Kaizen Camp: Seattle 2013 Announced

Kaizen Camp

Kaizen Camp 5

Join us July 30-31 as Modus Cooperandi will be hosting its third annual Kaizen Camp: Seattle on the beautiful grounds of the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture. Join Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry as we host our third year of Personal Kanban, continuous improvement, and better work management in Seattle. This event is two days, with wonderful food, conversation, and learning in a beautiful setting.Early bird pricing is $99 for the two-day event and only 175 people can attend, so register NOW!Last year we sold out quickly. We look forward to seeing you there.Kaizen Camp™ is an unconference. It's two idea-dense days of conversations about learning, creating, and building value through Lean Principles, agile methodologies, systems thinking, problem-solving, the thought leadership of people like Deming, Ackoff, Kahneman, and Argyris, real-world stories, and the impacts of collaboration and respect in the workplace. Kanban, Personal Kanban, GTD, Agile, Six Sigma, 5s, Cynefin are all on the table...but so are the root of all these forms: Continuous Improvement or Kaizen.Join practitioners, thinkers, and luminaries from across healthcare, education, manufacturing, retail, human resources, publishing, software development, and personal productivity. We had a sold-out crowd last year, and we expect to sell-out again quickly. So be sure to register today.Kaizen Camp™ is brought to you by Modus Cooperandi and sponsored by:

• Rally Software

• Substantial

• LeanKit

• Agile Logic

• TLCLabs

Kaizen Camp: Seattle–What We Did at Camp

Kaizencamp2012Seattle01

Kaizencamp2012Seattle02

This year’s Seattle Kaizen Camp was awesome.I loved the range and diversity of the attendees, with people from health care, education, government, software development, and a host of other occupations. We had attendees from college students to C-Level management. We were once again very close to gender parity. And we had people from across the US, as well as Europe and Asia.All this to discuss our experiences with continuous improvement, Personal Kanban, and lean.The weather co-operated, so most of our 75+ sessions were held outdoors in the beautiful Seattle summer. Just warm enough to be comfortable.Sessions included:

• Kanban at Home

• Failing Well

• Lean Contracts

• The Cynefin Framework

• Accelerating Innovation

• Metaphors to Convince Others of Lean Principles

• Resilience with Kanban

• Extreme Self-Organization

• Personal Kanban Experiences

and more .. about 70 more.What was most important for Tonianne and me as organizers was the speed at which people created topics and the depth of conversations.All the topics and conversations were conceived of, led, and participated in by the attendees themselves. There were no official speakers, no lengthy powerpoint presentations, no middle-of-the-day sugar crashes in dark rooms. Kaizen Camp: Seattle was people practicing Lean, Personal Kanban, and Continuous Improvement talking about what they did and how they did it.We are looking forward to Seattle’s event next year, but in the interim we have several planning across the US.Coming up later this year (announcements for each will be made soon):

• Kaizen Camp: Boulder

• Kaizen Camp: SoCal

• Kaizen Camp: NYC

Please come to one near you!   Several of the Photos and notes have been posted here.

Kaizen Camp: Seattle 2012

lean camp 2011

harold speaking

Following last year’s excellent “Seattle Lean Camp,” we are now nearing Kaizen Camp:  Seattle 2012. (We did have a name change, so as not to confuse us with another set of camps with the same name.)Kaizen Camp is July 24-25, again at the beautiful Center for Urban Horticulture. Yet again, we have award-winning food trucks catering the event (both with vegetarian options), so no boring food! Already the event is nearly half full, with attendees from software, government, health care, manufacturing, education, and more.The diversity of voices and ideas is unparalleled – which is exactly what we were aiming for. Lean ideals and principles will be discussed. People sharing their success stories as well as their challenges. Different disciplines working together to create new ideas and explore continuous improvement.Last year we were blessed with great conversation, learning, food, and near gender parity. Judging by the buzz so far, this year promises to be even better.What to expect:

1. Great sessions

2. Conversations with other smart people

3. Learning about what is working

4. Strategizing about sticky problems

5. Exploring ways to create better working environments, systems, processes, and policies

What you will be spared:

1. Dull speakers

2. Bad boxed lunches

3. Canned presentations

4. Being silent while others talk at you

5. Sales pitches from consultants pretending to be speakers

Cost and SponsorsKaizen Camp: Seattle is $79 early bird and $99 late bird. With all this learning, two awesome meals, a full day of snacks, and a T-shirt from Nordstrom, that’s a steal. We couldn’t do this without our sponsors:

• Nordstrom Innovation Labs

• Modus Cooperandi

• University of Washington

• University of Washington – Bothell

• LeanKit Kanban

See you there!

