Last Friday, I went to the 12th edition of Agile Tour Sophia Antipolis to give the presentation « Accelerate, FAST & UnFix sont dans un bateau », with my fellow countryman Yannis. The theme of this edition being « Prenons de la hauteur », we should have changed « bateau » to « montgolfière », which was done a bit at the last minute on the first slide of our presentation. 😅
After part of the way by train then by car from Avignon, we finally arrived on time to share the speakers' meal with a few organizers and other speakers. A traditional and essential sharing moment of Agile conferences 😋. Small downside, the org's budget seems to be among the tightest and everyone had to pay their own share ... but that's not what stopped us from enjoying this very good moment of conviviality.
The reason for this reduced budget is the will to keep the event free! A rare and appreciable thing, even if it means making a few sacrifices. The next day, the speakers still get a snack in the form of a meal basket; the participants, on the other hand, are either invited to bring their own meal, go fetch it in the surroundings, or order from the org to get the meal basket.
The next day, the big day arrived. After a nice flight of stairs, we arrive at the entrance of the buildings. As speakers, we're given lovely homemade goodies made in the university's FabLab.
After the opening of the day by the organizers, the keynote is given by Viviane Morelle, world hot-air balloon champion 🤩.
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Then, we pitch our session which takes place in the morning at 11:55. We can therefore enjoy the first slot as audience members. I choose the session by Felix Tapin & Pascal Tran, « La vision vue de haut ». Without spoiling their whole presentation, they had us do a « jolie prairie » and a « Pitch elevator ».
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Not without a touch of pride, our group got the jury's unanimous vote for our « Sofa Beer » pitch!!! 🍺 Obviously, as soon as alcohol comes up, it generally brings people together.
Our turn to give our presentation. It goes well overall, people seem interested, as there are quite a few questions. We'll just have to review the timing because we cheerfully exceeded the time normally allotted to us. But luckily, it was the lunch break right after. In parallel, Erwan Bourgeois was presenting « Créer sa communauté de pratiques Agile avec le Community Canvas » which I would have liked to attend, but you can't do everything.
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For the first session of the afternoon we meet up with Christelle Bergé & Jérémie Bohbot who give us feedback on a UnFix design workshop and I must admit it had been a long time since I had the feeling of learning during a session. Really very interesting and instructive.
I follow up with another feedback session, this time on SAFe. Interesting too, due to the speaker's pragmatism about this much-maligned method.
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Unfortunately, I couldn't see the closing keynote. I had to catch a train in Antibes and wanted to spare my driver the detour and the city traffic jams. So I hop into another car before the session. But it's without regret that I chat with the most elegant agile coach I know in the person of Léonard Prunier. You normally never see a bespoke 3-piece suit at this kind of event. He takes the opportunity to pass me his little retro compendium « Pimp My Rétro ». I therefore head back by train from Antibes and, something I hadn't noticed before, the train takes its time to climb back up to Lyon ... exactly 4h30 😱 ! But I wouldn't be disappointed by the journey, because the train passes literally a few meters from the coast and offers us pretty landscapes 😲
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