 They come grab a chair one of you will leave the fishbowl leaving one chair empty for another one For someone else to come in right and we're gonna try and seed it with different topics So we're gonna go through a bunch of different topics and just get a good feel for what people think Fair enough All right, what's the first topic? So I want to seed this topic which has been in the conference theme for a while Scrum certifications is killing agile So I want people to express the views Yes, I'm I'm anti certified anti certification for anything. So I truly believe some certification has Contributed much more to the degradation of agile than to While in some sense it might get started off, but it is too simplistic to start but then we drown So do I want to give? That sense of comfort to people to start that to say that, you know, it's fairly simple But then not achieve your goals and after that commit suicide It's as simple as that. So people are Going on the verge of committing suicide in a jail without knowing before knowing So my last previous talk was about not necessarily just around scum certification But about the over focus on processes without thinking about how a particular process or a tech or a technique Adds to the business world and I and I worry that you know certifications sort of Cement this further this over focus on process without seeing how a particular process. It's the larger Well, definitely in our community we are well used these certifications And really we know that if you want to get a lot of these certifications You could get it in in year or two just have some some money and sometime but So first, I think we should think about don't create the value of this certification Much as possible, but also we should think about providing some knowledge If we just cancel all these certification programs Guess it's it's important because we still see that people don't understand what agile means. I wish I did Then probably I wouldn't have needed all these education and qualification that we are talking about and do two to two days and Probably hundreds or hundred certifications and then they aggregate them to one whole value. No, I cannot What is the value is there is that anybody here also who feel that there is there is value in the certification and You know that it's not we shouldn't just take it up Everybody has a differing opinion Apart from getting certifications We have to that is a basic knowledge what we can get it Though it is a two-day or one-day or one-day training or a one-week training But the basic concepts if at all we can get it We that's we can get it from those certifications, but apart from that what we practice So that it's all matters how we can we can practice those concepts. So that really matters I totally agree with that so long as it is body of knowledge, but then why do you need a certificate? I Need a certificate because I want to showcase it somewhere. I Make a poster out of it or a placard out of it, but what's the value of that if you remove that element? I would say probably 110 or 99 percent of them will not go and buy that placard The point is that there is a superficial element created in it and it is posturing Certain amount of commercial mechanism to it and people value that to some degree and that value is incorrect in I mean both ethically and also on a commercial line. Why do we want? Yeah, I disagree with this point that Certifications are downright bad It's very easy for us to say what is wrong With what is there? It's very easy for us to find out various pitfalls which are there no doubt, but Not having it is not the solution. You know, we need to improve. So just like any other Profession this is a profession and we need to take it forward and Certification is at least to some extent. There's something that a Company such as you know who wants to start practicing agile. They've heard about it. There's something that they can do There's something tangible By not having it they'll be void. So there needs to be something that needs to be Maybe a more Deeper professional two-year or four-year degree course or whatever or maybe, you know Just like a chartered accountant or a doctor you might have people practicing with the agile Practitioner for years before they get certified, but just not having anything is not a solution No, it was an interesting story last year. I Needed an agile coach to hire. So I've done a lot of interviews with a lot of people with a lot of Certifications and in the end I hired person about certifications at the hotel absolutely The case the case was that so he had no time to get these certifications, but he had really extremely high knowledge experience So I think again that that's that's a very clear illustration of what's happening So one thing I tell people that are thinking do I get this certification or not is It's one of it is completely practical There are a lot of organizations and companies and if you want to do business with them They it's a language they speak right and the language they speak is certifications And it's just a choice if you want to do business with them Go get the certification and get it done So so you can do business with them and speak their language and then just let it go Don't think it's going to qualify you, but it's just very practical. It's very utilitarian I just need to do business with them and that's you speak the language I'm going to be certified. So then you're going to size me up a certain way and we can talk then and it's it in I don't like it anymore anybody, but that's it's just the fact if you want to do business The other thing is there's certain like I'm working on a certain certification now. I am in the process of becoming If I pass through a certified scrum coach, right and I'm just doing this completely for me Right, this is completely for me if because it's a really rigorous process through people peers I really trust it's not going to make me more marketable. I was just thinking it's kind of funny, but it's the truth Any star that's Star Trek fans in here? Okay, this is totally this one star threat