AgilePalooza Los Angeles Speaker Bios
Diana Larsen
Diana Larsen sparks the creation of workplaces where productive teams display resilience in times of change and focus on frequent delivery of high value software their customers want and use. Drawing on fifteen+ years of experience working with technical professionals, Diana takes a pragmatic approach to consulting with leaders and teams to promote work process designs where innovation, inspiration, and imagination flourish.
Diana leads system-wide groups in collaborative thinking and planning, as well as guiding teams through project kick-offs, chartering and retrospectives. She coaches managers and leaders on their role in a changing workplace and presents workshops on agile adoption, self-organizing team development, team leadership & management, organizational change, and leading retrospectives.
Current (2007-2010) chair of the Agile Alliance Board of Directors, Diana co-authored Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great! and posts at her blog, “Partnerships & Possibilities” http://www.futureworksconsulting.com/blog . Diana discovers solutions and possibilities where others find only barriers and obstacles.
Doug Shimp
Douglas E. Shimp has 18 years of experience in the technology field and has played key roles in software development (developer, QA, Analyst, Manager, Leader, Coach and Consultant etc). Doug whose passion is about teams and applied learning for real product development is establishing himself as a leader in this area. He believes that the core bases for applied agile is that "You must see the result for it to be real; otherwise it is all just theory to the individual". He is actively writing a book on Scrum Topics.
One of Doug's distinctions is his focus on the interaction of technology and corporate cultural issues. He is an active writter on numeros blogs and a regular speaker at conferences (you can often find Doug at one of our events). He has taken his passion for bending technology to help people better communicate. Doug is actively using his passion to improve technology and people interactions. He has establish both inperson and online communities and regulary fosters social networks where individuals and companies can build better reputations.
Doug is a Certified Scrum Trainer with the Scrum Alliance and an Trained Facilitator with Innovation Games.™
Luanne Curran
Luanne Curran is a Product and Agile consultant for VersionOne. Prior to joining VersionOne, Luanne was a Project Leader and ScrumMaster at Farm Credit Services of America where she led agile projects for a company-wide initiative.
Luanne has twenty years of software development experience in various roles including developer, business analyst, project manager and ScrumMaster. A prior user of VersionOne, Luanne provides a great blend of agile process and tool experience. Her breadth of experience with software development also allows her the opportunity to share real life experiences and what it takes to transition from a traditional project leadership role to an agile one.
Paul Culling
Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Paul is currently on the board of the Agile Alliance and has been on the board of his local user group, Agile Vancouver, for the past four years helping organize monthly Agile events and four successful conferences in the Vancouver area. Paul is a trained innovation games facilitator and experienced in open space facilitation. Paul has worked extensively with Agile community groups at local, regional and international levels and is the founder and editor of the Agile Chronicles newsletter for VersionOne. Paul is a technology marketing professional with 17 years experience in the development and marketing of both packaged and service based offerings. As part of his role as Director of Marketing at VersionOne, Paul also has been working as part of a team using the scrum framework outside of a development environment. Working from Vancouver, BC with the majority of the team in Atlanta, Georgia, Paul also has first-hand experience with distributed Agile practices.
