Agile on the Beach New Zealand is a fresh event, supporting the discovery and evolution of our mindset and practices around lean, agile, and systems thinking. The inaugural event is in Mount Maunganui, near Tauranga, on the weekend of 5-7 April 2019.
To balance the larger commercial conferences, this event is designed by practitioners for practitioners. Agile on the Beach NZ is a for benefit organisation, that is we do not intended to make a profit, but if we do, we will invest it back into appropriate initiatives. In our inaugural event, we will be using any profit as a koha (gift) to the local iwi and to Agile Alliance NZ, with any balance held towards our 2020 event. The ticket prices reflect this motivation, with the standard ticket price of $350 and masterclasses at $150.
Early beginnings
Agile on the Beach started its life in 2011 in Falmouth Cornwall (the South West of the UK). It’s intent was (and still is) to encourage interest in a emerging software industry in one of Europe’s poorest socio-economic regions. It showcased local success stories alongside well-known speakers and thought-leaders. As you can imagine, combining that with a party on the beach (or more recently now, on a boat), it was a roaring success and grew from strength to strength.
David Morris knew Allan Kelly, one of the co-founders of AOTBuk, and in 2014 started talking about bringing the concept to New Zealand. However, it wasn’t until he had recovered from his MBA and joined forces with Colart Miles, that it became a real possibility.
Wanting to respect the start conditions for AOTBuk, they sought a location that not only had a beach and the infrastructure to hold a conference, but also had the combination of tech start-ups and lower socio-economic groups. Out of three possibilities, Mount Maunganui stood out as a spectacular destination in its own right, important connections with the local iwi (through Colart’s friendship with Turi Ngati), as well as a growing agile community.