Talking agility at Agile Islands conference
agile42 will be part of the Agile Islands conference taking place on 24th September 2019 in Mariehamn, the capital of the Åland Islands. This conference is organized by representatives of the local business and the administration of Åland.
During the conference, I will keep a workshop to introduce coaching with practical exercises before lunch. It will be discussed what is coaching, what models there are to drive through the coaching process, what are powerful questions and how agile coaching differs from personal/systemic coaching.
After lunch, we will have a talk on organizational culture. Why culture is getting more important nowadays, and what ways there exist to assess where an organization stands on the culture and what steps can be taken to improve it.
Our team will be present at the Agile Islands with a stand, where Sofia Svanbäck and myself can tell you more about the services agile42 can offer and why many big and smaller organizations from around the globe value those.
The Åland Islands are a group of 6,700 islands between Sweden and Finland out of which 60 are inhabited with a population of 30,000 people where almost half live in Mariehamn. They belong to Finland but are an autonomous and demilitarised region with own government, stamps and a top-level internet domain (.ax). The main language is Swedish. The main industries include shipping, trade, banking, farming and the production of food items.
Agile Islands conference was first organized in 2016 and has taken place every year since then. It has evolved over time and the organization of the event has become more professional year by year. Each year there has been a growing number of participants on average of 200-300. This year there are more speakers than ever, 23 in total, and it has become more international as they come from different corners outside the neighboring areas and with the majority of the talks to be held in English.
The vision of Agile Islands is to contribute to Åland to become the #1 agile community in the world. “This means that all parts of the society are based on agile values and they are leading examples in agile methods and practices in their respective areas, regardless of whether the organization is based on commercial, public or non-profit principles.” The local administration’s focus is on people’s wellbeing, the environment, and sustainability. “All parts of a community are better, efficient and creates more value if run by agile values and, irrespective of the being commercial or non-profit organizations”. I think this sounds quite noble and is very cool in my opinion.
This year the program of the conference offers a big variety of talks in 6 tracks. There are speakers who approach agile from different perspectives, IT, culture, public authorities, HR, and others.
Also, there is time for mingling and networking, as the location is quite functional for this purpose. On top of that, the conference tickets are at a quite affordable level compared to many other conferences. More information about the conference can be found on the webpage at agileislands.ax. You can book your tickets here.
It would be really great to see you there! Come and talk to either Sofia or myself or even both! Let’s get connected and exchange viewpoints on agile.