 And we are live, broadcasting here from Mumbai and all over the world, waiting for folks to join. We are now live. So it's Doc and myself here, and I guess the others are watching us as a viewer. Let me check with them if they can see anything now. It's from Mods. So yeah, these guys are able to see us now live, but I think they are all viewing as watchers, so they are basically only watching the YouTube broadcasts. Okay, so I thought I had that view up as well, and I can't, all I see is the Agile India logo, but maybe I can't be in both at the same time or something. I'll close that one since I'm actually broadcasting. Yeah, I think because you're involved in the actual call, maybe you can't watch. Yeah. So I think we should get these guys to come in. Otherwise, we won't actually be able to have this call. Right. So if you guys are listening to us, why don't you please join the Hangout. Go to the page that I had sent the invite and try joining in the Hangout itself because then we will be able to have a discussion. Maybe try sending an email. Okay, so here's Pramod and Ellen is Ellen. There she is. Pramod and Ravi, I've just shared a link with you guys on Google Hangout on the Google Chat. Can you guys click on that link and join the Hangout itself? I can hear myself. Yeah, I actually turned off the view, so it shouldn't come back to you again. I was watching and participating, so I was probably going to create a really long, slow feedback loop. So Ravi says, I see the video, but I want you to join the Hangout, not see the video. We want you to participate in the Hangout. So quit the video, close that view, and come to the actual Google Hangout. So I guess it's just going to be you and me then, my doc. Okay. Yeah, it's interesting. So the way that I got into this, where we're actually broadcasting together, was basically an incoming call, and I answered it and said, yes, I'll join this video call. The invite that's on my calendar only takes me to the ability to view as a watcher, not a broadcaster. Right, right. So what I tried to do is that once I kicked it off, I invited people, and I invited them to the video call, so they should get like a phone ringing on their side. Right. Yeah, and I could see that you invited them. So let me try again to see if that would make any difference. So let's see, I'm going to invite this invitation posted. So it does show there is one viewer, and there is a link to that. This is the event link. Okay. So this is going to be tricky, because the person that we're going to call into this will have to be able to answer the call for them to join in. And I should be able to share my screen as well. Right. Let's give that a try. Still folks coming. Cool. This looks awesome. There's a screen within a screen, within a screen. And I am sharing an infinite stack of screens. Oh, wow. This looks like a bug. So the moment you speak, it all clears up, and then it just goes back to a screen within a screen infinitely till it basically zones out. That's funny. Yeah. So I end up jumping to the front, which gets rid of that repeating screen. That's funny. That's cool. So I see Doc with your title and everything that shows up when you speak. That's pretty cool. If you do the Hangout Toolbox, you can actually set the lower 30-year screen to read whatever you want it to read, and you can add a logo and change colors and stuff. Nice. We'll play around with all of this stuff. Yeah. Let's get back to turning off the screen sharing and see me back. There you go. All right. So I am back. And what was that? Hangout Toolbar Toolbox? Toolbox, yeah. Along the left-hand side of the screen, you've got all those little icons. It's a little, well, Toolbox. Toolbox, yeah. I see a Toolbox. And then the first icon Toolbox. Request for permission. Okay. Take all my information. I accept your policies. I have no choice. Yeah, right. Okay. So I am in now, says Ravi. I beg to differ Ravi. I don't see him in here. So it's the Choose Logo thingy. Yeah. This is turning out to be a good experiment more than anything else. Yeah. Turn it on. There you go. There you go. It was inverted. It appears that way for you. Oh, it appears inverted for me. Yeah. I'm not sure why they do that. Okay. I guess the idea is that... This is cool. So now it's set. Now imagine India. Yeah. Looks good. You can have a pink color. Pink is cool. All right. I'll play around with this at a later point. We are good to go. So, all right. I guess the others are just listening in. So we'll get started and I'll give you a quick run-off of what's happened so far and then doc jump in and ask any questions or things like that that you have. I'm hoping the other folks will be on the Q&A section. Maybe they might be asking questions over there. So I'm opening the Q&A part of it. It says fail to link. Okay. That's not going to work. Okay. All right. Anyway. So, yeah. So far, where are we? Where do we stand? So we have pretty much zeroed in, I think, on the program so far. We've got all the sections locked in at this point. I'm just working on a little thing which will allow us to add the invited speaker session into our submission system as on behalf of them instead of directly asking them to add it in. Basically, just add me or Pramod. One of us will just go in and add all the invited speaker sections. And then those will show up in the submission system. There we will generate the final program that is right now there is the draft