Kaizen Camp: Seattle 2013 Announced

Kaizen Camp

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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

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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

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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!