
The Research Stage at Agile India 2012 received 22 submissions of which 15 were accepted after reviews from an international Program Committee of expert Agile researchers. These accepted papers included 7 full papers, 4 short, and 4 position papers.
In order to allow the authors to benefit from practitioner feedback, we scheduled the 5 full papers in regular practitioner stages relevant to their topics. For example, research presentations were delivered in the Enterprise Agile, Lean Principles and Practices, DevOps, Organizational Strategy, and Culture and Teams stages. I am pleased to report that a majority of these presentations were very well attended – full occupancy and people standing at the back – and received lots of feedback/questions from practitioners.
Besides these, I organized a specialized Research Cafe on the 3rd day of the conference which ran from 10am to 4.30pm. Although focused at researchers, the stage was generously attended by practitioners too. The structure of the Research Cafe was as follows: an introductory talk by myself (Rashina Hoda) on Researching Agile, followed by two full paper presentations which raised some interesting discussions in the audience. This was followed by another short, impromptu talk where I presented details of my PhD research results in response to a speaker missing due to an unforeseen emergency and audience’s demand (responding to change in plan 😉 )
Next we had the Poster Madness session where the authors of short and position papers presented short talks summarizing their work and referring to Posters that were pinned up in the room. Attendees had an opportunity to discuss these posters with authors soon after.
Post lunch, we hosted an Open Space which witnessed some passionate discussions in three groups – “Quality in Agile projects”, “How to retrieve real data for Agile research”, and “Agile in the classrooms”. The last topic resulted in the participants forming a group “International Agile Education Consortium” to encourage more Agile ways of teaching in educational institutions.
Proceedings of the conference were made available to all attendees. Research papers should appear in the IEEE Xplore ditigal library soon. Speaker presentations are being uploaded through the conference website.
Overall, it was a high energy conference where Research presentations received generous attention from both practitioners and academics. I am extremely grateful to all of you who have been a valuable part of the Research Stage and making Agile India 2012 a successful conference! Wishing all the attendees and participants success in their studies and careers and hope to catch up with you soon.
Links:
Research Paper Abstracts: http://agile2012.in/program/researchpapers/
Opening Talk by Naresh Jain, Conference Chair: http://www.slideshare.net/nashjain/agile-india-2012-opening-talk/
Opening Talk by Naresh Jain, Conference Chair: http://www.slideshare.net/nashjain/agile-india-2012-opening-talk/
Rashina Hoda 