schedule and basically have that available on the website. So that's one thing that needs to be done. Otherwise, I think the program is pretty much finalized at this point. There we go. Ravi is finally joined. Finally. Okay. Cool. So yeah, just trying to... So what did you do, by the way? Sorry. So we know what to tell someone else in the future. Well, I think I had to install the plug-in. So Google Hangout plug-in, it asked me to install the plug-in. Okay. So that's good to know. Yeah. And I think I had to click that button on add to circles and then do that to go there. Okay. I still don't see Pramod in here, but I do see two people are there as viewers, so probably Pramod is one of them. And Ellen probably is the other person. So anyway, going back to what I was just saying, we need a little bit more work to give the invited speaker sections inside the proposal system and announce the final program that I'm hoping we will be done by end of this year which was kind of our target and then have that life. So that's about the program. I think pretty much most people have sent in their experience report or case studies with an exception of a couple of people which again, the plan is to have that ready by end of this year and then announce both of those together. Experience reports basically download PDF versions of those and then have linked them from the website and from their respective sessions as well. Sorry, not sessions from their respective proposals and have that available off the website. So was there any confusion regarding the new template that we asked people? I thought at least I didn't see anyone complain about it. So far nothing, nobody has complained. At least in my track, nobody. Except there was one confusion on the naming, convention, etc. that was sorted out with only one person. Okay. Yeah, it was pretty seamless for us as well. Cool. That was the last minute thing. We always had the idea that we will do something in the end but we didn't quite think of it to be like a template or any of that stuff. We didn't want to add in the header or footer or something like that but then we went a little crazy with all the icons and everything. But I think it will be good for... All right. The next thing that we have on the list is... So the program is pretty much done. The experience reports and the case studies are happening. We had one or two speakers, I think one speaker dropping out and that basically at this point we replaced that with Doc Your Talk and I sent you the time on which we have you speaking. And basically we have a whole bunch of backup speakers at this point so if any other further speakers dropping out we should be able to backfill that with one of our backup speakers. So I think we are a good shape even over there. Good. The next thing we need to do is I'll basically have one person work with the speakers to make sure that their visas and all of that stuff is in place and the tickets are booked and things like that and I'm hoping we'll do that in the first week of Jan. That's when probably people will be ready. We have Pramod in here. Hey man. Hi guys. How much did you have to bribe? I heard you have to bribe Google to get in. I heard Ravi talking about installing that plugin. It looks like the procedure is to install the plugin and then add Agile India to your circles and once you go to the circles it actually shows the icon saying join the hangout and that's when you get the magic button. So Alan if you are listening you need to install the plugin and then add Agile India to your Google Plus or Google Plus or whatever that is. Circles and then you'll get the magic button I guess. Agile India is going to be rich with all the people adding me to circles. All right. Pramod you heard what we talked so far right? Yes yes. Cool. So I think I see still one more viewer which I'm assuming would be Alan you know which is actually pretty cool because when we do the hangout we'll be able to see actually how many viewers are there on the hangout. And if you guys heard earlier Doc also helped me set up this little Agile India thingy that comes up when I speak. So it's on the left in the toolbar. You guys can set that up. Google Hangout Toolbox. I think that also will be pretty cool because if we have that during our actual broadcast then when someone's asking a question or whatever their name will show up and it'll be more contextual in that sense. We'll have the speakers do all of this as well. Okay. What else do we have? So yeah early Jan will get all the speakers there, the slides, all of that stuff sorted out, visas and things like that. And that is pretty much it I think from the program point of view. Any other questions you guys have? No. So not around the program so much but around some of these case studies experience reports. I've got at least one where we've been trying as hard as we can to get it to come together but it's not looking very promising and the author is now pretty defensive. I don't want to mess things up on the schedule but I also am losing faith that this is going to be a worthwhile experience report. What do you guys think suggest? Doc, I have a couple of cases like that which I think I have to act already so I'm not sure. Yeah in some cases I have actually gone in and written stuff for them like elaborated and show them what I mean and what I'm saying like instead of just putting comments, actually add paragraphs and say this is what I mean