On Saturday June 20th the Agile Open La Plata 2009 took place, more than 65 people attended.

After having breakfast, we did the official opening, which I facilitated. An incredible experience: it was my first facilitation in an Open Space model. At the beginning, it was exactly as we’re used to see in these kind of events: people does not understand the expectations on them until after 10 minutes of actual work, the result was almost 40 sessions proposals, a very fluid voting and the following schedule:

AO La Plata 2009

Agenda AO La Plata 2009

I highlight some sessions I was able to participate in, all of them of an excellent level:

Lean introduction (facilitated by Juan Gabardini) and Agile introduction (moderated by Nicolás Paez) were the first two sessions. I saw people very engaged on the topics, I admit it was hard to stop those sessions on-time due to the atendees’ enthusiasm.

The starts of the second track were SCRUM intro (proposed and moderated by Marcelo Belnicoff) and Agile Team Communication (moderated by Nicolás and Esteban).

Lunch arrived on-time, there was an excellent climate where people exchanged concerns, experiences, questions, solutions, doubts, opinions. A great networking context.

We started the afternoon with the “Pajarraco” Game, during which I took some photos (taken with my cell phone) and a lot of other parallel sessions, more advanced ones in which I was lucky to participate: CMMI+PMI+Agile, Scrum with very little teams, Agile Testing, How to engage the client in Agile Projects, Non IT-industry implementations of agile methodologies, etc.

* Pajarraco Photos:

Pajarraco 1Pajarraco 2Pajarraco 3Pajarraco 4

After a coffee break during the afternoon, there was an interesting debate about Retrospectives (open discussion format) and an Agile Architecture presentation (by Diego Fontdevila).

We reached to the closure with more than 40 people. It was facilitated by Diego with excellent results, as we’re used to in every Open Space: great people interaction, highly engaged & active people,really interesting topics, living experiences, etc. The result was more than positive:

Resultado

Resultado AO La Plata 2009

The next steps we’re taking at “La Plata” level is to organize a monthly event where to discuss agile topics following the same approach that has been working for months in Buenos Aires, while at a national level we still have the organization and realization of the Rosario, Mar del Plata and Bahía Blanca Agile Opens. And any new city who wants to have one.

A new Agile Open was finished, and -same as the previous ones- it left it’s footprint.

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