More than XP. More than one day.

Deadline for submissions: Friday August 8th 2008

XPDay London will be held on 11, 12th December 2008 at Church House in the City of Westminster.

This year, the conference will be organized a little differently than it has been in previous years. The main goal of the conference this year will be to provide a forum within which practitioners can move the state of the art forward. A proportion of the conference will be given over to Open Space sessions.

To help find good topics for the Open Space to consider, there will be a time for Lightning Talks at the beginning of the day during which attendees give a very brief presentation on a topic of their choosing. This format may be familiar from Bar Camp and other events.

The Agile community has matured and there are now many training providers and consultancy services available for those who want to learn how to apply Agile techniques. In the past, the conferences were the main source of such advice, but that’s no longer the case. Those beginning their journey will still be very welcome, of course.

There will be a few programmed sessions of the usual sort: workshops, tutorials, and so forth to provide an anchor for the event. Experience reports and posters are also invited. The programmed sessions that have been accepted will be announced on 19 of September 2008.

Those submitting proposals for programmed sessions are encouraged to address topics that are of current interest to established practitioners. Sessions discussing new approaches and techniques will be preferred. The session types for programmed sessions will be:

• Workshop – collaborative discovery
• Tutorial – experiential learning
• Talk – interactive exposition

We strongly prefer sessions with active participation.

As in previous years, programmed session submissions (including experience reports) will receive a non-anonymous review by the community. Accepted sessions and reports may then be shepherded to help presenters give their best.

There will be opportunities to rehearse of Lightning Talks at a sequence of XtC meetings in the months before the conference. You don’t need to give a Lightning Talk to suggest a topic for the Open Space, and you don’t need to rehearse your Lightning Talk before the conference.

How to Submit

If you want to propose a session for XP Day London ‘08 (and we hope that you do), then here’s what you need to do. We want the conference to be largely self–organizing this year, so the submission process is suitably light weight.

Experience Reports

Please send a very brief outline of your report to submissions2008@xpday.org You will receive a URL to a google document. Make sure that you include an email address corresponding to a google account (or let us know if the address you send from is the one to use). The document will be writeable by you and the committee and all other submitters. Develop your report there. As in past years we invite the community to collaborate together to help maximize the quality of all submissions. After the close of submissions the committee will make a selection of experience reports to be presented at the conference. The selected reports will be shepherded between acceptance and the conference.

Conference Sessions

Most of the duration of the conference (other than experience reports) will be OpenSpace. There will be Lightning Talks early in the day where people can publicise topics that they would like to discuss. We encourage people to engage in this way. There will be optional rehearsals at XtC in the weeks running up to the conference. You do not need to attend these to make a lightening talk at the conference. If you would like to have such a rehearsal, send a title and a google account email address to submissions2008@xpday.org You will be allocated to a rehearsal slot. We invite groups outside London to schedule rehearsals too, and are happy to help with scheduling those. There will be a google calendar with the slots shown.

Some kinds of session can benefit from some preparation of materials and some logistics on the day. For example, a workshop involving some sort of server, or extensive materials. There will be a limited number of time slots during the conference for such sessions. Please submit a brief outline to submissions2008@xpday.org indicting an email address associated with a google account. You will be sent the URL of a google document within which to develop your proposal in collaboration with other submitters. After the close of submissions these proposals will be assessed by the committee and suitable sessions will be selected for the program.

We have decided to extend the submission period, so for experience reports, rehearsals and programmed sessions the submission deadline is now Friday August 8th 2008.

This year we want to de–emphasize sessions introducing Agile or Scrum or XP or TDD or… and promote topics of current interest to practitioners. We want the conference to be a forum in which the state of the art is advanced. That doesn’t mean that only experts are welcome, or welcome to present. Experts have their failure modes, simple questions from journeymen often reveal the essence.

All are welcome, so get your thinking caps on!