so that they get some drift of what you're trying to say. Sometimes it's hard to convey that over comments. So in this case we had one that was like that and we actually were able to help them find a better story to tell and we kind of reworked the experience report and I think it's much better. In this one it's specifically about using metrics to improve your team and as we're getting into it it appears all they actually did was track velocity, set iteration goals and run burn down charts. There's reference to a bunch of other metrics but no evidence that they were actually used and as we've asked for evidence hey can you tell us more about this metric or that metric and what were the how did that work for you or not work for you? The pushback is pretty consistently my report's already too long. So I can continue to work with her but my actual concern is that they've only done this one thing and they actually haven't used these other metrics and that's just not a it's not a compelling experience. So one thing you could try is like for any standard enterprise organization to move from having nothing to like having two or three metrics is a big shift. So you can ask them to give that big shift and then where else they're planning to go and what else they could implement like the future vision. I think that may also add some value. So like I think someone also had a report where they went from like half yearly releases to like two week releases. Yeah that's the one that's one of the ones and I think and that's not the one that we're talking about that's one of the ones that I had and I think we I think we got that to a point where it's a reasonable story right. So all right cool I'll keep working with her and maybe I'll maybe I'll ping you offline with some specifics and examples if you've got some guidance. Hi and then join the group. Welcome. Hello finally here Google made me go round in circles and around and around and around and around. Yeah I'm hoping this is all just one time effort not ongoing thing. I bet every new speaker you add to this list will have to do this. So the first webinar is going to be interesting. Well so what we'll do with the speaker is basically before the actual webinar maybe I will set up some time with them and you know get connected with them do a little broadcast which is like a trailer for the actual broadcast and then set up the trailer because there's a way to add a trailer to the Hangout. So I was thinking we'll do a trailer and add that and during the trailer I'll get them set up and all of that stuff. Cool. So the steps are basically from what I understand is install Google Hangout plugin add Agile India to the circle and then join the invite, join the Hangout. Yeah Cool. So doc thanks for bringing that up. Ravi or Ellen do you guys have any similar challenges you faced with the experience reports? I have a couple of them which I've already flagged. Go for it Ellen. I was just going to say there's one that I personally haven't seen yet so there's a bit of uncertainty around it. More to the point I haven't seen the latest version. The rest of them I'm hoping to have together by this weekend I've been hounding people in the background. My core team members are of course the slowest people to get theirs in but I'm chasing them so it should be good. It's a terrible, terrible cold today so I may disappear off screen to go do unmentionable things. Sure. Ravi I think you've marked a few of them and they're coming up long I believe. Yeah a couple of them at least one of them is not worthwhile the other one is still coming up I don't know it looks tentative to me at the moment. So Pramod if people submit their thing their experience report or if the program chairs feel it's not worthwhile then what is your take what should we do? I mean the first try is we actually help them out like I was talking with Doc about it the next stage is like we'll have to take them off I mean we'll have to find some backups if not then we'll put some insert some invited speakers in there like that like based on the two that Ravi is talking about and the one Doc is talking about I think we can work the number of them is not high so we can work with them to make it better if there are like seven or eight of them then we would have no choice I have to like flag some of them off and then work with some but I don't think we're in that situation so I think three we can handle working with them like Ravi me and Doc can work individually with them and get something in a shape that is reasonable so I think we can live with that for now yeah I think that's fair you know my hope will be that we try and work with them to accommodate them into the conference but if we basically cannot after we try then that's okay to let them go because we do have enough invited speakers to fill up the slots so filling up the slots will not be an issue but I would personally like a way to make it work and encourage those guys yeah cool cool the other update from my side is the sponsorship for the conference is coming along fairly well at this point we have two title sponsors you know that's pretty much confirmed we have two theme sponsors confirmed at this point and then we have three gold sponsors confirmed so with that I think we should be in a decent shape to basically at least at this point break even one of our big concerns at least Pramod and I had discussed in the past that originally when we had