 All right, everyone's awake. I hope you're not just awake but really charged up and motivated, right? Sustainability is such an important topic and I think it's a great practical introduction and potential opportunities for all of us to make a difference. So again, I want to thank Dr. Anita for such a wonderful talk and a brilliant start to the conference. I'm gonna take 20 minutes quickly run through some of the important things you need to know about the conference for the next three days so you get the most out of it, right? How many folks here just quick show of hand have been here before to any Agile India conference? Yeah, that's quite a lot, appreciate that. All right, so this is our 19th annual conference. We started back in 2005, been running the conference and some of you I can see have been around from the very beginning. So appreciate you continuing the long journey with us and you'd see that we've kind of suddenly been changing the positioning of this conference all along. This is no longer just about Agile methods. This is now more about product engineering and we've been kind of slowly, slowly shifting that the only thing we've not changed is the name of the conference. But, you know, and you'd see that in the program as we go through, you know, this is trying to be a little bit more encompassing. So that's just a little background about the conference itself. Started with the Agile Software Community of India which is a non-profit body we created when we started this conference. It's actually Manoj, myself and Owen Rogers, three of us kind of came together to put the first conference together. Both of them were not from India, they went back. I was the only one left behind to continue this. And we've done, you know, over 100 events now in different parts of India. And that's kind of been a pretty interesting journey for me. And the kind of people we've been able to touch over the years, I think it's about 14K plus, we've kind of touched over the years. So I want to, now you've been sitting for a while, so I want to do a quick exercise to just kind of get the energy up. So I want everyone to please stand up, right? Little bit of stretching. If you've traveled to the conference, five kilometers radius, then please sit down. Lucky ones. How about 15 kilometer radius? 15 kilometer radius, all right. How about 25 kilometers? Maybe 50, that should cover Bangalore. Anyone from Bangalore, 50 kilometers radius? All right, how about 200 kilometer radius that I think should touch pretty much the whole state? 500 kilometer radius? All the folks from Chennai sat down. All right, 1,000 kilometer radius? That should cover India? No, not really. 1,500, that should cover. All right. So the folks who are standing probably traveled overseas at this point to get to this conference. Cool, I appreciate all of you. Thank you. So we have 372 people attending this conference from 14 different countries listed over here. It's kind of the numbers have shrunk and that's been the general complaint from a lot of folks, but we kind of, like I was saying earlier, moved from, we just finished the conference last year, November, and we kind of had this conference in a very short duration because we wanted to get back to our original March schedule. Also, I think there is still a lot of concern around events, in-person events, but clearly you guys don't seem to be too concerned, so I appreciate that. Hopefully next year, that concern is going to reduce, but this is where we stand. So we've come down from 1500, which is usually what the strength of Agile India used to be to about almost one fourth of that, but hopefully you'll still be able to enjoy the conference. I just wanted to quickly call out the code of conduct. I think, I'm actually pretty proud that Agile India has been one conference where everyone feels at home, feels included, and it's a fairly wonderful crowd here, very open to meeting new people, welcoming them and being friendly with them, and I just want to appreciate that you continue keeping that spirit of the conference and making sure everyone feels welcomed and everyone feels comfortable at the conference here. Just give the speakers the hard time, but everybody else is okay, right? All right, so we kicked off the conference yesterday with some pre-conference workshops. I see a few folks who attended the pre-conference workshops yesterday, and then we're gonna have the next three days of the conference, and then we're gonna have post-conference workshops as well. So that's the overall agenda. Again, we shrunk from a seven-day conference to a five-day conference in terms of the size. So right after this, we're gonna take a quick coffee break, and then we're gonna have another keynote here in the same, and after that, which is after Beata's keynote, we're gonna have a lunch break, a little early lunch break because most of you have come in early, and then we're gonna get split into three halls, right? So where are the three halls, which is gonna be the most important question everyone will need to figure out, right? This is gonna be the hall number one, Grand Ball Room One, all right, this. So right there in the middle, there's gonna be dividers that are gonna come over, and that side is gonna become hall number two. So that's the track two, or Grand Ball Room Two. And then if you go out of the hall, turn to your left, in the corner you would see Jupiter, which is where you would see the third track. So we have basically three tracks at the conference, and I say I'll be lying if I said there are only three tracks. The most interesting track is right outside, which is the hallway track, right? Which is the fun track. So we have the four tracks. I hope by now you've figured out the lay of the floor. So there are restrooms right outside there, and then there are sponsor booths here, big area for us to just socialize and network with folks, and then the three tracks. Yeah, clear? Any questions around the layout? Also one big change in the schedule. Anyone knows what's the change that I'm talking about? For folks who've been to typical Agile India conference, there's one big change in the schedule we have done. It's an experiment. Every year we wanna run one experiment. We usually don't do