Digital delivery thought leaders in keynote line-up

Update – 23 August 2016: Announcing our full keynote line-up! Our final two speakers are now confirmed as Kaila Colbin and Scrum.org's Dave West...

Kaila Colbin is the New Zealand Ambassador for Singularity University. She is also a co-founder and Chair of the non-profit Ministry of Awesome, the starting point to make things happen in Christchurch, and the Curator of TEDxChristchurch. She is also Chairman of the Board of the New York-based Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, Deputy Chair of CORE Education Ltd and a member of the Advisory Board for Te Pūtahi, the Christchurch centre for architecture and city making. A native New Yorker, Kaila is fluent in Spanish, French and Italian. She holds a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration from Cornell University and has been a serial entrepreneur since the age of 22. Her purpose in life is to be an uplifting presence.

KC smiling at TEDx cropped2

Dave West is the CEO/Product Owner at Scrum.org, a frequent keynote speaker and a widely published author of articles, along with his acclaimed book Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and then worked with Ivar Jacobson running the North American business for IJI. He then managed the software delivery practice at Forrester Research as VP and Research Director. Before joining Scrum.org, he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture.

Dave West cropped copy

Update – 5 July 2016: We're delighted to announce that Naomi Ferguson, Commissioner and Chief Executive, Inland Revenue, NZ is our fourth keynote speaker for AgileNZ 2016. Naomi is an experienced public sector executive with more than 20 years' experience working in revenue agencies in the UK and NZ. She has successfully delivered major transformational change projects and built effective teams to deliver results. Before coming to New Zealand, Naomi was the Director, Business Customer and Strategy at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK. Naomi also completed a secondment with Inland Revenue New Zealand from 2003-2006 in the Deputy Commissioner, Service Delivery role. She took up her position of Commissioner and Chief Executive of Inland Revenue on 21 July 2012.

Naomi Ferguson4

 

16 June 2016: We’re delighted to announce three of our keynote speakers for AgileNZ Conference 2016. The full keynote line-up will be five strong but we’re kicking off with three of the best first: Jeff Patton, Joshua Kerievsky and Ahmed Sidky…

Jeff Patton is a Product Manager, Agile, Lean, UX and Product Design Evangelist. He’s the ‘glue’ that connects good product management and strategy, lean user experience and Agile delivery practices together. He has authored many articles, essays and, most recently the book User Story Mapping. An independent consultant with a unique teaching and speaking style, he uses hand drawings and engaging story telling to share his passion for product design. Jeff’s keynote supports our new ‘Product’ track – and we think there’s no one better in the world to do that. 

Joshua Kerievsky is the founder and CEO of Industrial Logic, a pioneering extreme programming/Lean consultancy that radically improves the software development capabilities of organisations around the globe. In the mid-1990s, Joshua was among a small community of 'lightweight methods' practitioners experimenting with better ways of developing software. Since then, he’s helped thousands of people across hundreds of organisations learn better ways of making software, carefully reviewing and revising methods with the greatest impact and return on investment. Today, he leads an effort to modernise Agile by removing outdated practices and leveraging the best of what the software community and other industries have learned about achieving awesome results. Joshua is an international speaker and author of the best-selling Jolt Cola-award-winning book, Refactoring to Patterns, numerous Agile eLearning courses and popular articles like Anzeneering, Sufficient Design and Stop Using Story Points. He’s active on TwitterSnapchat and the emerging ModernAgile.org community. Jeff’s keynote supports our new ‘Technical’ track.

Ahmed Sidky (aka ‘Doctor Agile’) is back at AgileNZ Conference. Ahmed is President/Co-founder of ICAgile, a well-known thought leader in the Agile community and a keynote at AgileNZ Conference 2015. He is currently the Director of Development Management for Riot Games and, before that, was an Agile transformation coach and consultant for Fortune 100 companies. He is the co-author of Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World and the President and Co-founder of ICAgile. Ahmed was selected as the programme chair for the Agile 2009 conference and has been an invited speaker at many Agile conferences around the world presenting on topics such as the Agile mindset, how to create Lean, high-performing habits within teams and how to transform organisations in a manner that achieves sustainable organisational agility.

We’ll be announcing two more keynote speakers in the next few weeks. Follow us on Twitter and our blog page for updates.

AgileNZ x 3 speakers

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Assurity is a delivery consultancy for the Digital Age. Today’s customers expect quality technology to be delivered fast and frequently and they want to be delighted by new innovation too. We help clients achieve these goals by applying the best digital thinking, education, practices and technologies across the project lifecycle. Our services include Lean Business Analysis, Agile, Better Testing, DevOps, Education, Tools and Technologies. We also deliver solutions to meet today’s biggest challenges – creating the right structures, environments, culture and practices to allow self-organising, multi-disciplinary teams to deliver quality software at speed.