planned the conference we said we're going to charge for the morning conference and then looking at our schedule we ended up going pretty much till 9pm and then we were thinking maybe we charge people again for post six o'clock sections but with the sponsorship I think we might be able to skip that portion and just let people come in maybe we charge a small amount for people who want to have dinner but you know other ways the whole thing can just be as is I might not be making much sense to you guys I'm not sure because there's a little bit of context behind that say it again I'm sorry I was just saying I'm not sure if I was able to explain the context behind this thing that I was talking about where when we originally sold tickets for the conference we only sold from 9am to 6pm and when we actually put the program together the conference runs up all the way to 9am to 9pm so Pramod and I had discussed maybe we break it apart into two different conferences 9am to 6pm which we have already sold and then we charge maybe an additional amount for people who want to just come in for the evening sessions and then we said well we're not sure how that's going to work so let's leave it as of now until maybe if we don't find any sponsorship and we will not be able to break even at that point we will probably have people pay for the evening slots but what I was saying is at this point I don't think we need to do that with the sponsorship we have except maybe charge a very nominal fee for people who want to have evening dinner at the conference okay yeah that makes sense so we're still deferring a bit to see about sponsorships at this point I don't think we'll announce anything yet probably let's wait until mid-Jan which is when we'll really have a clear idea of all the sponsors and at that point we can do a quick calculation of what the costing is coming up to and then decide if we need to charge for the dinner or skip even the charging for the dinner so for example if we get reception sponsors then we don't need to charge for the dinner but at this point we only have one reception sponsor so far sorry Ellen I was not able to hear that I'm just muttering to myself about why am I not in the hangout but I'm apparently still here can you hear me yes yes I think that sponsorship stuff is cool and I think if we have some people in our network that we can tap into especially tool vendors and stuff like that that you think can do a reasonable like a 2k dollar sponsorship for reception I think we should reach out and figure out if they are willing to sponsor Github is an example of that we reached out to Github and they said fine we'll do a reception sponsor so if we get like 3-4 of those I think that will help that's right so if you guys have anyone in your network that you can reach out and see if they want to sponsor a reception or a lunch or a meal or any of that stuff I think it's about 2k dollars is the lunch thing and then 4k for the reception which is a little bit expensive but companies could pick any one of those any money coming in basically at this point would help us further subsidize the cost alright so we'll take a call on that by around mid-Jan I think one thing that I'm not sure if we've really discussed with everyone maybe Pramod and I have had a few discussions around this is the whole thing about these webinars that we are planning what's the context behind it and what is the thought process around that I think I'll just take a couple of minutes and quickly explain that so what ended up happening is we reached out to quite a few people to speak at the conference but then they were either not available or not willing to travel or things like that so we thought maybe we could instead ask them to do a webinar and we could start much before the conference and that way it would create a buzz for the conference so that was kind of the thought process behind these webinars and at this point we also have a Google Calendar that we put together in which we have scheduled these webinars and most of them are in the morning India time because at that point most people would have just reached office and they won't have calls with the counterparts and things like that and we would be able to get a much larger portion of people attending these webinars but the idea is the webinar will only be open to people who have registered for the conference I mean at least that's what I think we have nothing to lose but the idea is you know to market it such that only people who have registered for the conference will get an invite to the webinar as a viewer so they will be able to view and they would be able to ask questions via the Q&A application which also I wanted to test on this but it seems to not be working so we'll figure out either Q&A via their app or Q&A via Twitter or something like that where people can ask Twitter questions and then few of us will be on the hangout itself with the actual speaker and we'll be watching for these streams and then asking questions to the speakers on behalf of the participants so that's kind of the brief idea with the webinar the first one that we have I think planned is Jeff Actwood 7th let me actually tell you the exact date yes it is 17th January is the first one at least as of now that we have planned and that's with Jeff Actwood and the topics that we have are not necessarily very specific to agile either like for example Jeff Actwood's topic is how to be good citizen