What improvements have we made to Agile India 2013?
Based on the lessons learned from Agile India 2012, following are few notable improvements we’ve made:
- Based on the participant’s feedback, we learned that 3-days was a bit too long for the participants. They found the conference scope to be very broad. So we’ve split the conference into 2 parts. First 2-days Management focused and the last 2-days is more of a technology/delivery focused conference. This would lead to a more focused audience and will appeal to a large group of diverse practitioners.
- There is a demand for more focused hands-on workshops. So we’ll be hosting 4 paid hands-on workshops on each day, which is separate from the conference itself.
- Each day we expect 650-700 participants. Plus another 100 participants will attend the paid workshops. So over the 4 days we should see 1500 unique participants. Which is more than twice compared to the 2012 conference.
- Unlike last conference, this time the sponsor area is right in center of all the halls. Food would be served in the same place and an open space is planned in the same area. This will ensure a significantly higher footfall to the sponsor stalls.
- Each part of the conference has a dinner reception allowing participants to have an extended conversation with other participants and speakers.
- Last time the conference program was built 100% via open submission system. In spite of a meticulous open review system, quality of some of the sessions was poor. Also because of the open submission system, we were not able to attract many big names. This time, we’ve over 25 Agile/Lean luminaries from around the world; each presenting 2-3 of their greatest hits. The conference is paying and flying each of those speakers down. About 25% of the sessions will still be accepted via open submission system. This will ensure a very high quality program. We believe it would be far better than any other Agile conference world-wide.
- Last time we had 7 parallel tracks distributed on different floors and the participants were lost. This time we’ve 4 parallel tracks and an open space. All rooms are on the same floor in a central area. The room sizes are much bigger compared to last conference, ensuring comfortable seating capacity.
- Except the room layouts, most participants loved the conference venue las time. For 2013, we are hosting the conference in Hotel Sheraton, a brand new 5 Star Luxury hotel. A much better venue compared to the last one.
