Ecosystem Affinity Group Write Ups from SprintTwo

On day two of SprintTwo, we met to discuss how we could grow the ecosystem for agile marketing. We broke up into twelve affinity groups. You can see the groups below.

SprintTwo Ecosystem affinity group miro board

Several of the affinity group leads submitted write-ups of their breakouts, which are posted below.

Consultancies Group – The group leader was Andrea Fryrear

The main needs identified were to improve the buyer/client experience by establishing credibility, credentials, or similar for Agile marketing trainers/coaches/organizations; to improve connections among trainers so they can help each other, and increase collaboration between trainers and tool vendors.

  • Initially, we talked about partnering with the foundation to establish criteria for being an approved individual or organization, seeing the foundation as a neutral group that would vet applying people/orgs. Today we agreed on taking an MVP approach to this by starting to document what we believe the necessary qualifications are for a successful training/coaching/transformation partner, with the goal of having many groups sign off on it and distributing it to potential buyers. 
  • We met for the first time today and agreed on the doc I mentioned above as well as looking into the creation of a private Slack group (or similar) to bring together trainers/organizations to support one another. The outstanding question remains about whether there will be any barrier to entry for this group. 
  • We’ll be reconvening in 2 weeks to review the work on the qualifications doc and determine when/how to try setting up the private trainers group. 

Thought Leadership Group – The group leader was Giannina Rachetta

  •     What solutions were considered?
  • Channels of distribution for thought leadership content
    • Feedback loops for continuous learning and cross-pollination (local/int’l conferences)
    • Knowledge hub
    • Content publication cadence
  • Different content topics and ideas were discussed as well
    • Step by step guides/book of knowledge/adoption toolkit
    • Cultural change required to adopt
    • Agile marketing metrics and assessment tools (how to use them, what works, what doesn’t)
    • Career path and competency journey
    • Agile marketing applied (from practitioners)
  •     What were some of the pros and cons discussed?

There was some confusion as to what the thought leadership track (or guild) was about. Folks initially focused on the channels of distribution but after further discussion, the group agreed that this track is about content creation first.

  •     What are the next steps?
  • Agreed on a charter statement to define the Thought Leadership guild since some ideas were very close tied to the Higher Education/Training and Case Studies categories
  • Meeting cadence and method of staying in touch (slack channel was suggested)
  • Track/guild leads were established and they were going to follow up with the next steps above.

Foundation Group – The group leader was Jim Ewel

The Solutions Considered

  1. Create a foundation/association chartered with expanding the reach of Agile Marketing. Organize future Sprints, create additional certifications, PR/AR work, etc
  2. Do both our own organization and improve relationships with other Agile organizations
    1. Create – if there isn’t one yet – an agile marketing chapter within established industry associations (AMA, DMA, similar int/l organizations) as a first step
    2. Link in with Business Agility Institute
    3. Form alliances/ enroll the UX and CX communities

 Pros/Cons

We didn’t really discuss pros/cons; everyone felt that there needed to be some kind of organization. We discussed more things like:

  1. What is the mission statement of this group?
  2. What is the governance model?
  3. We need some dedicated people, not just volunteers. 2-3 people, maybe part-time at first
  4. How do we fund this operation?
  5. Does it need a customer advisory board?

 Next Step

Meeting to kick-off scheduled for Nov 3rd

 Global Agile Marketing Committee 

The global agile marketing affinity group met, and held another meeting after SprintTwo. The group is working on a list of projects and prioritizing them. Including translating the Agile Marketing Manifesto into the first three languages, French, Spanish, and English, and then ten languages. The committee will also work on projects to evangelize Agile Marketing globally.