Agility, Anarchy and more at MiXiT 2017

That's it, MiXiT 2017 It's finish. I'm on the 8:34 p.m. train heading to Paris. My neighbor is quietly reading One Piece on his screen while I immerse myself one last time in these 2 days of a conference like no other, 2 days of happiness, sharing and emotions.

MiXiT has a special connotation for me in the sense that the conference takes place at CPE Lyon, the school from which I come. I had also made my very first intervention there as a speaker last year – of which here is thematching item.

This year it is with Fabien Maury, a former colleague and very good friend that we presented a session entitled: « Agility, an anarchism incompatible with business? ».

Slides are available here.

The video is also online here.

The story behind the session

For people who know me a bit, it might seem surprising that I present a session on anarchism. I must admit that I would never have imagined it myself! 😛

In reality, all of this emerged from a discussion with Fabien while writing his article on the subject. He wanted to have my agilist opinion on the substance to make sure he didn't deviate from the original meaning of things. Indeed, he wanted to avoid turning his speech into a simple troll and I was happy to help him!

After reading his draft, I realized that the links between Anarchism and Agility were really relevant and told him in a joking tone that it could be the subject of a conference. He took me at my word with a lot of enthusiasm, and after submitting our session on MiXiT's cfp, we were pleasantly surprised to be selected! 🙂

So it was time to prepare more seriously what we were going to say!

Frame construction

See you at Good to prepare our session together. Fabien put his bag down on a table and took out a packet of little books on anarchism, including that of Peter Kropotkin, “ anarchist morality“, which will then be at the heart of our talk.

The ideas of structure begin to emerge:

You will notice that we were already borrowing a touch of anarchism, from the preparation! 😛

As in his article, Fabien proposes to draw a parallel with the Agile Manifesto. We then build in ping-pong: I explain the meaning behind each value, Fabien bounces back gradually with the anarchist ideas that come to his mind. When I listen to him, I feel a certain emotion in his words, an emotion that I share in my own way.

Our reflection materializes as follows:

The more we exchange and the more ideas we have for links, it is both very encouraging and at the same time a source of stress because we always remain in the blur of a structure on which to rely.

This talk seems to take the form of a committed testimony more than a simple explanation of the link between Anarchism and Agility. It gives it body and surprisingly it suits me: will we have the courage to say what is on our heart? I tell myself that it is nevertheless important to keep this authenticity in our discourse, while being careful not to make the whole thing too controversial! 😉

Repetition

A little concerned, Fabien quickly tells me about a rehearsal at Arolla to help us out and get feedback. It was above all a good way to structure our presentation in advance rather than waiting for the last moment! 😉

We still had to figure out how to organize our ideas:

• Were we going to talk about Agility and link it to Anarchy?
• Or the opposite ?
• Or otherwise?
• With what tone?

For people who don't know Fabien, he is one of those people I describe as having "a big mouth and a big heart"! He has the ability to come out with amazing expressions spontaneously with a smashing humor! I think that's one of the advantages of our duo: different but complementary personalities! It was also important for me that we remain ourselves, to defend what really carried us: with our own words and our own examples.

After a few thoughts, we decide to go with a ping-pong format – where everyone will bounce on what the other has said – simply because that's how it all started! Wearing the cap rather "Anarchism" and I rather "Agile", we would together try to explain why the "Agile" transformation approaches are particularly difficult to implement.

For this we will base ourselves on quotes from “La morale anarchiste” by Kropotkine, a book that I ended up reading myself and that I find particularly well written! 🙂

Our rehearsal welcomed about ten people, mostly developers. As always, the examples or illustrations we give during are different, but the ideas are there. This freedom within a framework seems to suit both of us, when one seems to be blocking somewhere, it is the other who comes in support: isn't this what we call "the self? -organization " ? 🙂

The feedback was quite positive and relevant, which allowed us to gain confidence and refine our presentation for the big day. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone present for the time they gave us! 🙂

D-day

After a pitch of our session made at the beginning of the afternoon by Fabien, we left for Hamilton (or small Amphi for short).

Find us on video:

Feedback

We had brought about twenty copies of “La morale anarchiste” by Kropotkine in order to distribute them at the end of our session: they were gone in less than 10 seconds! 😀

A rather positive feedback door! Thank you to the participants for coming to see us and for the discussions at the end of the session 🙂

MiXiT a conference like no other

"The Lyon conference with pancakes and heart"

In addition to a redesign of its visual identity, I was especially marked by the spirit of the conference through:

• of his diversity brought by speakers from all over the world, the different profiles of the participants,
• of his opening with subjects for all tastes, of all levels and for all ages,
• of his humility to allow as many people as possible to participate by experimenting with accessibility tools,
• of his authenticity embodied by an organizational team with very strong human values.

Moreover, speaking of the members of the organization, these people in purple who are at the origin of this great event, we will probably never tell you enough but a big THANK YOU for giving us this moment of happiness, sharing and emotions.

This 2017 edition allowed me to express myself without filter, to share without measure and to meet beautiful people: it feels good! 🙂

My only contribution will have been to produce a small video of the event presented during the closing session (coming soon).

That's what MiXiT is, pancakes, heart and a little more! 😉