on Stack Overflow but I think it has a lot of similarity in my opinion between some of the agile culture that we talk about and what happens on Stack Overflow so it would be a very interesting quest and then we can always ask questions and kind of turn the topic more towards agile culture or any of those things if you want to any questions so far so I think if I look at schedule so far I'm just going to quickly run through it so 17th Jan we have Jeff Actwood 24th Jan I'm planning to do this thing with Jim McCarty because one of my concern is not many people actually know Jim McCarty in India and some of his work so I was thinking before the conference it would be good to get him to talk a little bit about his work and why he believes that the whole agile culture was something that what he defined in his culture hacking work and what he has to say so I thought we could do that 31st we have Andy Hunt 31st January is Andy Hunt then 7th we have Scott Ammler 7th Feb 13th Feb we have Jim Smiths and then there was Jim Jim Jim what's our dude sorry I'm bad with names we let's play TDD Jim Shores Jim Shores I think we were planning to do on 21st but that one is not scheduled yet so at this point we possibly have two more slots open in January so you know do you guys have any recommendations for folks we can add to the webinar series do we want folks that are speaking at the conference no not necessary it could be people who are industry recognized but can't make it or don't want to travel have other obligations things like that I like Dan Norse don't know if we've talked with him we can ping Dan Norse I don't know how much we can certainly ping Dan Norse I think but we can certainly ping what about somebody like Linda Rising who has appeared at a previous conference and is very popular sorry Alan your voice broke a little bit I was not able to hear the name Linda Linda yeah okay we could certainly ping Linda in fact it would be good to have Linda kick this off because she was extremely popular last year and that might bring some attention back to this well and that partially what I was thinking is people who were very popular speakers in the past who maybe aren't coming this year but we want to sort of connect that dot right I think we will certainly learn that so Linda Rising comes to my mind Hendrik is another person that comes to my mind and then Kevlin these were three I think the top rated speakers last year these webinars I think we'll need to plan them a little bit make sure you know whoever is there on the webinar is asking meaningful questions and turning it into an exciting you know 60 minute action paxing you know if you just let it flow it might not it you know that there are chances that it might not so there's a little bit of prep that will be required and you know I think from all the eye and anybody else who's interested let's all work together to put these things together and maybe one person could take a lead for each of them and others can jump in and that way we could distribute the load a little bit and have a little bit of variety as well amongst ourselves amongst ourselves another idea for a webinar might be to rather than just have one speaker have two people having a conversation so that it's interactive even if the interaction with the audience is technically limited it's not just one person going blah blah blah blah blah so I don't know if there's any lively speakers we would want to set up to debate each other or something but maybe there's a possibility there. The idea with the webinar was that it won't really be a presentation by the speaker but it'll be more of a Q&A interview kind of a thing with one of us kind of asking questions to the speaker and kind of you know asking some really hard questions trying to put them on spot maybe do like you know answer in one phrase not more than that right you know stuff like that or like 60 seconds fire round where we just like boom boom boom boom question of the question and they just need to answer in one word yes no or stuff like that things like that might make it more interesting for people you know and maybe some questions will require more detailed answers some will require yes no I disagree you know you're stupid what else another opportunity for that kind of interview if you want to do something with really short restricted answers is do a Twitter interview different media channel but that might also drum up some interest if you're interested in getting more followers on an agile India Twitter feed one challenge in India is not many people are on Twitter so we'll have to be a little bit worried about that as well because many people are active on Twitter at all that's something that is growing but it's not yet there I believe Ravi you're not on Twitter you probably have just created an account recently something like that I'm not on Twitter yeah my point is not my point is like you are a typical example of what you know a lot of people in India you know because of the corporate environment and stuff like that have to deal with where it's hard for people to access Twitter or things like that from office so generally they are not active at all on Twitter are there any other channels besides video webinars that we should be looking at in terms of trying to drum up a little bit of recognition good point last year we did these interviews we basically published on the blog these were more written Q&A interviews with mostly