There are really awesome presentations lined up for this years Agile Roots, and I’m looking forward to most of them (although the downside of a multi-track conference is you have to miss many presentations, but life is about choice and I digress…)

Someone asked me to tell them what I wanted to see most on the program… I couldn’t pick one, but I narrowed it down to two. (this, this and this were in the running for the top spot…)

One is a presentation of ideas that Agile needs to get to the next level, and the other is a presentation I always hoped someone would give, based on my experience with the both of these communities.

These two presentations are Jeff Patton’s ‘No One Wants Your Stupid Process‘ and Pat Maddox’s ‘Growing Up Agile‘.

Jeff’s focus is bringing great products to market. All the Agile in the universe can’t help if no one wants the product. He’s extremely thoughtful and thought provoking. I’ve been an admirer of Jeff’s work for a long time and we’re lucky to have him at Agile Roots (even though he lives in Salt Lake City, the man is in demand and constantly on the road).

I’m most familiar with Pat from his code and contribution to Ruby projects. I’ve met Pat in passing, but never had the chance to really have a conversation. Hopefully, we can fix that at the conference. If his talk at Mountain West Ruby Conference was any indication, this will be a great presentation.

As fate would have it, these two had recent conversation that resulted in Pat posting this on his blog: Are you punching your users in the face?

And if you are, who are you really hurting?

Well…

Are you?

(ok, that was probably gratuitous)

Between that post, and the comments (several of whom will also be at the conference), I’m looking forward to seeing these presentations and the conversations resulting from both of them.