Okay, start Star Trek fans. This is like go becoming a CSC is like running through the gauntlet of Klingon Peyton sticks That's not going to make sense if you're the Star Trek fan, but it's like the ultimate test, right? You're you're these these people you trust are throwing this stuff at you and when I get done done and through it Like it's going to feel great. Is it going to be make me more valuable or smarter than anybody else or you know? Is it going to is it going to gain but I would have gone through and given myself this test and that's that's it's one kind Of certification that's valuable to me Just just for having gone through the experience So I'd counter that to me I would I would make a very strong statement and say certificates certification is like tissue paper and Why I say that? The reason is very I mean I would like to make a very clear distinction between the claims made on the resume for graduation like What does it really mean when I look at the resume and say he has graduated and done master's or whatever it just is Indication of sincerity of the person pursuing that degree Beyond that How much the depth of the knowledge that the person is acquired is to be tested when the candidate comes in With regards to certification If you just have to leave it at that point that the candidate knows something but the depth of it cannot be assessed So that's why you know I say that that's what I I'm coming in just a little bit late, but I just wanted to rant for a minute Years ago. I At a conference there was a panel discussion a debate on certification and no one There was a you had to be for or against and the people who were going to be for Certifications didn't show up only one person showed up so somebody said Jeff will you be on the four certification? I can debate anything I can argue for it. So I'll sit on there and I managed to convince myself. It was a good idea So Given that the first certification I ever received was when I was 15 years old I had to get a food handler's permit So that I could work in a restaurant which taught me to wash my hands after going to the bathroom It didn't mean that I was going to work in the restaurant and be able to be the lead chef or be good at it I just Knew to wash my hands if I peed on them in the bathroom and and that was about it I you know learning scrum in a two-day class is kind of like learning to swim from a PowerPoint deck no one thinks you can survive in a pool and I The only thing I think look there is a huge demand for just basic agile training And I think the scrum certifications fulfill that demand I wish any other organization would have picked up and fulfilled the demand and maybe a more neutral way But no one else has in a strong a way as they have So that's good. Everybody gets basic certification and I worry that sometimes That we think the the employers that we think employers or people are stupid. I guess I don't think Does anybody think that employers who hire people that with scrum master master certification think that they're hiring You know super confident people do they think that? Oh my gosh, they've had this two-day class So these are these are much better people than other people It I don't think so. I don't think we give employers enough credit I don't think that they see the certification and think oh, these are more confident people It's just a beginner class. It's two days worth of instruction. Give so gives you a basic vocabulary I don't think anybody thinks it's you know any more valuable than the food handlers permit. I got when I was 15 But if I don't if I can interrupt you say what would you call a graduate of the training class? Because there's another word we have for certification like that's a bigger problem That's a bigger like I'll give you a gold star on your head. Would that be enough or is it? wouldn't work in India Right, you know the reason with With the agile the kind of the what we are trying to bring in is the mindset change with the behavioral change and the certification Accrediting that whether the mindset has been changed. It's really tough So I don't think so that certificates are going to add any value whatever we talk about until unless you are actually practicing I In my opinion It seems to achieve some where we need to learn fast where we need to get it back faster agile is the reason achieve some Whether you call us a child or the busy within that time The word is such a big deal about that Why are you making such a big deal about that? Like I don't get it, right? We're talking so much about agile, agile, agile. It's been four days Yet we struggle to define what agile is How it's different from what we were doing before I mean pretty much every perspective that was brought out of the table was shot down saying Is that unique to agile and the speaker said no Is this unique to agile and the speaker said no So I'm really curious now that what is that Why is there such a big deal about it? Should we just kill it? It's a word In themselves it actually has no meaning beyond that to forgive it So should we kill it? No Because it has meaning because we give it that meaning But at the same time agile isn't especially your right There are other processes and frameworks that do the same sort of thing that happened in the long decade really If you look at the adoption of agile across the world We've been one, we're no longer the kippies and youngs wearing sandals and beers talking about this new fancy way of working We are the establishment We're no longer the outsider So maybe there is a point to be said that this component, this component I like But other agile conferences this whole idea of community around something that is the establishment Maybe there is a point to be made that we've won so what's next? Actually maybe that's the question Why not should we get rid of agile? What's next? So I think it was Anton Cheko that said that happy families are all alike but unhappy families are all unhappy in a different way And I want to take that metaphor to talk about and say that why do we never ask about the same thing for waterfall