This is a version of an email I recently sent out to all the people in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane who participated in a LAST Conference, in 2017.

Some favourite photos from LAST Conferences 2017.

I have recently returned from Brisbane, where I participated in the very first LAST Conference Brisbane. This marked the end of the extended tour of Australia for LAST Conferences in 2017. It started in Melbourne in June, headed to Sydney in July, and stopped off for the first time in Canberra, in September.

Along the way, it was really gratifying to see over a thousand professionals get together to share their knowledge and to learn from each other. It was also good to receive the highest rating we have ever had for LAST Melbourne, an excellent improvement on the rating in Sydney, and very high satisfaction from our colleagues in Canberra and Brisbane.

“Great topics, excellent speakers, and great to see the local community. 10/10”

— Brisbane participant

Thanks

The collegiate and community feel of LAST Conference, that we aim for, depends on the enthusiasm of the people who participate i.e You.

Kudos must go to the organising teams in each city, that include:

Melbourne - Gabor Devenyi, Wai Ling Ko, Steven Mitchell, Paul Dealy, Craig Brown
Sydney - Caoilte Dunne, Gareth Bowell
Canberra - John Connolly, Alex Sloley, Irene Zhen, Mia Horrigan , Matthew Hodgson
Brisbane - Dave Pryce, Ryan McKergow, Karen Jenkin, Bhavesh Sharma, Andrew Robinson

Each city also had extra content curators and helpers, who deserve a pat on the back.

In addition, the affordability of LAST Conferences depends on organisations who provide support, both in kind and financially.

The organisations who supported one or more LAST Conferences were:

MYOB, elabor8, REA Group, Dius, Reece Group, Aconex, Swinburne University, UTS, AGL, Oakton, Zen Ex Machina, and Tatts Group.

Keep it going, Keep in touch

Don't forget to keep the spirit of LAST going throughout the year by supporting the Meetups in your city. Volunteer to share knowledge at a meetup, and consider submitting for a LAST Conference (or more than one) in 2018!

These are the meetups that Tabar are closely associated with via organising content and venues and sponsoring. By the way, we always appreciate support for meetups from companies that can host and/or provide catering.

There's many ways you can keep in touch with us on social media:

Twitter - @LASTconf or @TabarAus
Facebook - Last Conferences or Tabar
LinkedIn - Tabar
You can also sign up to receive our Keeping Tabs digest of articles, videos, and audio regarding lean, agile, systems thinking and the world of work…all key themes related to the events that Tabar organises.

Slack

We also recommend our Slack team. There's hundreds of people from all over Australia involved, with active discussions about all sorts of topics relevant to LAST concepts. If you're not a member, you can apply to join by emailing us. If you came to a LAST Conference in 2017, check your inbox for an invitation.

Photos

You can see a few of my favourite photos in the collage, above. You can add your own and see if you can spot yourself in the Flickr Pool or the Google Photos album.

2017 logo design by Bruce Taylor

Tshirts

This year's design was by Bruce Taylor. You can get one (or a design from other years) here.

We also have a bunch of stickers left over. Ask me for one, next time you see me!

Diversity/Gender Balance

LAST Conferences are signatories to the Diversity Charter, because we want to reflect the communities that we serve. Although diversity is not just about gender, something we aim to do is encourage a better gender balance to run sessions at LAST Conferences. I intend to write a separate post about how we have tried to do this and the results.

In summary

It feels like we have come a long way since Craig Brown and I ran the first edition of LAST Conference in 2012. I remember him high-fiving me, saying "We are awesome". This year, I'd like to give everyone who participated in a LAST Conference in 2017 a virtual high five, as we have most defintely continued the awesome-ness. Thanks!

It's a meetup on steroids

Of the various descriptions there are about the event, I like "It's a meetup on steroids", the best. It's designed for people who have a bit of experience with agile (I run an event called 1st Conf for people who have less experience). We have a whole day of workshops, talks, lightning talks, retrospectives etc. We deliberately have up to 7 concurrent sessions, to keep things exciting and we keep it really affordable, too.

Who comes?

In the lead up to this year's event, I was doing some analysis of who comes along so I thought I'd share. Look ma, I did a pie chart! Click the preview above for a larger version.

Not unsurprisingly, people who fit into a manager role, make up the greatest proportion of participants, followed closely by Business Analysts. The types of job title that made it into the Manager bucket were "Business Solutions Manager" or "Practice Manager".

It's good to see that there is a reasonably diverse spread of roles and it's really good to see that Developers are about one fifth of the cohort, there's a few Architects and a good few QA people. I would like more UX folk to come along…we've got a couple of UX sessions in the pipeline this year.

18 September 2015

We've run the event in the darkest days of Melbourne Winter, up until now. This year, we're going to be in Spring! In order to make use of Swinburne Uni's brand-new Advanced Manufacturing Design Centre (AMDC), we have moved away from their crowded winter term and instead will be on 18 September 2015. We will be opening registration in the coming days (signup to the mailing list to be the first to know), and you can still submit a session idea, over on the LAST Conference website.

LAST Conferences 2017