2024 ACC-WW in Costa Rica

We’re getting close to finalizing our dates and venue, for Agile Coach Camp Worldwide. We also have a tentative agreement from a most excellent facilitator! This year we’re decoupling from the main conference for a few reasons that I (Paul Boos, the Initiative Chair) have been articulating since we have come back to in-person. This is will be an experiment for 1-2 years. Here is the rationale for the change:

• It limits how long the event can be as it spills into the conference for most people, so people take on a day and a half in front of a week long conference. This, in turn, often unintentionally limits the time that can be devoted to the conversations. And some people have commitments at the conference venue that take them away even earlier. Adding more time to the front-end, would start getting into a time frame that is a week and a half away from home.
• By being in front of the main Agile conference, it is always based in the US. For a Camp that has Worldwide in the title, that feels odd.
• More important than that, it limits access to people from wealthier nations or where travel to the event (within North America) is easier and cheaper.

So the experiment is to see if changing the location and timing will address these in the following ways:

• The event will be more of a destination event from 3-4 days. Longer events, particularly those based on an emergent agenda like that used in open space, are incredibly powerful as the threads of conversation surface in surprising ways. My observation is this spawns more innovative thinking on the subject(s) as people’s minds have some down-cycles to process.
  People also enjoy destination events more in many ways as they have longer to connect with others and take in some of the scenery and culture around them.
• Changing locations throughout the world over time feels more like a worldwide event and not just a US event. If the experiment goes well enough (mainly if it doesn’t produce a loss in the investment for the Alliance) we’ll move to the next location. It will come back to North America and likely the US at some point, but as long as the experiment continues to support the hypothesis that attendance is financially viable and helps a region’s attendance, we’ll likely continue experimenting with moving around. (Sort of how Mob Programming started – let’s dojo on this to learn, that was great, let’s continue to dojo again…)
• And by moving it around, we will be selecting locations that help make it easier for underserved areas to attend. The first couple of ‘experiments’ will be in locations where our core attendees of North America or Europe can attend easily while being able to serve some people from a target region. Later experiments will hopefully build up enough of a following that we can go farther away from these core areas so we can serve more regions.
• And a hopeful benefit is by holding a Camp in a different area of the world may spawn more regional Agile Coach Camps to continue serving their area.

So our first location is Costa Rica. It’s been chosen because it helps serve the Central and South American region that to my knowledge has no Agile Coach Camp. It’s a central location to much of that region and easily reachable by the US and Canada. While not the cheapest country, it isn’t outlandishly expensive; we’re choosing to focus on being in the capital of San José. I had enough willing support in country to help make it happen (mainly this is researching venues). It’s a beautiful country, so we hope some people will tack on a visit before or after the Camp.

Like all Agile Coach Camps that are under the Worldwide umbrella, it is brought to you as an Agile Alliance initiative, will be conducted in English, and will follow the Agile Alliance’s Code of Conduct.