Not a single process document has ever been written to codify a waterfall and yet we all uniquely berate waterfall without any standard But yet, and for agile we have like probably four dozen different standards at the last count and yet we still continue to have the problem I think the way to define agile is to burn down all the standards and say this is agile and let's accept it that it does not have to be bottled inside single person's opinion and it's just a state of mind that's what it really is at the end of the day Unchain it from the shackles of process, tools, vocabulary, terminologies, roles, artifacts and what have you You said state of mind It's a state of mind So what's that state of mind? It's a state of mind that says how do we go about solving the problems in a way that allows me to metaphorically and literally represent the meaning of English word agile, because that's what we have embraced We didn't use the word stone, right? It's like De Bono's word of water logic I find water logic versus rock logic as a metaphor Go back to the state of mind So how do you list, how do you characterize that state of mind? I think it's like the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder It's the guy, if I know how I'm solving the problem Wait, wait, wait, beauty can't be in the body of the beholder I don't think I need to How do you know that person is agile? Can you figure it out? I think that's the point here Lance I'm saying that we don't have to be apologetic or defensive about telling someone else that all teams are agile but some teams are more agile than others We don't need to get into that state of agility But there's a state of mind and there's some people in the state and some people that aren't, right? So let's look at it this way, if I'm a six year old child and I've just started to learn to kind of get to and start running faster would I be any less agile than Usain Bolt? By the dictionary you could go with physical agility No, I think I would reserve the right to be agile and not being compared to an Usain Bolt who can run in 9.8 seconds The point is I am agile compared to what I was yesterday and that's what to me is the end of the day So comparatively agile Thank you One of the things that I found when I meet people is I can find out, I have this feeling like wow, this person would be great to work with because they have this, I think you said it state of mind and a lot of the people after some conversation you find out you share some background and history on how you develop software together and you find out maybe they've been doing XP maybe they've been doing Scrum maybe they've been doing Kanban, something different So I'll go ahead and jump in and say here's how I define agile and actually it isn't me, it's those people that put together that document in the past, the agile manifesto To me that's the that to me is the closest documentation of the state of mind that you're talking about So I actually wasn't trying to create a disagreement or anything, but I was interested in seeing how you would define the state of mind and see if it would lead us to that That's what I do, so I talk about the agile manifesto I was really wondering I don't know whether we had waterfall coaches Why do we need agile coaches I don't understand So if it is a state of mind and it's so natural to be Right I never know whether it is a waterfall conference There have been some software engineering conferences I never come across one, I don't know It would be information for me if I heard a waterfall conference So it's been all done for some sense of economy Like any other religion It's a religion now, more than anything else I'm very much pro agile and since there was no waterfall coaches that's why there are agile coaches If there would have been like there was waterfall coaches then there will not be any problem and we will not hear as the agile coach I'm very much pro agile Agile is a treatment what I think it is Because we all have all the companies is having diseases and agile is a kind of treatment and whether you are going to solve that disease with medicine like Kanra, medicine like Scrum medicine like DSDM it depends upon the doctor who is taking that treatment Is it fair to say that agile is required for dysfunctional teams and good teams don't need agile? No, I always believe in there to cure disease I mean that metaphor breaks down very badly What I feel is if your company is doing waterfall and they are doing the delivery, they are happy their customers are happy Why do you need agile? At that time you don't need agile because you are happy with your that model but why agile comes into the picture because when you have some problem and the word agile the first round I heard being agile word agile is a noun agile is an adjective agile is like it depends how you put it into the sentence it gets its beauty when you put that agile word as an adjective in the sentence and that's my point that's why I put my company name agile plus You know I really don't know why we are arguing so much and so intensive about this thing because for me it's quite obvious how to define IOT agile or not so I've done a very simple exercise a lot of times I just put all values and principles paper grab the team ask them to put green stickers if they think that they are doing that's something that correlates these principles and values and red stickers that something is not correlates and strange but after this exercise some teams were happy after leaving the meeting room and some not and it was obvious do they agile or not they are awful coaches but we always had CMM consultants and we always had RUP consultants I think to me agile is actually you know it's not a state but it's a behavior it's a movement and probably one thing which is really unique about this whole agility is in this conference itself you know you can see that people are really killing their own so called agile practice they are constantly questioning you know whether is this really working and killing it and kind of improving it or sort of innovating it that's really the