Hi! My name is Mari Graulau. I am a Scrum Master working in the IT department at GEICO Auto Insurance. I have been a scrum master for less than a year. I have learned quite a lot about Agile in my short time as scrum master but I am always looking to supplement my knowledge. A co-worker suggested your site as having good content and a supportive community. I look forward to exploring the content and collaborating with the Coalition.
Welcome to the Coalition! Introduce yourself :-)
bradstokes
#285
Welcome Mari,
This is a great place to try out ideas in a supportive environment. The members are generous with their time and knowledge. I look forward to seeing what you bring out.
Cheers
Brad
andycleff
#286
Well… we’re batting at least 0.500 on that account 
Use all content of mine at your own risk!
Great to have you here!
tarascott
#287
Hi all!
My name is Tara and I’m based out of Minneapolis, currently working for a logistics company with about 5 development teams both teaching and coaching. I’m an agile coach who definitely came from the school of “hippie agile,” and spent all of my earlier days in the agile space mentoring with someone affectionately known as The Dude (David Hussman). I learned really early on about why being pragmatic is so important. I also learned right away that you don’t know what you don’t know.
I’ve been coaching for a few years now but have buckets to learn. I’m a big fan of experience over certifications, tough (but good) conversations over hierarchy and purpose over process. User research is also a huge passion of mine.
I also really love pugs, cycling and rock and roll. 
Thanks! Looking forward to growing and sharing here.
bradstokes
#288
Hi Tara,
Welcome to the coalition. I think to be effective we all need a little hippie in us. I come from a UI/UX Development background, so user research is always a good thing to hear in my ears.
And pugs… Well, my son would agree with you 100% there. The most beautiful personalities with such poor construction. If you are up for rock and roll, the guys did a whole podcast on agile in music.
I look forward to chatting with you. What’s the thing that really has you going atm?
Brad
ManuelGomes
#290
I’m somewhere between Anne the Architect, and Gerald the Generalist. A David of a couple of decades’ experience, Ivanning out on occasion, now mostly sitting among Ivans and working on their interactions with Elliots. But I still love hanging out with Daves - they’re my homies.
Frequently, some Elliot will ask me to “go make X happen” - when X is something the org doesn’t really know how to do, and needs to learn about PDQ. Other times, it’s “Go fix Y”. Y is usually hairy, misbehaved, and has horrid table manners. Other times still, I just find my own trouble. I’m good at that. I’m a knowledge door-kicker, a silo saboteur, an agent of change and mischief.
After dealing with quite a few agile dysfunctions, and benefiting from a few winning agile plays (mostly of the very unorthodox - nay, iconoclastic - variety), I figured that most of what I do is promote business agility up and down the organisation.
I hope to get a few of my “am I crazy, or…” answers here, to avail myself to the wheels people have come up with before me, so as to not have to reinvent them, and to provide comedic relief, iconoclasm on demand, and whatever experience I can contribute to my fellow insurgents.
agileGeorge
#293
Hi! I’m Georgina Hughes. I’m a ScrumMaster in London, UK. I’m a contractor, currently working with two teams in an exhibitions marketing company. I’ve been doing scrum mastery for about five years now. I spend a lot of time with the real world agile community here in London through such things as attending meetups and volunteering in Tobias Mayer’s ScrumMaster Clinics.
I’m more of Charlotte the Coach than any of the other personas. I’m usually the person who gets asked the hard answers about agile, and I’m getting more comfortable with not always having the answers to them. Last year I went on Lyssa Adkin’s Agile Facilitator and Agile Coach courses, and I found them to be life changing both professionally and personally.
I’ve found myself in a lot of early transitions into agile, and I’ve learned a lot from that. I’d like to go somewhere a little less dysfunctional in the future, but then I wonder what I would be needed for…?
kschlabach
#294
HAHAHAHA! Good luck with that!
Jokes aside, you could transition from “adoption” into “scaling”… not sure it will be any less dysfunctional though.
Bnorm
#295
Hail! I was so happy to find this great community online while trying to write a paper for school on discourse communities. During the day I am somewhere between Barry the Beginner and Peter the Product Manager. I have been a software developer on an agile team about five years ago, however now I am on the business side and function as a product line manager for an area of technology called “the internet of things”. I’m here because my developer counterparts at my organization are agile, and I want to learn everything I can to become a good product owner, and be able to relate to my developers so I can best serve them. At night I am still picking away at a degree online in information technology with a focus on information assurance and cyber security.
bradstokes
#296
Nice! Welcome to the coalition. Interesting subjects to be studying. How have you found the use of discourse in the creation of Communities of Practice in the technical world? I’m definitely curious.
Karina_Gerdes
#297
Hi, I am currently a Business Change Agent for the Retailer IT division of an Automobile Manufacturer that is trying to move from Waterfall to Agile. Ironically, my previous job was within the realms of Continuous Improvement for an Aerospace OEM supplier trying to become more “agile” (and failing) through introducing lean principles (such as Kanban) from the automotive sector within the manufacturing environment (without working to adjust c-level/management expectations in any shape or form) by coaching through an external consultancy.
My journey with agile is just starting but I am excited to be here and look forward to the ride. I view the opportunity of personal and professional growth within the project management space, and its’ various methodologies, a great personal challenge and welcome the “learning opportunities” that I will inevitably encounter.
bradstokes
#298
Wow,
That sounds super interesting and challenging at the same time. I’m not sure we ever get there, but it is a fun journey. How well do the principles of agile hold up in the automotive space, if not the practices?
I know the theory of constraints and Lean are things in the industry, but what of other practices and frameworks?
Welcome to the coalition. Hopefully, you get to share some of the learning opportunities here.
adeilsonrbrito
#299
hello everyone. I’m glad for be here. I’m a Chief Information Officer with 23+ years of experience in the technology area, focused in promoting and driving the digital transformation in my Organization: “Take digital to the core business”. Professionally I’m passionate about digital business, innovation, artificial intelligence, startups culture and agile mindset. I hope share ideas, exchange experiences and learn strong insights with the Coalition.
cusack
#300
It will be great to get some perspective through the Executive lens! Thanks for joining, and looking forward to hearing more about your experiences with startups culture and agile mindset…
bradstokes
#301
I’d second that. Welcome, Adeilson,
You will have faced some unique pressures few of us stare down. Balancing the will of the CEO with using technology to see the vision of the company come to life is never easy. I look forward to chatting with you.
You said the magic words of AI. So how do you think AI can assist developers and teams in finding better solutions? I’m not thinking the magical neural networks, I was actually thinking more the rules-based side of the coin. I’d think that finding a sufficiently large corpus of data to provide meaningful insights on team performance would be difficult in the extreme.
Welcome again.
Shaun_Mitchell
#302
Hello Everyone,
I’m so glad I stumbled across Agile Uprising. I’ve been listening to the podcast as much as I can to catch up. I feel I’m in a bit of a unique situation (perhaps you can tell me that I’m really not ). I’ve been apart of Scrum development teams in the past and loved the practices. I now work in an HR department trying to setup Agile HR, I still have oversight over the technology road map aligned with the our IT department.
We are in the process of creating value streams for HR with an agile discipline to scale agile outside the software development practice. It will be a really interesting / exciting adventure and I look forward to engaging the community in some thoughtful discussions.