Dydh da!
I’m Steve Smith. I’m on the Agile on the Beach 2024 speaker committee, with Chris(tine) O’Dell and Gwen Diagram. It’s my 4th year as speaker committee chair, and 10th as a reviewer.
Agile on the Beach 2024 will be our 13th conference and you can see the schedule at agileonthebeach.com/the-conference/schedule/. Two of our keynote speakers – Abeba Birhane for AI ethics and Janet Bumpas for product management – have already been announced.
Agile on the Beach CFP process
Our process supports the Agile on the Beach purpose of sustaining a high quality community, and growing the Cornish tech industry. We also aim to increase session quality and speaker diversity each year. We measure the latter as speakers who self-identify as part of an under-represented minority (URM) group.
The process is in Sessionize, and as follows:
1) Invite reviewers. Ask for reviewers.
2) Send mailing list and social media invites. Ask for proposals.
3) Send personalised invites. Send personal invites to potential speakers who self-identify as an URM.
4) Run reviews. This is a 4 stage process:
– Pre-flight checks. Remove unfit proposals.
– Reviewer blind review. Mark as 1 to 5, with constructive feedback and no author details.
– Speaker committee blind review. Mark as yes/no, with no author details.
– Speaker committee final review. Mark as yes/no, with a balance between high scoring sessions, URM speakers, first time speakers, and Cornish businesses.
5) Send speaker invitations. Ask for invites to be accepted/declined within one week.
6) Send proposal declines. Thank people for their hard work, provide constructive feedback, and ask them to try again next year.
7) Announce schedule. Publicise the conference schedule online.
We’re passionate about blind review. It’s a great way to minimise bias, and create better opportunities for people who need them.
In 2024
Our experiments this year have included:
Moving to Sessionize, to reduce workload for authors and reviewers
Publishing advice in Andy Nesling’s Agile on the Beach CFP tips blog, to boost proposal quality.
Sending more personalised CFP invites, to increase speaker diversity in some tracks
Proposals
We had 401 proposals, 47 reviewers, and 5330 reviews. Proposal quantity increased by 46%.
And author motivations are varied!
Sessions
Average scores for our 44 sessions are slightly down from last year, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The switch to Sessionize, reviewer changes, and firmer review guidelines all played a part.
We have 55 speakers this year, and 58% are part of a URM. We have a more diverse schedule than ever, and we can do better. We’d welcome your feedback at info@aotb.org.
Thanks to our speaker committee, reviewers, and authors, for all the time and effort they dedicated to Agile on the Beach. See you in Cornwall in July, and remember you can buy tickets here!