cool thing about this movement and I think that is what binds us all thank you so for me more than practices agile is more about being and the passion we all carry of that state of being healthy everybody may have different idea about their health and them being healthy I think the passion everyone of us today being Saturday 6 p.m. we all are in the room that's a passion for agile I think and maybe round of applause for all of you guys for being here on Saturday 6 p.m. so it's not about the question about whether we believe in agile or not I think the discussion is about how we consider when we want to improve our agility so there are different ways and means to be there practices processes may come and go your team might adapt a practice today and tomorrow they may find practice be better than a for their context this will keep changing being agile way of being I think that's a philosophy in that role I think I would like to speak being a pro agile and I would like to define in a single line it's a very effective software methodology which can become very fragile if people don't take it in the right frame of mind alright so I'm glad this question came up about what the word is because it's something that I think in the people in India can actually answer better than the place where the word originated from because somebody said what's agile and it's this English word and English is a horrible language for this kind of thing it's the language of politicians combined with this western need to understand and dissect and be able to understand things rationally and we're sitting here in the land if you allow me to get mystical for a bit we're the land where God appears and hundreds of thousands of farms I go down I've traveled to this mountain in Tamil Nadu called Arunachala it's a holy mountain at some point Swamiji went and he said he documented over 100,000 places where you could get Darshan from the mountain and each one would have a different effect I don't see anybody going down there and getting certified whether the Darshan was appropriate in another 100,000 places okay because it just is I go there and I'm in the flow of people so this is kind of where I really look to the answer from here be with you have such a way in India living with chaos and ambiguity and not needing to know agile we have this certification there's so much it's been such a blessing to be here in the last year that there's so much you can bring to the world especially because there's so many software developers here and more and more and more and there's a lot you can bring to the world on this well thank you for this perspective I will just request everyone to think from one different perspective being from psychology background as I'm hearing this terminology since last 4 days agile is a mindset it is there to increase visibility so do you mean the visibility we're not there in protocol some but the degree nobody knows and when you implement agile what's the degree okay it is it depends on the conditions it's not standard all together but let's take a step back and think about mindset which means a very big word do we understand it what is mind when we think okay you know what mind has different categories it is conscious subconscious unconscious conscious is 10% which you can correlate by just focusing on words because you can focus on words consciously but subconscious excuse me if it is something subconscious how you can control it consciously subconscious forget about it nobody knows it nobody is trying to still figuring it out but still it's the whole mind set a set of conscious subconscious and unconscious are super conscious alright now about individual mindset of all these 3 dimensions when people try to see how they are they look in the mirror and this here you know what this is my reflection of physical appearance conscious things and I can control it subconsciously subconscious I still need someone else to tell me how am I maybe some mentor guru coach when we have a team working towards a common goal with individual mind with 3 different dimension and obviously it becomes very complex and chaotic that's where chaotic theory comes from to reflect upon the actions of a team as an organization as an individual and that's why we need coach to have neutral reflection and visibility and let the individual decide what they need to do and that's why it is facilitation and that's why we call that's why we have books like skill facilitator or team builder who does not guide it they just help in reflections so this is just one perspective and it's like oh you tell me how mango tastes oh how mango tastes okay how about having mango lassi how about having mango milkshake how about having mango how about having Alpenso or some other varieties alright so it's just a perspective that's it I'll answer shortly by this so first thing is Ajayle is for me a collection of good people so they want to help everybody else in the world and without asking for too much of price so I like this to be continued without asking the good people will keep doing what they feel is relevant for the rest of the world they feel they have the awareness to help everybody in the world with whatever knowledge they have and that's why they are good and I'll again close it by saying Ajayle is nothing but for me a good people and as Snowdown said so it's a willing to learn a new language somebody willing to have adapt I hope that will answer the next question I'm actually up here for 30 seconds because I'd like to hear from people who aren't speakers some of the attendees are feeling a little bit brave because it's actually not that scary come up and answer the question so sorry my voice is really too high so this is the first time I'm coming to this conference I heard about it somewhere about November December I started following it basically enrolled it pretty late but at the same time something that struck me is that it's been growing over the years and something that I would like to see next year I'm definitely coming next year so I'm new to Ajayle I'm just getting to know it and getting