Here’s the thing, next week I am going to speak at the Agile Tour Dublin . My talk topic is in the beginner track and it is a Quick Introduction to Agile.

How do I keep people awake and deliver something that will be valuable?

I could start with a timeline of the events that brought us to the manifesto and then continue towards the different frameworks, mention the important people, talk about the values etc.

Well, I could, but maybe nobody would care.

I could talk about how agile requires a fundamental change in the mindset and discuss potential problems people might find once they embark into a change journey.

Maybe slightly better

Or I could focus on the values and principles in the manifesto and explain how they apply to what people do within organisations

But people might go back asleep, etc.

Fundamentally I think that no matter which of the 3 approaches I take, it might be something that people could get from reading a wikipedia page, not good enough for my customers!

So I thought, how about I do an agile talk instead of doing a talk about agile.

How about before the start I ask my customers (the audience) to pick from a set of topics they want to hear about. And how about I get the audience to give me feedback while I deliver so that I can react quickly and change the subject when it is not giving value any longer?

This would embody the close customer collaboration, the fast feedback and the ability to react to changing conditions.

Also, how about I ask the audience if they want me to speak for exactly 30 minutes and go through all my slides or if they believe that they can collaborate and give me feedback so that I might be finished 10 minutes earlier if the topics are complete or maybe even 5 minutes later if they still need some answers.

This would reflect the customer collaboration over contract negotiation

How about if I told them that I am not going to send them the slides by mail but I am available all day long to talk to each and any of them discussing the content of the talk.

This would sound like face to face collaboration over processes and tools

Wouldn’t this format also embody Working software over comprehensive documentation?

Do you think a format like this would be valuable?

Do you have any other suggestions to do an agile talk instead of a talk about agile?

Please help me by using the comments or mail me at augeva@gmail.com