Well, another turn of the calendar page and it's 2008 already.  I wanted to extend my thanks once again to all of you who have supported and encouraged me in the past year.  I'm very excited about the New Year as we have many things happening here at Data Transfer Solutions and in the broader agile community.  First, a quick update on our office build out.  We've moved our development team out of my living room and are currently in our temporary digs until our future office is done being built out.  So far, we're loving the dev rigs we've built out (many thanks to Scott Hanselman and Jeff Atwood for the Ultimate PC build out specs) and the office space is bright, cheery and conducive to an agile team. Check out the new setup below:

Our new space is currently in the design phase and we are working with some great architects out of Boulder, Colorado (Wolfe Lyon Architects).  Our new office will be built using renewable resources and Green energy and IT practices.  It is also being designed around an agile philosophy and will feature open development spaces, lots of windows, glass partitions where needed, a multi-purpose conference room, and even a place for us to store our bikes inside!  The developer desks will be self-contained and set on wheels to facilitate pair programming and a variable configuration of the developer work area.  We're very excited and are looking forward to a move in date around March 1. We'll host an open house sometime after that, so be on the lookout for invites!

Another thing we're excited about for 2008 is the enterprise adoption of agile practices at Data Transfer Solutions.  We'll be working hard to introduce the rest of the DTS organization to agile practices.  I'll keep you abreast of our progress here on my blog.  Hopefully, we'll find some good knowledge to pass on to you as we move through our agile transition. 

In addition to adopting agile practices, DTS will also be providing agile coaching, consulting, and training starting in 2008.  We are actively working with our business partners to develop GIS specific agile training materials, as well as honing our own coaching skills to help others successfully adopt and refine their agile practices.

I'll also be working hard to provide new and interesting content for this blog.  In 2008, GeoScrum will feature two new interview series: Agile Minds and The Agile World.  Agile Minds will feature a series of interviews with today's top thought leaders in the agile movement including Mary Poppendieck, Andy Hunt, Esther Derby, James Coplien, Johanna Rothman, Jutta Eckstein, Mike Cohn, Ryan Martens, Jean Tabaka, Oksana Udovitska and many others.  The Agile World will feature a series of interviews with GIS developers, managers, and industry leaders about agile practices and agile adoption in the GIS world.

Dave Bouwman and I have also been busy being interviewed as well.  We've recently completed several interviews speaking about agile adoption at DTS, agile tooling, agile contracting, and agile practices in the GIS world.  As these become available on line, I'll post links to them here on GeoScrum.  The first interview was just released today.  It is on agile tooling and is available online now at TechTarget.

Finally, the Agilistas group on LinkedIn is currently up to 234 members. We will continue to grow this group and have plans to release an Agilistas website sometime this month, so stay tuned for details.  If you haven't joined Agilistas yet, head over to LinkedIn and get yourself signed up if you're interested.  Here's the direct link to the Agilistas Group sign up page.

So here's to a happy, healthy, and agile 2008!