to see it and feel it and we just started this Ajayle methodology so next year probably I want to see more beginners come in and share whether it worked whether it didn't work and why it didn't work and how we can improve it more and probably more of sessions like this where people who are really well versed in it can suggest how this can improve more question answer is kind of a discussionist session rather than just having people talk and people listen like people said it's a mindset and the way people comprehend is different so basically question answer to your question how we can improve it will also be the same so every year if we do have more sessions where people describe what they understood out of the sessions would improve understanding Ajayle more for me this is the first time taking part it was really great and I like the last section basically where we have this discussion I think this is what is bringing it lively and going one more step ahead what I want is not for the next year already if you have some sort of a community where we have a lot of great people coming in here and there are a lot of people coming in for the first time for them to reach out understand the content and something new that's happening in the community we should keep this community alive and for us to go back and keep checking on what is happening around I think that is something that I would look forward for and if we can incorporate this information well in advance for participants to come in I think we have speakers introduction sessions but little more on the community if you have a global community for example I don't know where do we find more information on these topics because there were a lot of sessions and I'm pretty interested to attend many of them if I get to know little more on few of this topic that will be really great I believe sorry so I'm going to end this session for the very first time so but I'm not new to agile I mean I'm following various projects on agile and done it for over five years it's pretty interesting to see the views out here because I started with normal SDSD model and I believe a lot of projects using normal waterfall model as well so some of the things that have been said quite contradicts in the last 14 years to be honest in last 14 years I delivered around 10 projects overall 7 of them were waterfall at that point and I can't recollect any failures then we moved into the agile light in 2007 somewhere I delivered 3 projects one of them I can say it's a bit of a failure 2 or not if you just go by data right it's not about I mean for me practically speaking I know a lot of people have said a lot of different things possibly very good things but as per data what I believe is at the end of the day it's a team which matters more and then you supplement that team with the right practices to be successful what I would like to see here next time around probably is to have some real data in terms of where even after applying agile certain things have failed because you know throughout this you know sessions we talked about a lot of good things in agile and obviously there are that's why we are all here but you know anything will have the other side as well and I mean if you bring that other side it will probably help all of us right and not to repeat the same mistakes so that's only feedback this is Venkat from Fidelity Investments and I'm also coming taking part in the conference for the first time probably if you ask me that what would be better for the next year conference I would say we need a use cases based material like you know whether agile sucked their project screwed up their project or what was the positivity on that particular when they had this particular method very very important I think whenever we have speakers coming in and giving a presentation everybody talks very highly about agile nobody says that it's true I think but at the same time the question came when we had the session saying there why agile if agile was not there I think the question should have been asked so I would think that when you bring in the different perspectives specifically projects specific to you know by applying agile practices what made project more better or you know were they able to create innovative products and you know things like that at the same time the negative aspect as well if we could you know give it in a proper bucket I think it makes more sense Hi this is Ganesh again from Fidelity what I would like to have bring back one of the good things that we had been doing this is the third time I'm coming over here we used to have I think a couple of years ago we used to have ad hoc sessions that actually participants can actually put together can have 15 minutes 20 minute sessions on the breakout area and they can bring up any question that they have in mind or any practical problems that they have have a small discussion and get things answered or share their ideas if they are doing something good so that that's something that I missed this time I would like that to come back so like him it's the third year as well so I've been coming here for like three years now so I just believe that agile is doing just do it and then just go on with it so if you ask me personally one thing I would like to see in the conferences more deliberate practice I mean a lot of practice and a lot of workshops where I'll do something and learn something I mean personally I'm not a great fan of talks it's good it's good to hear but I feel that I can actually read the PPT also I would really like to do something with learnings but mostly workshops and deliberate practice sessions that's what I look at Hi I'm Lakshmikant I've been coming here since 2007 since Naresh introduced me to agile it was the first session when he introduced me and I then had a war within myself whether I should do agile or whether I should follow the SDLC method the only way I could overcome it was I found in a report by the person who got the waterfall method I read through the report and where he himself mentioned that you know it's not good for large projects