We all know the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic left many conferences and events unsure of their futures with postponements and cancellations changing everyone’s plans. Not knowing what the next week or months would hold, the Improving team decided to pivot and do something they had never tried before. They made the quick and successful jump to take the Agile Shift Conference from being a 450 attendees in-person conference in Houston to a free Virtual Event, that saw attendees from all over the world.
Instead of a full one-day conference, this new virtual version of The Agile Shift spanned across the month of June, having one live-streamed talk every Monday – Thursday at 3:30pm Central. With support from our fellow sponsors: NRG, BP, FlightAware, and Scrum.org, we were able to bring together thought leaders from all different industries who have been through every stage of Agile and shared how their businesses have grown. Attendees came away with tips and tricks not only about doing Agile in person, but methods of doing it together with their teams remotely and making it be successful.
"I was impressed that the team was able to turn a physical conference to virtual in less than 30 days, and It was 5x the original size! " Devlin Liles, President of Improving – Houston says about the success of the event alternative format.
Here’s a look at the numbers:
18 talks
20 speakers
Over 1,450 attendees
37 different countries around the world
Average rating for the presentations 9.8/10
In addition to live streaming the talks, they were also recorded and posted on the Agile Shift YouTube page. This allowed for those that were not able to join live to still be able to catch the session and share with other colleagues. So far, the recorded talks have had 1,600 views with over 250 hours of watch time.
Comments from attendees: ‘I really enjoyed the ones I attended; glad that I can watch the ones I missed on YouTube!’
‘Please continue offering these sessions. They are very helpful.’
With the Agile Shift Virtual event being such a big success, we are looking at expanding our reach beyond Agile with another virtual conference in Q4 of 2020 or Q1 of 2021. Stay tuned to our website and social media channels for more details on the next event.