I met Olaf at XP 2011 Madrid. That’s also where I met Mike for the first time. That’s where the discussions for the first ALE took place. It was a foundational conference in fact. Olaf, he was a tall German always with a smile on his face. With a sort of adventurer vibe, and from time to time surprised looks. Oddly enough a big jacket like Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven” (maybe my memory is failing me there and he’s only had the jacket more recently). In short, an eclectic mix.

Olaf won me over easily. He grabbed me and squeezed me against him. A huge “hug”. Since he’s 40cm more than me in width and height, I sort of dove into the middle. I’ve realized since that by giving me this huge “hug”, with his stature, Olaf was echoing a significant event in my existence. When my father died, at his funeral I was elsewhere, there without being there. Until Jeroen arrived. (Jeroen is another great friend forever, my Dutch side). Jeroen is even taller than Olaf. When he arrived unexpectedly, we weren’t expecting him, I rushed toward him and I dove into his arms, and there I truly broke down. I still cry about it today as I write this to you. The gigantic “hugs” from Olaf are echoes of that moment I believe. Not surprising that I love his speech on vulnerability so much. Emotion allows change, opens doors, but also crystallizes moments.

Over the course of our meetings something quite magical happened. A true friendship. ALE played a big role in that. We meet there every year, or almost, and we dance there. A sort of shamanic dance, offbeat, with unexpected levels of reading. The latest dance was at Lean Kanban Fr (the ritual has extended to other conferences), wandering around looking for a place we ended up at my canteen, my kitchen, the restaurant where I find myself every week (the Rusti, rue des Tournellles, Paris, if you go there you tell Vincent the owner that you come on my behalf, and you get whatever you want everything is very good, if in doubt the “penne alla norcina”). In short, we found ourselves at Rusti, there was a party next door, and since I’m a regular, Vincent the owner left us alone to go there, it was late, we were alone in the restaurant (there were 4 or 5 of us, including Dragos). Vincent is also a musician, and the music in the restaurant is good, very good. You can imagine the end: We turned up the volume, Vincent came back and we all danced among the set tables, then the people from the party next door joined us… surreal moment.

Well I’m losing you in my stories, but with Olaf since then we seek each other out, we find each other, we give each other depth: everything becomes more interesting with him around, I believe I have the same effect in his eyes. Recently he decided to be downright a sort of impresario for me, to spend time together. It’s with him that I did Darefest 2015, or the Scrum Gathering Prague 2015. And it’s not over. He works from time to time for the French branch of an international company, we meet in Paris, often, and we were also able to see each other at Lean Kanban Fr. Thank you Olaf for these moments.

I recommend that you take an interest in Olaf’s discourse. It’s not simple: it’s not a magic recipe but an attitude and an intention (these two words are key in my worldview, intention and attitude). It has several levels of reading not necessarily easy and a scope far from the usual first considerations of our contacts, wrongly so: vulnerability, acceptance, compassion are not easy notions to carry into our companies but they are essential. We don’t agree on everything, but certainly on all the fundamentals. And then we move forward together in our reflections, and that is priceless.

Thank you my friend.

Lean Kanban Fr 2015

A word about Lean Kanban Fr, quite a nice surprise. We can congratulate the organizers. Quality sessions and speakers, undeniably warm venue, sumptuous buffet, friends (Olaf, Mike, Natalie, Dragos, etc.) all the ingredients for a magical sauce to take. This conference is establishing itself as a reference.

During my talk I was able to benefit from two supporting effects: at the end of the day, having a conference in French after many English speakers was a relief for some. And my approach (organic, non-linear, emotional, warm) as a counterpoint to the tone of the conference (rather focused on kanban, matrix, figures, cardinality, causality, sequencing, coldness and arithmetic) was I think also a little breath of fresh air. I discussed there a naive perspective (term borrowed in the morning from the Keynote), on the forms and perspectives of our organic organizations. I’ve been talking for 1 year or more about doing the sequel to horde agile. Everything is there, I call it living organizations (Fabrice suggested the title to me) and I just have to give that thrust (or effort) so difficult to give in this exciting but exhausting end of year. I’m trying.

Here are the materials and the video of my conference. I still don’t quite have the storytelling.

Video

Slide

Scrum Gathering Prague 2015

The month after we meet up with Olaf at Scrum Gathering Prague 2015 to facilitate the Open Space during the 3rd day. Question: how to open a space that’s protected enough yet disruptive and invite people in? I’m truly becoming a specialist in this (after the Open Space at ALE Sofia, 150 people, and the Open Adoptions that I run), the facilitation of the Open Space at Scrum Gathering Prague 2015 with its 400 participants proved to be a challenge nonetheless.

How to be disruptive? We tried to sweep away with a humorous backhand all this useless growth around certifications, a subject so present at this conference. With a few destabilizing, provocative, but friendly strokes of humor. By inspiring people to dare: by starting by singing very famous songs with adapted lyrics (we love music). On one hand we distill an emotion: these songs necessarily evoke things, we try to sing all together (at 400…). But also by not being professional musicians we expose ourselves, we make ourselves vulnerable (singing, and playing guitar, in front of 400 people), and we survive easily: we can try, be vulnerable, even ridiculous, and have a good time, and survive, and love it.

Participate, dare, subvert, you are welcome. Beyond that, our Open Space expertise (Olaf’s and mine), allowed us to manage well all the other aspects (a double “marketplace” for the numbers and to avoid bottlenecks). We were very pleasantly surprised by the involvement of the participants who made this day a success (and Thanks to Bjorn for the helping hand!).

We hope to repeat the experience often, and if some people are interested in Open Adoptions or Open Space with Olaf and me don’t hesitate to contact us.

The slides that accompanied the Open Space: