GET YOUR TICKETS HERE
NOTE: Individual plenary session abstracts are coming soon !
All of the speakers listed here are speaking during the morning of main event on February 5. The Symposium is a 3-day learning event with the main Symposium event on February 5 and Master classes scheduled the day before and day after. All of the plenary speakers on February 5 are also teaching these courses. You can choose to participate for 1, 2 or 3 days.
OUR KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
COX AUTOMOTIVE EXECUTIVE EBENEZER IKONNE
Ebenezer Ikonne works for Cox Automotive (a business unit of Cox Enterprise) where he provides support and guidance for teams which develop and deliver software solutions that are transforming the automotive industry. Ebenezer has held a wide range of senior leadership positions in different types of organizations such as software product organizations, services organizations, and startups. Ebenezer is passionate about engaging individuals in delivering products and services that make a difference in society. Ebenezer blogs at eikonne.wordpress.com, and is on Twitter @eikonne and can be contacted on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/ebenezer-ikonne
Eb’s Keynote Session:
If you haven’t figured it out already, organizations don’t need good leadership to achieve their financial goals. Your department doesn’t need good leadership to deliver software on time, hit sales targets, or close X number of tickets. But it won’t always be this way. Organizations that do not evolve leadership and the role of the formal leader in organizations will eventually become extinct. The demands of the 21st century continue to put a strain on leaders that did not exist before. Leaders have always faced challenges that were difficult to define and for which no clear and obvious solution exists. However, the dynamic and constant change in business, legislation, economics, and societal norms have made these challenges even more complex. Also, the face of the workplace continues to change as well, with the new entrants into the workplace demanding treatment that previous generations of workers may not have asked for. Employees (and society as a whole) are beginning to hold their leaders to much higher standards. For organizations to remain successful, they will need to develop a new approach to leadership and a new type of leader in their organization. Leadership will need to shift from the realm of the individual to the realm of the collective. Leaders will need to truly care for those in their care. The keynote will explore how leaders can create direction, alignment, and commitment which results in an organization with highly engaged employees making an impact in society.
Plenary Speaker and Masterclass Instructor:
DOUG KIRKPATRICK
Doug Kirkpatrick is an organizational change consultant, TEDx and keynote speaker, executive coach, author, board member and educator. He has been a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and Forbes and authored Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization. His newest book from Forbes Books, The No-Limits Enterprise: Organizational Self-Management in the New World of Work, launched in July 2019. He recently served as a board member at the Association for Talent Development (ATD), the world’s largest talent association with 35,000 members in 120 countries.
The first season of his business career was spent in the manufacturing sector, principally with The Morning Star Company, a world leader in the food industry, as a financial controller where he co-founded the Morning Star Self-Management Institute. He now engages with Forbes Speakers, Open Leadership Network, LeadWise, People-Centric Organizations, Center for Innovative Cultures, Great Work Cultures, Radical, Business Agility Institute, Responsive and other vibrant organizations and leaders to co-create the future of management.
DOUG”S PLENARY SESSION:
NO LIMITS SELF MANAGEMENT EXPLAINED
New organizational models link mission-critical processes to individual stewardship without the need for burdensome traditional management and hierarchy. Interest in organizational self-management is bubbling up throughout the world as more leaders recognize the strategic opportunities available when organizations can focus on execution rather than bureaucracy.
What You Will Learn:
- How to Create a Highly Scalable Enterprise
- How to Drive Organizational Agility, Innovation and Leadership through Organizational Self-Management
- How to Slash the Costs of Management, the Least Efficient Activity of Any Enterprise
Plenary Speaker:
HEIDI ARAYA
With over 20 years of experience in a wide range of industries and roles, Heidi brings a pragmatic approach to her work leading transformation in organizations through the use of Open methods. Heidi is currently Director of Agile Transformation at Tenable, a cybersecurity firm based in Maryland.
A passionate and vocal champion of the Open movement, Heidi trains and speaks at events and conferences worldwide. She also co-hosts a very popular virtual-video meetup series for Agilists you can learn more about and sign up for, at www.coachingagilejourneys.com. Her forthcoming book is The Agile Open Practitioner: Growing High Performing Teams.
Heidi’s Plenary Session:
Agile Open Practitioner: Coaching Using Open Patterns
As Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters, we often find ourselves in environments where “Agile transformations” have been imposed on people. Such “transformations” fail to deliver promised results, and they often create disengagement and a sense of apathy in the teams we are tasked with helping. Through the use of Open Methods, we have a unique opportunity to stop playing “process police” and instead enable empowered teams through invitation. Heidi will share specific methods and offer clear guidance on how to gain alignment, engagement and real improvement at the team level using Open techniques.
