The benefits of conference co-location (Business Analysis Forum within Building Business Capability 2010)

I'm not there, but there's definitely an interesting conference taking place this week. Actually, there are three interesting conferences:

Building Business Capability 2010 is three co-located conferences for the price of one. Our Chairs have created this never-before event recognizing that all three pieces of the puzzle can help you create effective, complete business solutions. Attend just one conference, or mix sessions across all three – your choice. Join an unsurpassed group of professionals tasked with building more capable organizations. Whether you are interested in Business Process, Business Rules or Business Analysis, or simply want to make your organisation more agile, responsive and effective, don’t miss this opportunity! See the whole picture and share experiences with like-minded practitioners and managers.

Since my primary interest is in business analysis (although I have interests in the other two areas also), I investigated the Business Analysis Forum microsite to see what that track looked like. Here's a sample:

Tuesday | 11:30am - 12:30pm | Business Analysis Forum Track

Presentation
Nonfunctional Requirements: Forgotten, Neglected, Misunderstood

SPEAKER(s):
Ellen Gottesdiener
Principal Consultant, EBG Consulting, Inc.

ABOUT THIS SESSION:

Non-functional requirements are essential to build the right product, right. Yet analysts, developers, and business customers often struggle with when and how to define and document non-functional requirements. Some teams neglect non-functional requirements during requirements analysis, considering them less important or unrelated to user requirements. Or they specify them incompletely, or with un-testable attributes. Join Ellen Gottesdiener in a fast-paced survey of key practices to help you identify and define non-functional requirements. By acknowledging the equal importance and value of non-functional requirements, your team will create requirements documentation that fully captures the product's needs.

Key Learning Objectives:
1. The different types of non-functional requirements (quality attributes, external interfaces, and design and implementation constraints)
2. Practical techniques to represent quality attributes and how to define their acceptance criteria
3. Visualizing external interfaces
4. Tracing non-functional to functional requirements.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER(s):
EBG Consulting, Inc. principal consultant and founder Ellen Gottesdiener is an internationally recognized facilitator, coach, trainer, speaker, and expert on requirements development, product chartering, retrospectives, agile requirements, and collaborative workshops. Ellen’s company provides high-value training, facilitation, and consulting services to agile and traditional teams. Author of two acclaimed books (Requirements by Collaboration and The Software Requirements Memory Jogger), Ellen delivers training, facilitation, and consulting services globally; speaks at industry conferences; writes articles, blogs, and tweets; and is an IIBA (BABOK™) expert reviewer and contributor to the BABOK agile extension. EBG’s Web site provides a variety of useful practitioner resources as well as access to Ellen’s free eNewsletter Success with Requirements.

But the strength of the conference is that you can pick and choose between the tracks, allowing you to tailor a conference experience that is similar to your own needs.

As it turns out, I'll be attending a separate conference in California later this week - one that, although much smaller, offers its own two-track presentation.