A Funny Thing Happened When Presenting At Agile 2023

I’ve been lucky enough to speak at conferences for a decade now, but this year? Totally next level. Agile 2023 was the biggest stage I’ve ever been on. When that acceptance email landed, I was honestly over the moon… for about twenty minutes. Then reality hit: “Oh boy, now I actually have to deliver.”

I spent months building my talk—tweaking slides, running activities by friends, iterating until everything felt just right. My goal? Make learning about agile maturity fun, not just another lecture. The trickiest part was designing activities that were challenging but not impossible. After plenty of trial runs (and more than a few tweaks), I thought I’d nailed it.

Fast forward to showtime. The room was buzzing, the audience was engaged, and the conversation flowed. Then came the “big finale” activity—the one meant to pull everything together. And… it flopped. Instead of that “aha!” moment, things went sideways.

Honestly? It stung. But here’s the thing: the presentation still sparked great conversations all week. And after a bit of sulking (hey, I’m human), I realized this was a classic agile moment. Instead of blaming the room or myself, I started asking questions. Was the activity too complex for a first-time group? Did my test runs work only because my friends had more context? Or was it something else entirely?

It’s easy to shrug off a flop and move on, but that’s not how we grow. I reached out for feedback immediately and began planning experiments to identify the root cause of the issue. With a few tweaks, some peer support, and honest input from others, I’m hoping to crack the code—and maybe even turn this into a topic for Agile 2024.