Kelsey van Haaster has been a staple member of the Agile community for a number of years in Melbourne, and she has been a supporter of Tabar events from the very beginning.

It gave us great pleasure to have Kelsey assist in the curation of 1st for this year. She has taken charge of the design of the second day of workshops and she also took a lead in driving diversity across the speakers to ensure a balanced conference.

Take a read of our short interview with Kelsey, getting a feel for what 1st is really trying to achieve this year.

1st Conference is being held on 2-3 March. Registration is available now.

Dan Prager is active in the Melbourne Agile community, presenting at meetups, delivering training with Tabar, and is also a co-founder of www.skillfire.co, an Agile and Innovation consultancy. He works with forward-thinkers to bring the best of Agile and Lean approaches to Business and IT in a sensitive and effective manner.

Dan switched from scientific research to software development immediately after completing his PhD in mathematical physics, and was an early local adopter of Agile approaches. Given his broad experience Dan seemed like a great person to interview for some insights into 1st Conference, and he certainly didn't disappoint.

Read on to find out about Dan's upcoming talk and workshop, and a little bit of his story and relationship with Agile.

1st Conference is being held on 2-3 March. Registration is available now.

Dr Alistair Cockburn is one of the initiators of the agile movement in software development, helping write the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in 2001, the agile PM Declaration of Interdependence in 2005, and co-founding the International Consortium for Agile in 2009.

He is also known for describing Software development as a Cooperative Game, creating the oath of non-allegiance, finally defining Use Cases, and for developing the Crystal family of agile methodologies. When not doing all that, he likes to travel, dance, dive, or sit underwater.

I took an opportunity to ask Alistair a few questions in the lead up to 1st Conference, have a read.

1st Conference is being held on 2-3 March. Registration is available now.

We want to marry up the theory and inspiration with practice. We hope this will be a deeper learning experience and allow people not to just come and forget about it the next day.

People should be inspired by the talks and understand the ideas and theories behind them. We then want people to be able to go and learn something practical about at least one of those 4 core concepts and take something they can try straight away.