keynotes back to back. We do one keynote in the morning, one keynote in the evening, and usually after this we would split into parallel tracks, but this time we thought we'll pack the morning with just keynotes in the morning, and then the rest of the day will be parallel tracks. It's an interesting thing because every time when we have to split the halls right after the keynote, we have a 15 minute break to do that, and 15 minutes to pull these dividers used to be great when this hotel was new, but as the hotel gets old, pulling the dividers becomes a challenge. So that's the change. There is this URL you would see, tinyurl.com slash Agile India, where you'd be able to see this view of the schedule on your phone. This is a mobile friendly view. Of course, when you look on the mobile, it's gonna be one below the other, the tracks. So I just request you to take a look at this URL, have it on your phone so that you have the sessions. The main reason for that would be, you see that little star with the chat icon, right? When you click on that, you'd be able to pop up the feedback thing, and we would really appreciate if after the sessions you can give the feedback. So it allows us to understand what worked, what did not work, and what we could improve in the program next year. So whenever you click on those little star things, something like this will pop up. The comments are optional, but I would encourage giving some comment because that generally is more descriptive than just the star rating. Can I expect this from everyone? Cool, thank you. Of course, this conference wouldn't be possible without the fantastic speakers that we have from 10 different countries coming over. And one of the things we try and make sure is we try and balance the program with different perspectives, with different people from different backgrounds. And we do try and look at diversity from different angles. So gender diversity is one important aspect, but also like experience versus first-time speakers, that's an important diversity as well that we try and maintain in this. All right, so please do thank the speakers for making this conference a great experience. Like I said, we have total 372 people registered at this conference, these where you can again go to Confinement and you'll see the roles of people and stuff like that. Something that I'm generally very interested is what's the kind of roles that we are attracting. I'm always fascinated with the slight variations of the roles people have to mean the same thing, but slightly different titles, and that screen looks filled up, which is good for us, but it's not really those many different unique roles. There is also a way to connect asynchronously with other attendees. So you could go to the website and just click on mingle and you'd be able to find the attendees and chat with them. This is again a good way to, if someone you know has come to the conference but you can't really physically spot them, then this would be a good way to connect with them. Lots of you showed up your hands saying you've been to the conference or you'd be familiar with the law of two feet. Yeah, I believe this is something we take pride in. This is important for us in terms of making sure that you understand the importance of the law of two feet, right? You've all invested your valuable time over the next three days to be with us, right? And we wanna make sure that you get the most out of it. How do we make sure that? Of course, we've tried our best to put a fantastic program together, but that's not sufficient because depending on what you might be expecting from one session, sometimes you may get a slightly different expectation from what you're getting, right? Don't worry about that. We appreciate if you can silently leave the session and go to the three other sessions. You have three other options, right? Two actual sessions and one hallway session. So you can find yourself, so the law of two feet is basically if you find yourself in a situation where you're neither adding value or getting value, then you can use the two feet and take yourself to a place where you would be able to do that, right? We don't provide feedback forms in your kits for a reason. There's no point at the end of it saying, oh, I didn't find this session useful, right? Time is done, like not much can be done. So it's better you have the option now to actually go to another session and get value. And again, I just want to reiterate that it's not disrespectful to leave this session in between. It's, of course, you want to make sure you don't disturb other people when you leave, but it's completely important that you take charge and get the most out of the conference. Everyone keeps asking, where can I find the videos? Will the sessions be recorded? There are three parallel tracks. I can't be in three places. Cloning is not yet possible, so don't worry, all the sessions will be recorded and they'll be available on our YouTube channel and you can watch them later. Of course, the in-person experience is not going to be the same as the video one, but at least you'd be able to catch up on the sessions later. So about a week or so from the conference, once the conference is over, the videos will start going up on our channel, right? I want to thank the wonderful sponsors we've had who's made this conference possible. So I want to call out Zoho, a big shout out to them for supporting the conference as a title sponsor. Lean Wisdom and ThoughtWorks, again, wonderful companies that have been, you know, part of this conference for many years. Again, thanks them and PM Power Consulting, folks from PM Power Consulting, appreciate your support. There's not a lot we do for sponsors. I don't know if you've seen that, but none of the sponsors get a keynote slot at the conference, right, which is very common. At least I've been told time and again that if I'm sponsoring, I need to make sure some person from my company is up on stage speaking. We are like, sorry, that's not our conference, right? So we actually don't do a lot for sponsors, I acknowledge that, but I'm really grateful to them because they continue to support us. They believe that, you know, the conference is a great community coming together and they want to support