An Open Space event for Southern California IT
By Bachan Anand / Filed under Uncategorized / March 30th, 2010
I wanted to get thoughts from everyone on holding an Open Space in Southern California to bring IT folks at all levels and practices together on the challenges and opportunities in our field of work. My initial thought was to have an Open Space focused on challenges and opportunities for Agile adoption . When I gave it further thought, I realized it makes sense to broaden the scope instead of consider Agile is the solution , let us really hear from everyone what is the best way to support each other and be successful.
Here are my thoughts so far, would love to hear feedback.
Purpose :
To get IT professional together to discuss about the challenges and opportunities in their day to day work.
Mission :
Leverage this Open Space discussion as a spring board for further positive change in IT field. Create a forum for bringing people passionate about different practices together and discuss about the real challenges and opportunities.
Goal :
- Organize the event around mid June.
- Total participation of 200 People.
- Have participation from different IT roles including CIO, CTO, Sr Managers, Leads, Developers, QA , Product Management and Business Analyst.
- Have participation from Agile, Scrum , XP , Lean , Kanban, PMI and other practices and local user groups.
- Have Agile Alliance, Scrum Alliance , LSSC, PMI as supporters of the event.
Next Steps :
Get 5-6 motivate individuals involved and collaborate to make it happen.
Adjust the scope of the Open space event without losing focusing on
- Get wider group of IT folks involved.
- Have people from different practices collaborate.
Would love to hear comments from everyone.
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I enthusiastically support this initiative. By definition, Open Space participants select the topics they most value. Unlike most conferences, proposals for presentation are not selected by the organizers. Presenters offer what they are passionate about. Participants vote with their feet.
http://www.openspaceworld.org/
Thanks David for your support. I agree with you , as organizers we will just set the context for the event and have people come up with specific topics that they are passionate about and that are relevant . Do you think instead of focusing on IT as a whole we can make the purpose of the open space as Challenges and Opportunities in Software development or keep it broader for the overall IT.
Hi Bachan,
Do you know about Agile Open Southern California? As a southern CA event initiated by Agile Open California and co-organized with a SoCal team, it has its first event last Sept. at UC Irvine. The team has just started planning this years Agile Open Space. I’m an Open Space facilitator and the initiator of Agile Open CA – we’re now planning our 4th OS in San Francisco in October.
If you have an interest in collaborating with the Agile Open SoCal folks I can put you in touch. You advance the cause there – seems like there would be mutual advantage.
Ainsley