Plenary Speaker and Masterclass Instructor:
MARK BURGESS
Mark Burgess is a theoretician and practitioner in the area of cooperation and information systems, whose work has focused largely on distributed information infrastructure. He is known particularly for his work on Promise Theory, a theory of high-performance based on autonomous agents at scale. Promise Theory describes the interactions between autonomous agents within a system. It provides a semi-formal language for modelling intent and its outcome, which results in a chemistry for cooperative behavior.
Mark Burgess is emeritus professor of Network and System Administration at Oslo University College, Norway. He works as an advisor on science and technology matters all over the world.
You can learn more about the fundamentals of Promise Theory by watching this short 8-minute video. Click the video image or click this link to have a look:
MIKE BURROWS
Mike Burrows is an expert in implementing outcome-oriented business strategy and agile/digital transformation. He is the pioneering formulator of Agendashift , an engagement model based on Open principles. He has authored three books for decision-makers with budget authority for agile and digital transformation, Kanban from the Inside , Agendashift and Right to Left.
Mike Burrows has been honored with awards like Brickell Key award for his community contribution and service to the business and project management community. He and his team at Agendashift help organizations in keeping their strategy and vision aligned with the culture of continuous transformation and co-creation.
Plenary Speaker and Masterclass Instructor:
DANIEL MEZICK
Coaching executives and teams since 2006, DANIEL MEZICK is a ScrumAtScale Trainer, an expert on business agility, and an author of three books on organizational change. A frequent keynote speaker at industry conferences, Daniel’s list of clients include Capital One, INTUIT, Adobe, CIGNA, Pitney Bowes, SIEMENS Healthcare, Harvard, and dozens of smaller enterprises.
His first pioneering work on culture was published in 2012. THE CULTURE GAME described 16 specific patterns that extend Agile ideas across the organization, beyond software. In 2014 he built upon those patterns and formulated the OpenSpace Agility method. “OSA” is a flexible template and engagement model for enabling lasting change in your organization. Daniel is the primary author of the OPEN SPACE AGILITY HANDBOOK , published in 2015 with several co-authors. In 2018 Daniel co-authored INVITING LEADERSHIP: Invitation-Based Change in the New World or Work™. Upon publication, this book reached #1 on the Amazon bestseller list in the Organizational Learning category.
Daniel’s enterprise consulting practice is built upon the core concepts found inside these books. He conducts workshops based on these books, and also offers enterprise Agile coaching, Agile training programs for teams, and management consulting. You can learn more and contact him at www.DanielMezick.com.
Plenary Speaker:
STACIA VISCARDI HEIMGARTNER
Teaching and coaching Scrum for over 12 years, Stacia is a Business Agility Coach, a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) & Coach, a noted authority on Scrum, and an author of The Professional ScrumMaster’s Handbook. Stacia was one of the very first Certified Scrum Trainers in the USA, taught by Ken Schwaber himself.
Stacia is an expert on enabling high-performance business agility through the application of Open principles. Her forthcoming book FailAgility provides a set of guidelines and specific step-by-step advise on what to do, and what not to do, when the goal is enterprise-wide improvement.
Plenary Speaker and Masterclass Instructor:
PETER FISCHBACH
Peter is an executive coach and Scrum trainer located in Berlin, Germany. He has co-delivered Scrum education with Scrum co-creator Jeff Sutherland over 30 times across Germany and the European Union. Within the Scrum Events network, Peter is a co-chair of SCRUM DAY, Germany’s oldest and largest Scrum conference. Scrum Events established eduScrum Germanyin 2016, where Peter is an active team member.
Peter worked more than ten years as stage actor and acting coach. He has trained hundreds of actors how to discover their most vibrant personality onstage. As an executive coach specializing in Scrum, he now helps other coaches to develop their presence and have more impact.
Masterclass Instructor & OpenSpace Facilitator:
MARK SHEFFIELD
Mark an Agile coach, certified trainer, and author of two books organizational change. He focuses on explaining and then implementing invitation, opt-in, and pull when coaching Agile to executives, teams and organizations. Mark has been training, coaching, and launching Agile teams since 2013 and has over 20 years’ experience developing software solutions.
In 2015 he co-authored The OpenSpace Agility Handbook, which describes an engagement model for leveraging invitation and Agile principles when implementing organizational change. See www.OpenSpaceAgility.com for more information.
In 2018 he co-authored Inviting Leadership, a tutorial and reference guide for making the shift from leadership delegation, to leadership invitation. See www.InvitingLeadership.com for more information.
Plenary Speaker and Masterclass Instructor:
DARREN TERREL
Darren is the Vice President of Enterprise Agile Coaching at Project Brilliant. As a senior transformation specialist, he has worked with executives and Agile teams for many years and has a breadth of experience in creating the conditions for agile and digital transformation in the private and public sectors. Darren is a pioneer in the practical application of Open patterns and practices to facilitate real agility in large organizations. He serves as a board member for the Agile Cincinnati and is also a co-organizer for Agile Ft. Wayne.
Click here to learn about our Honored Symposium Guests