with the workshop speakers as a way to give some some trailer into what the workshops will be about and we published them on our blog I went back and I checked the stats and we only had about 300 350 hits per blog so personally I think that was not successful this is one of the reasons why we were exploring more of the video webinar kind of a thing I believe webinars are a little bit more popular in India but I don't know if YouTube will be banned in companies that's another problem we'll have to deal with YouTube definitely is banned in my company or many of the services company so right now our plan is to basically do it on Google Hangout and basically have this live available on YouTube so if it is YouTube then it's going to be banned inside companies it will be YouTube even hangout for that matter even g-mails or whatever personal those kind of things will be banned some companies MongoDB.org is also banned I don't know where actually India.org is banned so I guess our site is banned until it's proven not guilty now I guess our only hope is like people would watch it from home like 9am being home time and some other time zones in and around India time zones like maybe the east to west to us or east to us would have enough testing and the other option would be people watch it at home and then go to work kind of situations so I guess people will figure out a way to watch and worst case is it will be recorded on YouTube available for posterity so people can still go back and watch that's a big advantage with this whole thing is that when we actually finish the session it's there on YouTube available forever and that way we don't have to do any post processing on any of that stuff and it becomes readily accessible for anyone so even what we are discussing right now is available for posterity so if you take some responsibility we have proof of that unless I go back and delete the video I didn't sign up for anything I think this is good this was also a good try run for this thing it certainly cleared some of the misconceptions at least that I had how Google Hangout works and any other questions you guys have I think we are kind of trying to wrap it up at this point so for me I could not hear Ellen and Pramod at all so I don't know what happened there so much of the conversations were Pramod to speak on the experience reports etc so I need to get that built and later on Google does not like Pramod alright doesn't like me asking questions too there's only dark and you I can hear rest of them I can't wondering why Google told me are you able to hear Ellen I can hear Ellen and I can even hear I don't know why Ravi can't hear I was seeing if there's a pattern I think Ellen was going to say this but I got to notice that Ravi actually muted Ellen no I was trying out stuff but I could not so then it happened but then I learned that once you mute a person then you cannot unmute that's fantastic so accidentally if you go on to mute trying out at least by muting on muting you cannot mute you can only do that for yourself but not for the other person in fact it's a support bug with Google there so I just checked out okay I won't feel insulted then no really Ellen he didn't want to listen to you I can't people feel that way but Pramod I just could not hear Pramod so I don't know okay we'll figure out something hopefully you can hear this I'm hoping we won't have that issue with the speaker where the speaker is not able to hear as ask any questions it's like okay I don't know if this is an issue probably because Pramod and Ellen joined after I joined because of that or I don't know that was the pattern I was trying to see if Pramod was able to hear Ellen then it's not something that the person who joins after you is punished for joining later Doc you're able to hear everyone I'm able to hear everyone Pramod is able to hear everyone so this seems rather a minor thing that we'll have to deal with not something which is common I'm assuming I will figure it out the first webinar will tell us that I will just say I have yet to be on a seamless google hangout experience I've done it I'll say quite a few times and there's always a lot of can you hear me now so don't expect this technical perfection there's only so much you can get for free and the challenge is that when you pay you don't even get that so be happy with what we get alright I think we're running out of our time but thank you all for joining this call and helping us test this out and it was good to catch up with you guys see you face to face a little bit so that's cool good to meeting you all in February cool how's the weather in Chicago doc it's cold man's home sick I don't know why I'm missing the Chicago cold could be in Ottawa I can still use shots here so Pune is cold I heard it is it is but it's like 50 degrees cold which is right now in Chicago 50 degrees anybody will take it it was minus 39 Celsius in Ottawa at the beginning of the week minus 39 only if we can figure out a way to trade some weather the world would be a much happier place to live easy that's the thing we should be working on weathertrading.com through the conference I thought that's what global warming was all about warm everything up and then everybody will get the same weather global warming is about let's make the wetter place more wetter and the hotter places more hotter yeah cool all right have a good one thanks again for joining the call take care bye bye bye bye