In this year, 2011, I have been experienced unforgettable things.
In the end of this remarkable year, I'd like to look back for whole things.
I wrote this article by stored information in my memory.
The details, especially quotes, might be wrong.
This is not official records.
Innovation Sprint 2011
In January, I worked for a conference, Innovation Sprint 2011, as the chair of operations.
The keynote speech was Prof. Ikujiro Nonaka and Dr. Jeff Sutherland.
Jeff is the co-creator of Scrum, the most common Agile framework in the world. Prof. Nonaka is one of guru in management and leadership.
Prof. Nonaka is also very famous in Scrum related people, because he and his colleague Prof. Takeuchi wrote an article which deeply affected to creation of Scrum.
The article name is "The New New Product Development Game", published by the Harvard Business Review, 1986.
"Japanese can adopt Scrum, off course. Because we learned from Takeuchi and Nonaka." Jeff Sutherland told me in August 2009.
When I met Jeff for the first time, he showed his strong respect for the two professors.
I was very moved, as a Japanese scrum practitioner.
"For a long time, Scrum people wondered why Nonaka and Takeuchi have been ignoring Scrum." Jim Coplien told me in January 2010.
I and Kenji Hiranabe talked with Cope about Toyota's Lean culture and Scrum/Agile.
Until this moment, I had believed Prof. Nonaka and Jeff would be friends for a long time. But it was wrong.
Soon after this discovery of the missing link, I send an message for Jeff Sutherland.
"I heard you and Nonaka-sensei have never met yet, I'd like to invite to Japan."
Jeff told me he wanted to meet Prof. Nonaka for a long time.
In February 2010, Kenji knocked Prof. Nonaka's room, for inviting him to Agile Japan 2010 as a keynote speaker.
A good news, Prof. Nonaka accepted the offer.
A surprising news, he had never known the Scrum movement in software industry.
I found the answer for the question: "Why Nonaka and Takeuchi have been ignoring Scrum?"
I and Kenji tried to set the first meeting in the Agile Japan 2011.
Unfortunately, Jeff's schedule already full booked around the conference.
But after this conference, we set a schedule for the new conference for Prof. Nonaka and Dr. Jeff Sutherland.
We named this conference, "Innovation Sprint".
We offered the venue Rakuten Tower, maximum capacity is 1000 people.
Yoshioka-san and Tazawa-san in the company Rakuten, did a lot of work for making this event.
And so many sponsors supported this conference.
http://innovationsprint.com/
In the keynote, Dr. Jeff Sutherland said "I have wanted to meet Prof. Nonaka for 16 years."
I was very moved once again, as a Japanese scrum practitioner.
Sean Osawa reported this conference:
http://blogs.atlassian.com/2011/01/a_father_of_scrum_meets_a_grandfather_of_scrum_in_japan/
http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2011/02/meeting-nonaka-san-in-tokyo.html
Jeff Sutherland also touched this conference in the "Scrum Papers" document.
http://jeffsutherland.com/ScrumPapers.pdf
pp.10 - 12
This conference had a few more brilliant speakers from various companies and university.
(To be continued... )
