Speed kills - Agility for IT professionals

There’s a first time for everything - and for me today it was my first unconference (a term so new that even my spell checker complains ). I stopped by the Fronde hosted barcamp session around e-government and was pleasantly surprised. Around 100 people turned up to talk about all aspects of topics around e-government - from policy to projects and software development to identity and privacy.

But while some of the content was quite interesting it really was the concept that fascinates me. An open invitation to the community to participate without dedicated speakers, topics or timelines. In an agile tradition a big flip chart was attached on the wall in the reception with sticky notes with sessions. Anybody could put up a session on any topic at an available slot. All sessions were well attended and not necessarily about the original topic - the community was driving the content - how agile is that?!? I am thrilled to be able to talk about Agile in Government in such a setting

As for the content the highlight for me was the discussion about Identity/Authentication (and the separation of the two aspects) and related topics like privacy, transparency etc. This is becoming more and more important and is not a technology issue at all. There is quite a philosophical aspect to it as in how far do we want to go with that. And the answer is that this is not a government decision - this is about what we as a society decide!

So well done Mike for organizing this and props to everyone involved to make this work!

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