so that's when I decided that okay wherever I can I would scrap that and I'll go for one of the agile methods but that case maybe so since then I've been following agile methods maybe discreetly in my projects so one of the things that I would really love to happen in future is that this conference is spread more towards students where they are actually looking where they can learn more about agility before they come on to the job it becomes valuable for them and also have more workshop for people who are already knowing most of the stuff they can have an experience report and they can attend more on engineering practices which are really hands-on so that would add more value to all kind of audience and I want to say one thing Naresh you've been organizing excellent conferences since last so many years thank you so much so I'm going to try and ask what I want next here people have said all of these things now who brings these things to the conference should I bring them, should TV bring them, should Ravi bring them we have an open submission system if you want to talk about a failure study please come and present we never rejected a proposal which talked about a failure study in fact I remember the first year you put in a proposal it was about a project failure and it was readily accepted we said we want more of this we don't want agile dogma there are n number of projects failing miserably because of badly implemented agile I'll use that word whatever it means I still don't know so turning the question back or rather answering my own question what do I want next year at the conference I want more submissions from people who are real practitioners I think we need to cut down on the consultants we've had an over dosage of consultants selling snake oils trying to say how wonderful this is but the problem is I could say whatever I want at the end of the day we need proposals coming in or where do we get the speakers from so turning the question back to you guys few other things I heard we want more of open space kind of sessions last year there were last year we had few open space sessions before that we had few open space sessions and I think we had most of them with four or five people is it justifiable to have a hall left open to four or five people so those are some of the hard questions we have to deal with while we want more participation it is not we stopping it is what we see and we reacting to it so let TVs jump in I agree with you Naresh and I just want to chime in that we actually would be more than happy to hear about honest confessions of people what they tried and what didn't work out for them we literally beg and plead all of you to actually tell people to come with those stories because that is what I think is the real value there I even want to make one more proposal and I just want to request all of you for a quick show of hands would that format be good just taking a segue from what you said about the consultants speak so I think as a practitioner I would like to see a talk in which there is no power point there is only a white board and people actually come and talk whether it worked for them or not because when you take away the whole power point equation people are suddenly more honest about what they want to communicate so I just want a quick show of hands do you think that kind of a session would be good I mean I would be a big fan of such a session keep your hands up how many of you are willing to put a proposal it is on camera again thanks all of you we look forward to getting your proposal on camera we will really look forward for those proposals how to go about submitting the proposals so basically if you ever attended a conference since 2005 you get spammed by me rule number one every time we run a conference we send out an email to all the participants who attended in the previous year saying hey registrations open call for proposal open whatever right there is a link which you can go in create your profile and submit a proposal it is people have said it is good it is bad the submission system some don't like it but we have one and it is transparent it is open it is basically anyone and everyone can go put in a proposal there are no limitations each person gets three proposals gets to put three proposals we limit each person to put three proposals because we don't want me just hogging the program so we try to limit three proposals and there is an open voting so people can vote for the session I know 100% of those are gamed which is fantastic we don't look at just those numbers I think we have grown a little smarter than that but what we look at is that topic of interest to people you can go and vote for a topic saying this is of interest that does not mean that particular proposal will get selected it just gives us an feedback in terms of ok these topics are interesting and then there are comments people can leave on the proposal asking for clarification asking for start a dialogue over there right so learning can start even before you come to the conference it will help the speakers refine the proposal because they will understand ok this is the kind of stuff people are looking for so let me refine the proposal to suit that right and so when we started this year I can talk about some massive failures we had in this year's conference I think this was one of the worst conferences we've run since we started in 2005 last year we had a committee we had a fairly big size committee which ran the conference so we had a lot of people selected beforehand and that committee was assigned to different stages and they would select proposals give feedback I think in the end maybe 6 or 7 people ended up working out of the 30 people so that was very frustrating everyone wants their name up there but very little contribution so this year we took opposite stand and we said let's experiment let's try by not selecting a committee so there is no committee to start with right there is a submission system people can go put in proposal and then if you think you can help the speaker improve the proposal by giving feedback you start