that. So, you know, I appreciate if you stop by their booths and meet them, they have some very interesting demos and stuff like that for you to kind of get to know what they are doing. Because that's the least I think we can do to, in return for their support to the conference. So, appreciate if you can meet the sponsors. I want to play a very interesting video from the founder of Zoho, it's a three minute video, I'm just going to quickly play that video. No, actually, audio, hang on. Is there a little audio or a distance? This one. If I played it from the HDMI, will it work? No, okay. It's a jail project matter, really. One thing that we say we joke about in Zoho is that we have never shipped any software product on time ever in our 20 year history. And the reason, of course, we don't ship anything on time is we don't actually set a particular time at which a particular product has to be ready. This is something that goes so much against the grain of what we all know as project management. It definitely bears some explaining. Let's step back. And when you think about project managers, what is the first analogy that comes to mind? Something like, let's keep the trains running on time. That's a very familiar analogy we all use. A train running on time goes on an already laid track where everything is predictable. Barring some unforeseen weather event or an accident somewhere, everything must be predictable on a track. But a software project is more like laying a new track through an unknown terrain. If you accept that analogy that software projects are like being in an unknown terrain, laying a track through an unknown terrain, what do you do? How do you actually keep those projects on track, so to speak? Well, you improvise, right? You make it up as you go. And that's actually there is a, there is this very familiar to us Indians. We have this word jugad. How many of you have heard this jugad, this term jugad? And the definition in Wikipedia I would say it's basically improvising or coming up with a solution to a problem using in a low cost way, using available materials, all of that, that jugad. Basically you improvise with what you have at hand. That's what you do in reality in software projects. You keep improvising. And interestingly, we look at agile project management as a formalization of that jugad, as a way to come up with a formal ways of recognizing this improvisation process. And if you look at Indian classical music, Indian dance, all of them have that strong element of improvisation in them. So jugad is something that is woven into the fabric of Indian culture, so to speak. To a very large extent, even our formal things, our formal music has that essential element of improvisation in it. And that's exactly how we marry that whole formal stuff that you track with the improvisational ways that we work together in order to achieve our objectives. Would you agree to this view of agile? Lot of Indians are like, yes, this is jugad. This is close to us. But this guy is not trying to pitch agile methods. He's not trying to sell agile method. He's saying this is what in reality for us, when we're building products and they build a lot of products, I'm sure you guys are familiar with Zoho suite of products, they experience that the analogy is a little flawed. And you wanna look at a different analogy and that kind of makes sense. And then you gear everyone towards that analogy of how to build products. So I found this interesting and I thought I'll quickly play this video. Now quickly just wanna thank the core team behind the conference. I think John is here. Natasha is still managing the booths outside. Jaydeep and Vikram are making sure all the logistics are running together. And I wanna thank all the volunteers who are here to make sure that everything runs smoothly. So appreciate all the volunteers. If you can just quickly stand up so people can see you. Make sure you see these guys carefully. If you have any problems, it's their fault. All right, thanks folks for coming together and helping us as volunteers. And that's it, I'm gonna shut up. I'm happy to take any questions, but I thought that was some important things that you need to know before we kind of get rolling. Any questions for me? Thank you. All right, no questions? Could we have all the speakers on stage for a quick photo? Maybe, you know, as speakers start rolling out, we may not be able to get. So we could take a quick one minute for a photo. Can I request all the speakers to please come on stage? We may still not have everybody, but I think it's a good, we can squish together. I mean, some of us can come in the front. That's too much of exercise. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for traveling all the way to the conference. Appreciate that. Organizing a conference probably is one of the most agile things you'd ever do. We've had two speakers who had issues with the flights. Someone had issues with the visa. Someone had some other issues. Just trying to keep everything going so that they can be here on time for this session. It's not like, hey, you couldn't make it. That's fine. We will, you know, do your talk next week. Doesn't work that way, right? So it's kind of interesting putting the conference together. So if you're interested in volunteering and seeing some of these things behind the scenes, every year when we announce the conference, we announce a call for program committee members. This year, you would see we don't really have a program committee because this is pretty much all done behind the scenes. But generally, the way Agile India has been running is we do a call for proposals and people submit their proposals. There's a program committee that selects the proposals and then we put the conference together. This time, we didn't have enough time to do justice to that. So we went with most speakers who have spoken in the past and a few speakers who have not spoken and the first time speakers to try and bring them in. But otherwise, generally, you would have a call for program committee and then we take people. And similarly, we have a call for volunteers who come and help us with the event. So if you're interested, watch out for the next year's announcements and you can apply for that.