Thoughts about the Agile20Reflect Festival by Scott Seivwright
Got your ticket for the Opening ceremony yet?
We are a week away from the opening ceremony of The Agile20Reflect Festival. This will be a truly international affair and we have over 400 events which you can book for free here. The opening Ceremony will be a community wide event and it will be led by the Festivals’ regional teams. It will be themed for Ubuntu the great African idea of Human connectedness. Link here to get your seat at the opening ceremony.
Reverend Desmond Tutu, the highly respected South African leader, explains Ubuntu like this: “A person is a person through other persons.
“None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings.
“We need other human beings in order to be human. A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good. This is based on a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished.
“Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness, you can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – ubuntu – you are known of your generosity.”
We thought that as we open this festival of Agile and the Agile community Ubuntu expresses and emphasis our interconnectedness. This underlines the Festival’s vision of bringing people together across the Agile Community. When we conceived the festival, we thought of the three Ghosts of Dickens Novel. Past, Present and Future and we based our thinking in Retrospective of Scrooge’s Life. Now there was a man that found the meaning of Ubuntu!! I hope our community can as well.
Sign-up here for the Opening Ceremony and get connected
Scott Seivwright, Chief Pirate
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heartofscott/ please link in if you want to ask me anything.
The Power of Invitation Whoever Comes are the Right People!
One of the most important basic engagement techniques we uncovered in the creation of the Festival has been the “Power of Invitation”
The Agile20Reflect Festival was an open invite to any Agilists to share their passion. Deliberately distributing the events and allowing people to do what they want. There have only been a few events that were out with our scope. As we started on this, we really wanted to find out who was out there? Who was doing what? Who wanted to collaborate with who?
When we first launched the idea, several people doubted that the festival would happen. To help guide us. We have developed a Red – team to minimise risk but we have put a lot of reliance on self-organisation and the ability of the community to self-regulate. Things will go wrong, and we will learn from that, but we have faith in the community to support the festival.
I was blown away at the beginning of the journey when Daniel Mezick took me to see the great Harrison Owen. I was in awe of the great man. He gave me some great wisdom. Whoever comes are the right People, whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened, and It starts when it starts. Meeting Harrison Owen was one of the great moments of my life. I felt completely Humbled.
I am so happy so many people took up the invite! And this is truly Global and truly multilingual And I am looking forward to understanding what happen next. I am still humbled to think that the unpaid volunteers achieved such inclusion. This is the Biggest Agile thing in the world and its free for everyone, a great educational charitable undertaking. I took up the invitation and i will be talking about three things, not theories or methods but human stuff. Imposter phenomenon holding you back, Gratitude and Agile Teams and Celebrating the super powers of Dyslexia and Agility. Three things that I coach in agile teams people in a lot. I followed my Passion.. I invite you to do the same.
And it all starts with the invitation to the Opening Ceremony. And a huge thank you to the volunteers. Agile20Reflect is a worthy celebration.
https://www.meetup.com/agile20reflect-meetup-group/events/275140778/ – Details for the Opening ceremony
#Agile20reflect #Agile
The Chief Pirate – Shares His intention for Respect and sharing in the Festival
8 Days to go to the Biggest Free Agile Festival ever
So many people have given their time from all areas of the Agile World. So many people answered the invite!
It has been very humbling to see our vision “To make a place where people could come together, meet each other and learn” come to life.
There is so much division in the world just now, and it is great to see the Agile Community setting their differences aside and focusing on what binds us, and not on what separates. I hope everyone feels safe to share your passion to the world. Let us embrace the Doctrine of the Via Media: Generous Orthodoxy, as Sanjiv Augustine discusses in the attached video. I hope we all choose the Via Media, the middle road, moderation in thoughts and actions for the Festival.
Whether you are young or old, new or a guru, come listen and learn from each other. Let us be physically distanced but socially connected in equality and respect.
So a little story and my intention for the coming Festival: in Scotland, we have a series of traditions of New year Celebrations, one of which is First Footing. This year, we could not do it because of the Lockdown restrictions in Scotland. As a young boy, this was my favourite time of year. First footing works by going to your friends’ and family’s houses, one after the other, with a gift, thus welcoming in the new year in their home. On the threshold of the new house, you shake hands and say to the host, “Happy New year in your own house!” You do this even though you may have been at parties with them for the previous 5 days. The Welcoming of friends to your space was always a respected tradition and honour. That moment of welcoming is taking up an invitation, and is a very human worldwide tradition. We all are hosts and we all are honoured by people responding to invitations.
I was part of a large Scottish family, where we all took turns, and everyone was a host, and there were many many welcomings. I remember one New Year when we were still hosting New Year parties on the 7th of January; that was 7 days of First Footing!
Let us take a tradition like that into this festival. Let’s treat each new hosting as special, and very welcoming. After all, our festival works like a round-the-world party with each event being a free invite to go to someone’s Agile home and hangout.
Why don’t we, as we start each event, say “Happy Agile Manifesto Anniversary in your House!” to mark the honour and respect of the Hosting! Please be kind to each other, and come together.
Peace, Love and Pirates… Scott Seivwright
Be Kind to each other!
The Theme of the Opening Ceremony of the Agile20reflect Festival is “Ubuntu”
Beautiful Humans!!
The festival is now 400 Events and still growing.. such a beautiful wellspring of knowledge from across all the continents. Well done – You are truly a Global Community!
We are pulling together the Agenda for the opening ceremony of The Agile20Reflect and we have chose the theme of Ubuntu….
In the next week we will explore Ubuntu and what Africa can teach the world about Human relationships. Our honoured first Nyansanii (wise person in Ghanan) will be the lovely Nana Bambara who will open our beautiful festival this year.
He defines the essence of Ubuntu as “The African Philosophy Ubuntu, a Bantu word, that defines what it means to be truly human. We affirm our humanity when we acknowledge that of others.” And we cannot think of a more fitting Human sentiment for opening up our global agile village in love, equality and connectedness.
I firmly believe that tThe Agile20Reflect festival is a true FESTIVAL of Humans celebrating our connectedness through each other!
I also like the idea of having the festival have a regional opening and this year we honour our brothers and sisters in Africa and welcome them to teach us more about being Agile Practitioners and our Humanness.
The Opening ceremony will have activities that bring us together and introduce us to new people from different experiences. The activities will be lead by different regions of the world. As we all work together to make something Beautiful! I wonder who will lead next year…
Scott Seivwright the Festival Chief Pirate!
Please share around the world!! (And please translate)
Join the Opening Ceremony here Opening Ceremony Link
#Agile20reflect #agile
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Next weekend The Agile20Reflect Festival will commence with its Open Ceremony.
The global reach of this unique initiative has been humbling. We celebrate diversity and inclusion as communities and cultures come together in multiple languages.
With 400+ events in the program we wish to reflect on the origins, hear more about the present and explore and debate the future. Many passionate Agilists have played their part in supporting this vision and helping make it a reality.
We have been encouraged along the way by many of the industry’s thought leaders who themselves have played a significant role in the 20 year journey to-date. It is many of their ideas and teachings we have being applying in this exciting global experiment.
Join us on the 1st and celebrate the contributions of some of those influencers; our festival #Patrons.
Alistair Cockburn April Jefferson — Soul Craftswoman Arie van Bennekum Askhat Urazbaev Ellen Grove Esther Derby Gabrielle Benefield Johanna Rothman Lyssa Adkins – she/her Peter Merel Roman Pichler Sally Elatta & Simon Wardley
You are invited, as we kick off a month of learning, sharing and celebrating.
#agile20reflect #community #bringingpeopletogether
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