Why I’m Excited About Lean Camp

LEAN_Camp-WebBanner

JUST LET ME LEARN!Hallway conversations are almost always what people peg as their favorite parts of conferences. Yet conferences rarely provide ample space and time for people to have these conversations. When we actually converse with our peers or with the speakers, we learn more and, more importantly, we retain more. We are actively engaged in the learning, rather than just being spoken to.When Jeremy Lightsmith and I sat down to plan a conference, we didn't spend any time on the format at all. We both knew we wanted conversation, learning, and community over talking heads, big names, and locations. The Open Space model was a logical fit for the Lean Camp we wanted to create.I am very excited about Seattle Lean Camp because it embodies some central ideas.

1. The Future of Work – In the last several years, science has uncovered some startling new truths about how we learn, how we collaborate, how we are motivated, and why we work. Through the intersection of Lean techniques, neurophysiology, and social economics, we are learning that humans respond better to respect than remuneration. Additionally, changes in the way we communicate and the cost of information storage and dissemination has had profound impacts on the workplace. As the workplace becomes more social and more humane, it also is becoming more innovative and less reliant on traditional top-down management.

2. Learning and Creation – Lean Camp is about value creation from the outset. While many attendees have been headliners at other conferences, at Lean Camp they are there to share their wisdom and learn from others – just like everyone else. The potential topics at Lean Camp are as varied as the participants. At Lean Camp we want to find new solutions to old problems in a dynamic, charged environment.

3. Cross-pollination - Conferences that are for one industry and attended by only people in that industry miss the opportunity to really learn from others. At Lean Camp, we already have attendees representing software design, government, manufacturing, medicine, academia, graphic design, engineering, and more.

4. Gender Balance – I have been pleasantly surprised to see something very near gender parity in the people signing up for Lean Camp. After years of putting on conferences in both software development and engineering, this is certainly a first for me. I'm looking forward to asking attendees what drew them to Lean Camp to find out why we are enjoying such remarkable attendance

5. The Fallacy of Work / Life Balance – Work life balance is more than personal and it is more than a choice. Whether we are employers or employees, we need to recognize and respect that “work” is part of life, not some opposing force we balance with life. Studies already show that companies with a strongly collaborative corporate culture have weathered the current economic downturn better. Pre-Lean Camp conversations have drawn focus on this fallacy and toward respect in the workplace.

6. Low Inventory – W. Edwards Deming warned us of keeping inventory in our companies decades ago. Inventory are those things that we create, believing they are value, but then need to maintain and mange those things. For manufacturing, inventory might be the parts you need to make your product, or the products themselves. We want to make just enough and at the right time. For a conference, inventory takes the shape of expensive speakers, venues, large elaborate dinners, and many sponsors with special needs. In creating Lean Camp, we've specifically kept our inventory low. Even though everyone who comes to Lean Camp will receive a free T-Shirt and free food from two of Seattle's premier gourmet food trucks, and will enjoy spending time at the University of Washington's beautiful Center for Urban Horticulture, Lean Camp is only $50.

7. Great Food – Those who know me, know when I’m around food can’t be far away. This year at Lean Camp we have two of Seattle’s premiere gourmet food trucks providing free lunches to all attendees. On Saturday we have Where Ya At Matt? with his awesome Cajun selection. On Sunday we have Pai’s with his highly acclaimed Hawai’ian and Thai works of art.

8. Clothing – Nordstrom’s Innovation Lab is making sure that everyone who attends also leaves warmer and happier with a beautiful Seattle Lean Camp T-Shirt.

9. Value Cascade – So what we have here is a beautiful setting, smart people, an open format in which to think, great food, and a stylin’ t-shirt. All for $50.

This year in Long Beach, California, the LSSC put on a conference that explored Lean and kanban in software development. We had a wonderful turnout and fantastic conversations that resulted. With Lean Camp, we are hoping to take those conversations and combine them with creative minds from other industries. We want to explore the personal, the teams, the governmental, and the corporate views of these emerging ideas.I am excited about Lean Camp's potential to unlock new ways of thinking about work, about life, and about the future. More than anything, I’m excited to see what community grows from this. We’ve built a strong community of practice for kanban and lean with Seattle Lean Coffee – what comes next?Thank you for all who have signed up thus far and looking forward to seeing the rest of you there as well.  (And I’m looking forward to the food ….)