Question: where can you find over 250 highly experienced project leaders including XP, Crystal and Agile luminaries, many dozens of PMPs and the lead researchers on CMM and RUP all in the same room within a resort with an enormous 4.5 acre atrium?

Answer: at the Spring 2009, Global Scrum Gathering within the luxurious Gaylord Palms resort in Orlando, Florida

A fine prelude to the conference was provided on Sunday the 15th with the Project Management Institute hosting a pre-conference party. This event was made only more memorable by NASA's contribution - the launching the Discovery Space Shuttle which the attendees watched from the venue's front entrance (see the non-zoomed photo on the right).

The conference proper opened with an address from Ken Schwaber (see the Welcome slide to the right). The following are some key points from his presentation. You can find the slides here on the Scrum Alliance site.

• There is a focus on speakers from companies using Scrum rather than consultants
• There are now 54,196 CSMs globally (more than indicated in the slide in the downloadable PDF)
• The Fall gathering will be in Munich, Germany in in October 2009
• The next Sprint gathering will be at the same venue in Orlando, Florida in 2010
• The Scrum Alliance now has a physical home in Burlington, MA
• A definition of Scrum has been distilled into a 16 page Scrum Guide
• The Scrum Alliance is launching a new-look website known as the ScrumHub
• If you do Scrum all alone, you will feel all alone - the new ScrumHub addresses this by connection people
• There are now facilities for virtual user groups
• If you are having difficulties with Scrum, you can now schedule someone to talk to you - this is not paid consulting
• Doing Scrumbut is like putting duct tape over your mother-in-law's mouth!
• A certain amount of sponsorship money from the gathering is to go to articles and research
• The Scrum Alliance has enlisted researchers from:
  • Mark Paulk from Carnegie Mellon University - best known for leading development of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM)
  • Philipe Kruchten from the University of British Columbia - best known for his work on Rational Unified Process (RUP)