Is Agile Open Northwest Worth It?
- Ray Arell
- Dec 29, 2025
- 2 min read
Every year, someone asks whether Agile Open Northwest is “worth it.” So let’s skip the polite marketing language and be honest.
Here are five excellent, highly sarcastic reasons you might want to stay home:
You prefer conferences where someone reads slides at you for eight hours. Agile Open Northwest has no pre-written agenda and no one hiding behind a deck. Instead, people talk about real problems they are actually facing. You will have to think, listen, and contribute. Understandably inconvenient.
You do not want to learn from people who are actually doing the work. This event attracts practitioners, leaders, coaches, and builders with lived experience. Not polished case studies. Not theoretical perfection. Just real-world learning, shared openly. Much riskier than safe success stories.
You are uncomfortable being treated like an adult. There are no tracks, no expert panels, and no permission required. You choose the conversations that matter to you and move on when they do not. Radical autonomy can be unsettling if you are used to being managed through an agenda.
You enjoy networking that feels awkward and transactional. If you love collecting LinkedIn connections you will never speak to again, this might not be for you. Agile Open Northwest is inconveniently human. Conversations are honest. Relationships form naturally. You may even feel like you belong.
You would rather complain about the state of Agile than help shape what comes next. This is a space full of people rebuilding, experimenting, questioning assumptions, and caring deeply about the future of our work. It is far easier to stay cynical from a distance.
People do not come to Agile Open Northwest to be impressed. They come to reconnect. They come to remember why the work mattered. They come to find others who still care enough to do something about it.
If any of this made you smile, wince, or feel slightly called out, that is your signal.
Register for Agile Open Northwest. Bring your curiosity. Bring your questions. Bring your whole self. Leave with new perspectives, real connections, and renewed energy for what comes next!
If your company aligns with these values, support them in action by sponsoring this outstanding nonprofit and helping keep this experience accessible and thriving.
Register here, and I hope to see you at the event!
