The Eclipse Foundation (http://eclipse.org/) is pleased to announce a new technical conference focused on connecting the latest software development tools, Agile methods and people across the entire application lifecycle.  This new conference, called Agile ALM Connect, will be held March 26-29 in Reston, VA and will be co-located with EclipseCon 2012.

Agile ALM Connect will include technical sessions to educate practitioners on tools and strategies for modernizing and evolving the application development lifecycle.   It will explore:
• The interaction between development and DevOps
• Foundations and methodologies for continuous delivery and continuous integration
• Integration between Test Management, Quality Management, Release Management, Build Management
• Agile task management
• Task-focused collaboration
• ALM and Platform as a Service (PaaS) / Cloud Computing
• Mobile Development Lifecycle
• Deploying and scaling Agile methods, such as Scrum and Kanban, with tools
• Leveraging open source technologies such as Maven, Git, Hudson/Jenkins, Puppet, Mylyn plus many more

“Agile methods, open-source lifecycle tools and new deployment destinations such as mobile and cloud are transforming the way that we build software,” explains Mik Kersten, Agile ALM Connect Program Chair and CEO of Tasktop Technologies.  “In the last few years we have witnessed an explosion of new tools and processes that make building and deploying software easier.  But as teams and organizations attempt to modernize their ALM stack, they are hitting against major challenges introduced by the rate of change and the heterogeneity of these new tools and practices. Agile ALM Connect will educate attendees on the new landscape for integrating tools and connecting people to enable a new level of software lifecycle and collaboration.”

The Eclipse Foundation is a well-respected open source community that provides open source development tools used by millions of developers.  Best known for the Eclipse Java IDE, the Eclipse community also produces key Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions: including Hudson for continuous integration, Mylyn for task management, EGit and JGit for distributed source code repositories and integration with Maven.   Agile ALM Connect will be co-located with the annual EclipseCon conference.

The Call for Papers (http://www.eclipsecon.org/2012/agilealm/cfp) is now open for Agile ALM Connect.  Industry leaders and technical experts are invited to submit speaking proposal for the conference.  Especially desired are case studies and real world experience with Agile and ALM.  The deadline for submissions is November 11, 2011.

The program will be selected by a program committee that includes the following experts:
• Mik Kersten, Program Chair and CEO of Tasktop Technologies
• Luke Kanies, CEO of PuppetLabs
• Michael Huettermann, Author of Agile ALM
• Jason Van Zyl, CTO of Sonatype
• Dave West, Research Director at Forrester Research

Sponsorship opportunities are also available for Agile ALM Connect and EclipseCon. For more information please visit: (http://www.eclipsecon.org/2012/prospectu).