Agile Scotland

Clarke Ching here, typing from Scotland.

I run the Agile Scotland special interest group.  We meet in Edinburgh once each month and generally we get a good turnout  – between 10 and 30 people attend each evening.  We have had a number of well known and respected Agile speakers over the last few years – David Anderson, Mary and Tom Poppendieck, Tim Bacon, Rachel Davies, Martin Fowler, Charlie Poole, Ken Schwaber to name just a few – plus we’ve had a good number of excellent presentations from the locals input.  I happily admit that I’ve enjoyed and learnt from every single AgileScotland event that I’ve attended.

My objectives with the group are to (a) build a community of agile practitioners in Scotland (b) spread knowledge within the community and (c) spread the word about Agile within Scotland. 

But currently I have two problems with running AgileScotland:

1. Although it hasn’t happened yet, I’m concerned that one day I’ll run out of ideas for new sessions.  We are starting to recover topics that we’ve already covered – for instance, we’ve just had our 2nd DSDM session in 3 years and we’ve had a few TDD demonstrations – but thats not really bothering me.  But, I would like to maybe consider different topics, different formats, … but it’s a little nerve racking experimenting like this.
2. I’m failing on my third objective – to spread the agile word.  We get a few new faces each month but … not many.  I also get a bit of interest from newbies (strangely, most of them work for my former employer) but many of them don’t come to our evening events.

So … The purpose of this note is to ask for advice and suggestions.

I know that a number of AgileScotland members read my blog.  Any advice?  Email me at agile.Scotland@gmail.com.

I know that there are a lot of similar groups around the world.  Any advice?  Are you in the same position of me?

Many thanks,

Clarke
www.clarkeching.com