Last week saw the climax of the Agile Awards 2012 — from nominations to shortlisting to the awards themselves — and it really does get better and better every year. Some random notes from my experience…

• Compere Steve Punt was a real pro. He dropped in an agile joke within about 30 seconds of opening, and was relaxed and chatty throughout. And even though many of the citations he read were part gibberish to him (I mean, he’s probably not that familiar with TDD and CI, is he?) he kept the awards-giving bouncing along happily.
• Each award category allowed its sponsor to say a few words, and the sponsors did a really good job. A few words from each, enough to let us know who they were, but nothing excessive, and they put the shortlisters and winners foremost.
• The shortlisters and winners were all genuine stars. As chairman of the judges I learned about the hard work and success of all the nominees, but it was still great to hear the huge cheers as each name was read out. There were plenty of shortlisters and winners, too, who you might not have heard of — hopefully we’ll all hear more from them in the coming year.
• Great to talk at length to Alison Saunders, a fabulous project and programme manager who I had the privilege of working with a few years ago. And she may just have helped me understand why we agile technology people so often, and uniquely, pursue organisational and behavioural change.
• The charity raffle in aid of the British Heart Foundation provided much entertainment. Someone won a wifi drone helicopter. I do hope they made friends with the nice people on the GCHQ table, because I’m sure they’d have had some good ideas about how to trick it out.

Congratulations to Julie Voice for driving the operation and making it happen once again. Go see the winners and their citations. Go see the overview of the awards and how they were judged. And keep an eye on http://www.agileawards.co.uk to see how you can nominate your favourite team, company or individual next year. Because evidence suggests next year will be even better still.