Exploration Through Example

We are soliciting nominations for the 2008 Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice.

Each year, the Agile Alliance awards the Gordon Pask Award on the last day of the Agile 200X conference. It recognizes two people whose recent contributions to Agile Practice make them, in the opinion of the Award Committee, people others in the field should emulate. In order to grow the next generation of Agile thought leaders, the award is given to people whose reputation is not yet widespread.

Each year, we fiddle with the award. This year’s fiddling is with the nomination process. It will be roughly modeled after the collaboration or trust model of some forms of microcredit. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameen_Bank.) We solicit group nominations made by collections of at least five individuals who have personal experience with the nominee.

The nominations should describe that experience and cover such topics as:

• what ideas the nominee has championed, and what the effect has been.
• which people the nominee has helped improve the practice of their craft, and how.
• the ways in which the nominee has fostered community (such as user groups, conferences, and the like).

The nominating group may be people who work with the nominee, but a successful nominee would have had an effect beyond a single company. You’ll forgive the nominating committee if they’re dubious about five consultants from one company nominating a sixth—please find clients who’ve benefited.

Send nominations to paskers@googlegroups.com by Wednesday, August 6. You may revise your nomination at any time up to the deadline, and committee members may suggest ways to make the nomination better before then.

The committee is composed of past recipients of the award (Laurent Bossavit, Steve Freeman, Naresh Jain, Nat Pryce, Jeff Patton, J.B. Rainsberger, and James Shore), plus the original members (Rachel Davies, Dave Thomas, and Brian Marick).

As is always the case, it’s Brian Marick’s fault the nominations are starting late.

Please forward this link to people you’d like to see form a nominating group.