What is the conference chair doing?

Committee formed
The committee is almost complete. (We still need to fill the Beginner Track Chair and Assistant Chair roles.)

Event planner hired
Agile Alliance Board approved the selection of Meeting Strategies Worldwide. This organization has solid experience in large international I.T. conferences that have both an industry and academic component.

"Retro" held
The AGILE 2006 phone .retro. was held on August 30th. Everyone in attendance was able to air all their views-- we got many useful ideas for future conferences. Jutta and I took notes and I will post these on the agile2007 yahoo group list soon.

Planning meeting scheduled
The first planning meeting is scheduled for September 20-21 at the Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel. In attendance will be:
- Jutta Eckstein (Industry Chair)
- Frank Maurer (Academic Chair)
- Mary Lynn Manns (Conference Chair)
- David Hussman (Assistant Conference Chair)
- Rachel Davies (AA Board President and Agile 2007 committee member)
- Nancy Wilson (Meeting Strategies Worldwide)
- Phil Brock (Agile Alliance Operations Manager)

On the 20th, Mary Lynn and Nancy will meet with the Renaissance Hotel people in the afternoon. Everyone will have dinner with some members of the Agile community in Washington D.C. who have offered to help us with the conference. The meeting will go through a long agenda (can post this later) all day on the 21st and will conclude in time for all of us to catch our flights that evening.

Website in progress
Phil Brock has agreed to do the conference website and we are lucky to have him. It should go live soon. (There is a temporary site is at www.agile2007.org)

Submission and registration systems being considered
We have explored a few options for new submission and registration systems. It looks like our meeting planner offers the best options. Select members from the committee will do a demo of the system on September 6th.

Conference feedback posted
I am uploading Agile 2006 conference feedback (as I receive it) to the "files" section of our yahoo group list:
groups.yahoo.com
This should help you in your planning of Agile 2007.

Budget in progress
We are working on the conference budget. It must be approved by the Agile Alliance Board.


What should the committee members be doing?

Form review committee
If your committee needs a review committee, now is the time to recruit some willing and able people. Submit these names to me and we will post them on the website.

Investigate keynotes
Interesting people have schedules that fill up quickly, so we need to hire our keynotes soon. If you have an idea for a keynote speaker, please make initial contact with him/her to find out:
- if the person is interested in speaking (and is available August 13-18)
- possible presentation topics
- cost
If you get this info to me before September 20th, we can consider the person you suggest when we discuss keynotes at the planning meeting.

Think about your full CFP
Short descriptions for your session types were due on Sept 1st. thank you. I am working on consolidating them and they will be posted on the website soon. I will ask for your full CFP (if you haven.t sent it already) after we set the conference timeline dates at the September planning meeting. Please start thinking about your full CFP because we will need these by September 30th.