Pay it Forward Panel at San Francisco Agile 2012 Conference

By Lisa Montaño / Filed under Agile, Pay it Forward, Scrum, WORK is GOOD / June 8th, 2012

I would like to share some notes on the Pay It Forward (PIF) panel discussion that took place on on June 4 at the San Francisco Agile 2012 Conference.

First, thank you Bachan, Jeena, and the Conscires team for doing the Pay It Forward interview of Bachan and for pulling the numbers together. I found that helpful during the conversation and people were very interested in knowing that we had trained over 600 people in PIF so far!

There were 4 attendees in our session, so we held it more as a round-table conversation than a panel discussion. Tobias started out by giving some background about the concept he and some colleagues tried around Welfare CSM in 2009, which offered the CSM certification for a low cost to people in transition; in total, Tobias did about 20 trainings. From this concept, PIF was started at Conscires last year.

Pay it Forward Panel image courtesy Margaret Motamed

I spoke about the concept behind Pay It Forward, the cost structure, who attends, and the idea that the program creates a sense of community that will last into the future.

There was quite a bit of discussion around the costing model, how this is sustainable, and whether people pay at all, and what is the amount that most people pay. In addition, there was discussion about PIF creating a new model for business, as mentioned in Charles Eisenstein’s video about “Sacred Economy”, which harkens back to a bartering system instead of using money.

Pay it Forward Panel image courtesy Margaret Motamed

Some highlights of this conversation include the idea of asking clients, training attendees, or other customers to set the amount they’d like to pay for any service, based on what they believe the value is that they have received from you and your work. So far it seems that businesses don’t know exactly how to respond to this model and are somewhat uncomfortable not being given an amount to pay. As we’ve seen in PIF, it appears so far, that most people will pay a suggested amount, and few will pay some other amount.

The participants were interested in the idea of delivering a service to create community, that had some other motive besides making money, a concept in which immediate gain is less of a concern or objective, and alternatively, in which the creation of relationships and knowledge among a community of people resulted in rewards of other kinds, including financial, come later.

I hope this gives you some glimpse of our session. I was honored and privileged to be a part of it.

- Lisa Montaño

CONSCIRES AGILE PRACTICES