Improving’s Jef Newsom will be delivering the closing Keynote at this year’s TulsaTechFest. Over sixty speakers from around the world will be convening in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to deliver tracks on topics such as enterprises architecture, software and web development, databases, project management, data security, and even graphic deign. The goal of the conference’s organizers is to “provide sessions that are immediately beneficial to the broadest range of IT professionals in their day-to-day jobs”.

Mr. Newsom will be presenting on the core tenets of Agile software development. Agile Methodology is believed to have “crossed the chasm into more broad-based adoption. As with most broad-based adoptions, there is a tendency for cargo cult mentality, rebranded status quo, and broad-based misunderstanding. This presentation will focus on one of the core tenets of Agile development, improving. By the end of this presentation you will have a number of very simple tools in your toolkit to recognize when you need to improve. They will help you find and remove the root cause of the problem to create lasting improvements” (http://techfests.com/Tulsa/2008/Speakers/JefNewsom/default.aspx).

Jef is a co-founder and the Agile Practice Leader for Improving Enterprises, Inc., the Dallas-based technology services company offering applied training, certified consulting, and rural sourcing, an innovative alternative to offshore. Jef is a strong proponent of agile software development practices and is proud to be one of the first 70 people to be recognized as a Microsoft Certified Architect for Solutions, and one of only 90 people ever to have received the distinction of Microsoft MVP for Solutions Architecture. Prior to founding Improving, he has consulted, trained, and shipped software in environments ranging from five person product startups to Fortune 50 corporations.