David Eddy

Co-founder, Lean Filmmaking & CTO, Agworld

Closer to the customer

Using Agile in filmmaking – with Kylie Eddy

Filmmakers are trained to avoid customers like the plague. In the film industry, they’re not even referred to as ‘customers’, they’re an ‘audience’.Conventional wisdom says that the filmmaker’s vision is more important than the customer’s needs, that you must know all the answers before you start, that the film has to be ‘perfect’ before anyone sees it and that everything is on the line with one huge all-or-nothing bet.

Encouraging filmmakers to get early feedback from customers before they even pick up their camera is an uphill battle. But once they try Lean Filmmaking, even the most die-hard auteurs can’t argue with the results. They appreciate how customers can help them make better decisions and that understanding their audience actually gives them more creative freedom.

In this talk, siblings Kylie Eddy (a filmmaker) and David Eddy (an Agile coach) will demonstrate how they test assumptions, impart lessons that are relevant across industries and share war stories from the Agile trenches.

About David Eddy

David Eddy has managed Agile teams in web and software development, was an Agile consultant for ThoughtWorks, a technical product owner at Bankwest, and is the current CTO of Agworld. David combined his Agile coaching skills with his sister Kylie’s filmmaking expertise: re-imagining how films can be developed, produced, marketed and distributed by using an Agile mindset. Their project is named Lean Filmmaking. David is a proud dad to three boys and an enthusiastic sci-fi fan.