getting points as you do that and then you have a leader board so people who have given more feedback start showing up and then we started approaching those people saying hey you've helped so can you come be part of the committee because you actually see you actually contributing right and we see that you're doing good feedback to speakers this was the idea which failed miserably I don't think we really had many contribution in the end we basically piggy banked on the 6-7 people that helped us last year and somehow we barely managed to put the program together this I think we put the program together about a month ago the final program was announced a month ago and a lot of it was to do with lack of support right we didn't have enough support to be able to review the proposals to go through that and it's just a lot of work I don't know if you guys have run conferences but the amount of work that needs to go in to select a speaker it's tremendous amount of work and we need to do that right so I know I'm complaining and rambling but while we all want this conference to get better I think we all can pitch in and do a little bit to make this better I mean we're not saying put your money in and if there are losses you take the loss right we're not asking for that we're saying put a little time to basically give feedback put your own proposal eat your own dog food we all put our proposal because we want to eat our own dog food we want to see what kind of feedback actually we are getting some people completely detail you on the proposal system right and we have to keep those things in check but anyway there's a lot of stuff going on and you know I'm sure all of you want to help it's maybe failure on our part not to be clear in terms of how you can help right so we'll try and communicate those there are blogs that we have written in terms of how you can help maybe we'll try and point more and more people to those blogs to help help us run this conference in future sorry I don't want something from the next conference but I want something from these that now they will help the next one so we will have some kind of a feedback form system or something like this because now just a few of us really speaking here and maybe we will just put our voices over at the others so I think it would be interesting to keep going so I take an extreme stand on that and by all means I'm ready to be proven wrong but I think feedback is bullshit I take an extreme stand on that why I make that statement is that you know if you're not in the context and you want to give feedback I think it doesn't mean much right you have to be in the context to give feedback when I came I said oh the AC was not good or I didn't have a chair to sit we see that we know that I don't need feedback on that right or we don't need feedback on that this speaker was not good inevitably we get that feedback but we ran some experiments we want to give opportunity to new speakers to come and present it's okay if some speakers did not present well right the projector did not show up I mean we get all of those kind of feedback let me correct myself one more thing majority of the speakers who spoke this year might not come back next year that's a trend we have seen over the years right so it really helps very little to say that this speaker was not good the speaker was good also just because the speaker was not good last year does that mean that speaker did not improve and is not going to be good this year I don't think that judgmental so there's lot more aspect to feedback and it has to be contextual which is why we keep requesting that if you have some feedback come talk to us we'll try and give you some context around why certain things are done so what I'm trying to say is the extreme stand we have taken is we're not going to send a form and ask people to fill things because monkey is now on someone else's back and that doesn't really help okay so let me quickly correct myself how about not to send a feedback form how about to send a put you one from next conference isn't that what this is because you already asked this question how about sending what do we want from next year right actually you like it or not people will send that email when I go back home tonight I will have about 500-600 emails in the inbox saying we want this we want this this speaker this speaker did this and you do get that feedback right so I don't know if you need the formality around what we want is people taking ownership of this conference this is not my conference or TV's conference or X person's conference this is our conference right if we are not taking that ownership it's not going to help it's not going to move this conference forward that helps right so next year what do we want I think we all will define that collectively is what my wish is yeah this is Basu Basu Chanshekar yeah this time in fact this is the first time this conference I had today all the sessions were also good I also like to just give a suggestion from next year if possible so if we can work on year on year a vision based conference so that people who are all attendees maybe considering the audiences like you know they are very first time to agile world itself or some of the repetitive ones all the speakers are also good so if we can work on let's say 3 to 5 take a ways from a specific conference on this year so that will help us to focus from the talks perspective or the topics which the speakers will pick it up and even for you guys also will organizing to focus on those kind of talks would be definitely helpful like this so just in November we did a conference in Pune and we had a specific theme for the conference we got two proposals that fitted the theme and 180 proposals that didn't fit the theme what do we do so in fact you know as we are running this conference for 4 to 5 days or a 1 week like this one so we will see the difference from last year to this year so what was the improvement what was there last year and what is there here so what is improved on this agile area so those are the interesting topics which people would like to