XP Days Benelux is an international conference where we learn to bring software to life and grow mature systems that support business needs.

It provides an excellent environment for exchanging ideas, hands-on exercises and extreme experiences.

What are we looking for?

What are you looking for?

What would make it a WOW session for you and our participants?

We’re interested in:

• Experiences with new and old techniques. What worked; what didn’t? Why? What have you learned?
• Unexpected ideas from other disciplines and sciences. How can we cross borders? What lessons have we missed? How can we collaborate better with people from other disciplines and departments?
• Ask for help from other participants. What scary problems confront you and your team?
• People from outside IT with an interesting story. What can we learn from their experience?
• Pushing the limits of techniques and organisations, doing the “impossible”. How far can you go if you challenge commonly accepted assumptions?
• Back to basics. What happens if we really take the Extreme Programming values of Simplicity, Commmunication, Feedback, Courage and Respectseriously?
• Taking back agile. What does “agile” really mean to you and why is it important?
• Questioning agile. Where, when and why would you not use agile methods? Why? What can we learn about context and applicability?

The XP Days community loves highly interactive sessions where everyone participates and learns from each other.

During review and selection, your session will receive bonus points when…

• … you have no slides. Think outside the box and sharpen your story telling skills.
• … it appeals to both technical and functional people. Involve the geeks, challenge the managers.
• … it has the “XP Factor”. Is it entertaining and crazy? Does it take people out of their comfort zone?
• … you’ve had a dry run. Did you join one of our try-outs? Did you send a video introduction?
• … your subject is fresh and original. Maybe something outside the domain of IT?
• … it has an original format. Doing something with fruit? Are there any sports involved? Great!
• … your session poses a question instead of giving an answer.
• … if you’re new to presenting at XP Days. First timers receive a warm welcome…

How does it work?

You propose your idea for a session: a title and a short description.From then on, organizers and session proposers work together to refine and improve your proposal, adding more information and improving the description and session content. We’ll give feedback and provide opportunities for try-outs. In return, we expect from you that you help others to turn their idea into a WOW session.

Yes but, I haven’t presented at a conference before.

You don’t need to be an experienced presenter, you “just” need one good idea or question to start with. And then you iterate and improve your idea with the help of the other presenters and the organizers.

We offer coaching for first-time presenters. Contact sessions if you want help proposing and refining your session.

Submit your proposal now. You have until July 5th 2015 to propose your idea. The sooner you send in your idea, the more feedback you will receive.

Agile Tour Brussels is calling for speakers!

Agile Tour Brussels is one of the biggest agile conferences in Belgium. Last year we gathered 250 attendees and speakers from Belgium, France, U.S, U.K, Luxemburg, Netherlands and Sweden to share our passion for Agile. The purpose of this conference is to gather in one place Agile practitioners and people wanting to know more about Agile.

At Agile Tour Brussels you will meet a mix of attendees who are either completely new to Agile, experienced or experts.

This year we’re going to have different tracks, and for each of these we’re looking for two kind of sessions: Interactive Talk (Presenter is speaking for most of the time with audience interaction) or Workshop (Primarily focused on hands-on participation with the audience).

Track 1: Experience reports.

Tell us your success or failure stories about Implementing Agile in Belgium (or in Europe), What is (not) working for you? If you’re an agile coach or facilitator, bring your client with you!

Track 2: Pragmatic Track

We’re looking for small changes or fundamentals, pragmatic things that work. How do you gather requirements? How do you run an outstanding retrospective? In this track your participants will learn something they can apply the day after. It can be technical, soft-skills or a process you use.

Track 3: Let’s Play together

This Track is for Agile Games and Serious Games. It’s also the opportunity to suggest “BootCamp” sessions like Introduction to [put Agile method here] or how to estimate with Agile,…

Track 4: Agile Management

What’s the role of Managers in Agile? What’s an Agile Manager? What’s an Agile organization? This track will cover subjects such as Management 3.0, Flat organizations, Evidence Based Management,…

Track 5: Various

Do you have a favourite subject you’d like to talk about, a kick-ass workshop you’d like to run, a theme you’d like to share? This track is for you!

All Agile methods are welcome: Scrum, XP, KanBan, Lean, Devops, Leadership, Lean Startup, Coaching, System thinking, Product Aspect, Agile outside IT.

We are looking for different levels of sessions: for beginners, practitioners and experts. We welcome experienced as well as new speakers.

How to submit a session?

To submit a session, fill in the form located here: http://at2015.agiletour.org/fr/callForSpeaker.html

(you can log into the website with your existing account or create a new one).

Tips for a successful submission:

• Don’t forget to specify that you’re applying for Agile Tour Belgium – Brussels
• Make sure you’re in the call for speaker of Agile Tour 2015 (links to the previous editions could still be active in the platform)
• Specify the size of the audience you’d like to have for your session
• Sessions must be in English
• We would prefer to have session of 1 hour maximum
• Deadline for submission: 10th of July 2014

All information about the event will be published on http://www.atbru.be

If you cannot make it, you can still support us by tweeting about #atbru, blogging, speaking about our event.

Mini XP Day Benelux 2015

Did you miss out on XP Days 2014 because the conference was sold out? Or the date didn’t suit you? Did you want to see some sessions again that you missed? Or perhaps you like to refer your colleagues and friends to attend that great session you experienced?
Mini XP Day is your second chance.

11 of the best

Mini XP Day reruns 11 of the best sessions from last year’s XP Days Benelux in 3 parallel tracks. What are the sessions about?

• Learn how to find and retain the right people for your agile team with Ralph van Roosmalen and Daan van Osch
• See how to use the many feedback cycles in Scrum with Kris Philippaerts
• Improve your programming skills by programming human components with Olivier Azeau
• Hear how schools use EDUScrum to apply agile techniques to teaching and learning with Ward Bergmans and Arno Delhij
• Help Guillaume Duquesnay to defeat the Plouf so that you and your team don’t get bogged down
• Explore techniques to work with difficult people around you with Nicole Belilos. Or discover that you are a difficult person 🙂
• Learn different change management approaches to help you introduce agile with Dieter Dehaes and Frank Geelen
• Try out or improve your Test Driven Development skills with Florin Bombeanu and Calin Darie
• Experience how courage and vulnerability can help you get better at your job with Gitte Klitgaard

Two more sessions will be revealed soon.

I want to know more

The conference website contains the program all the practical details.

See the feedback from participants, photos, blogs and articles of last year’s conference to get a better idea of what XP Days is about.

Or watch the video impression of XP Days.

Join us in Mechelen on April 3rd 2015

The conference will be held in Elewijt Center, near Mechelen (between Brussels and Antwerp), Belgium.

Register now, because the conference usually sells out quickly. Early rate (until end of February is 180€. In March tickets cost 210€.

See you there