Humanizing Work Advanced Learning Event 2018

This past week, I attended the Agile For All Humanizing Work Advanced Learning event.  Essentially, this event is designed to help Agile For All alumni grow further along with their Agile mindset and skills.  Just as every year, I found myself standing at the close of this event with all sorts of feelings that deserve to be acknowledged:

• • New Material: Selfishly, this is a great opportunity for me to test new conference and training material.  This year, I focused on getting feedback for a session that I will be doing with a colleague in London in October about drama triangles.  I was extremely pleased with the early results and have quite a few ideas of how to improve our session before the next time!
  • New Collaboration: I don’t remember how this came about but the idea of presenting with Dallas was a no brainer in my book.  We brainstormed a couple of different topics but the one that registered for us both was around being courageous.  Truthfully, I feel a little guilty as she did most of the legwork – the initial outline, the themes, the exercises, the key points.  I interjected with review feedback and added a thought or two as we went.  So it was collaborative but she definitely made this happen.  Getting to work with her was an honor – she is the first AFA alum to present at this event and she nailed it.
  • Learning: I’m lucky. When I’m done presenting, I don’t need to take a break and recover. So when I wasn’t giving a session, I attended someone else’s session. I learned content, I learned tips on delivery, I learned about my teammates, etc! My energy level just doubled 🙂
  • Surprises: Every year, I think that Angie can’t top the surprises from last year. Every year, I’m wrong. Remote control trucks that they designed and raced…AMAZING!
  • Grateful: Here I am in this amazing location of Beaver Creek surrounded by people that have formed new bonds and insights over the last several days.  Not everyone gets to say that they love what they do for work.  I do!  Again, I couldn’t be more grateful to be able to say that 🙂
  • Together: Given that we live in various locations and are not together often, I appreciate events that facilitate us coming together. Time together to talk, laugh…simply engage is so important.
  • Pride: This was an amazing event for attendees and facilitators. I am proud to be a part of providing this experience.  I am proud to have these colleagues.  And I am proud that I am helping to make a difference.

The one downside was that aside from pairing with Dallas, I didn’t do many new pairs this year and should have.  I chose not to for my sanity as I knew my schedule was crazy for the first part of this year but as the week occurred, I’m well aware of the missed opportunity.

This just makes me continue to look forward and be excited for next year!

What conferences do you enjoy/recommend?