Create Marketplace of ideas and join Open Space during A&A Days

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discussion-panel

While every year we encourage Agile & Automation Days attendees to actively participate in the conference as its success depends just partially on how good presentations and workshops are and mostly on how much you learn from each other by exchanging ideas in discussions behind the scenes.

This year part we go a step further, and literally give part of the conference into your hands. How successful it will be depends just on you.

We’re becoming a bit un-conference this edition.

Open Space is all about discussions on grassroots ideas. Do you have an idea that has been on your mind for a while now which you must share to gather feedback? Something has been bothering you lately, you’re facing some kind of challenge and want to review potential solutions with others? Maybe you just want see how other folks are doing, share and learn best practices, show and tell new tools and approaches.

Open Space is the place for you to shine!

Everything starts very early in the morning. Just as the conference starts moderators will remind everyone each day there is a 90 minutes block of Open Space ahead and we will wait for your discussion ideas.

During the day, in the Track1 Room, you will see a big sheet of paper with a table drown on it. This table will have 2 rows, representing two 30 minutes slots, and 4 columns, the number of discussion groups. This is so called Marketplace. Marketplace of ideas. Here you will put as post-it notes your idea for topic. It should be a short, catchy, summary of what you want to discuss with your alias or name next to it.

Keep in mind that the number of 30 minute presentation slots is limited to 8 per day. We plan to run four 30 minute discussions in parallel. You better come prepared. One idea per slot, and the first idea that gets posted on Marketplace wins. Afraid of being late to the game? Don’t worry, we’ll have a backlog of ideas. If for any reason initial discussion topic for a slot can’t be done, for instance author is missing for the discussion, ideas from backlog will jump in.

Once the time comes, and we’re in Open Space, we will kick start it with round the table. We will walk through every single idea posted on Marketplace, and authors will have a minute to do elevator pitch to gather discussion participants. As an author, you will need to become a salesperson for a minute. Think why people may want to join you in discussion? What valuable can they learn? How is this discussion going to improve their professional lives? This is group forming exercise. We want to have 8 groups of people who will spread across the time and space. Time, because we will start with 4 discussions, and once they’re finished, after 30 minutes, run another round of 4. Space, because the discussion will happen in the main room of the conference, in four corners, represented by unique colours.

Ideas explained. Participants decided. Discussions about to start. Are we done yet? No. Each group will be accompanied by a facilitator who will be looking over the health of discussion and note taking. Who will be driving discussions? Authors of ideas. We give 30 minutes of the conference in your hands. Use it to yours and fellow participants advantage.

It’s not over. When discussions finish, facilitators will give short summary of every discussion they participated in. They will tell what session was about, what they and participants learnt, what surprised them, and what kind of actions they plan to run as an outcome.

Check out the PROGRAM to plan your participation in the Panels.

Started scratching your head? Good, good, you’re looking for ideas. We need those! Power to the people attendees! Can’t wait to hear your stories.

See you on the Open Space soon!
Program Committee
Michał Kujałowicz and Bart Szulc

Olga