know so which is already covered last year so the difference has to be there from last year to this year which is an improvement area so that's what I would like to see as this is what the difference and in a good way we are progressing towards that one so we are trying to cover up the areas which are not covered last year and people also would like to take okay last year it wasn't there and this year I learned something people have to feel proud of attending this one of course now also it is there but a punching 5 to 10 take a ways to be a vision based or a focus based would help us I think that I want to just tell a volunteering story right I've been part of these communities from last 10 odd years this kind of satisfaction this gives to talk to just to sell about volunteerism it's all about the kind of learning the kind of sharing the kind of satisfaction we get and it's important in any community yes of course we are coming here to learn something but we need to put something on the table first then we can start getting so the putting something on the table is what is all about your time it could be your effort it could be your contacts it could be your whatever that you can put on the table right so then it could be a meaningful thing for us to withdraw so I invite all of you the kind of confidence which it gave to me because I associated this forum I don't do agile as something very special so I practice agile in my projects in whatever I do but the kind of satisfaction we get when we go home by talking to so many people and by doing at least spending an hour in a Sunday that is tremendous that's what I want to experience as a speaker I would like to know the feedback for myself right I have to improve for the next year I need to understand where did I do well where did I not do well so that's what I would like to improve the thing is that would people give you that feedback I can share you some feedback from past which we have done and the speakers almost discard that feedback saying it's useless so we've done a bunch of these and then we've kind of thrown away so if there's a better format to do it we are absolutely willing to try that I've so just to give you an example I've had people talk about okay what about at the end of the session we do red green kind of signals and it's like fantastic great idea now I had 20 reds and 30 greens what do I do with that just yeah just red green is not going to help me I need to understand the context so at least they can go back to the conference engine and they can put the replies in there indicating what are they felt about it I think that would at least help me the text would help me the problem with that sort of feedback is it's too late if they're not giving it to you straight away it's a feedback based on a memory based on a conference based on 20 other talks so it is not actually going to be overly valuable and 9 times out of 10 it's just going to be platitudes honestly the best way as a speaker to get feedback is to talk to people after the talk and just be open honest and say hey that was the first time I did that presentation can you give me some honest feedback did I do well is there something I could do better did you like it did you not like it just talk to people and you might only get 5 or 6 comments back from people you spoke to but they're going to be a lot more valuable and we'll be able to actually use them next time have you done in the past or considered doing a group retrospective on the conference at the end of the conference but to do it in a structured manner to say this is what specifically went well what did not go as well what we're going to take away collected all of that feedback we went through the retrospective the next year was a new set of people right so basically the continuation was very hard here maybe it's slightly different because year or not year we're seeing more or less the same people and even without doing the retrospective most of those points are there in our head anyway a lot of things go out of our control which cannot be done anything like the door was not closing how would a retrospective help me next year I mean we've done this but it's not helped basically I agree with Naresh point I just did my first conference last year just wanted to share from retrospective I had a thumbs up and a thumbs down I'm sharing a real story when companies come I come from Delhi so I was just propagating there and I totally agree after facing it there are groups of people who come to facilitate their speakers it happens and we got thumbs down for very good speakers and we were very embarrassed it was a state where the speaker had spoken very well however there were a group of people who just because if they represent some organization it happens so it could be a risky affair from a conference perspective and it could be very dangerous also the second thing would I would like to say let's not give ownership to Naresh or the team I think it's very important for each one of us I mean the person who does it and takes accountability cannot sleep all night it's very very tough so let's appreciate the fact any problem which happens is because of all of us anything which good is happening is because of all of us it's like an open space mechanism so we should not say this is us all of us are a part of here if you don't see something is not happening come here and contribute that is the way it should happen second thing I think what we can do rather than speaking more about it because some people are not able to speak properly you can have different charts attached in different areas right on the info and something but let's again not be so descriptive there because people are too smart these days I have seen groups who behave very differently and it really embarrasses so as a speaker in response to Ashish's question I think we already have a feedback mechanism in form of twitter screen so I think that's a wonderful tool already if somebody tweets you already know if it doesn't it's like the conference engine voting mechanism right and of course you have the lobby talks