Nyari Samushonga

CEO AT WeThinkCode_

Nyari Samushonga joined WeThinkCode_ as the CEO in February 2019 where her primary responsibility is to gear the organisation up for growth. In her short tenure, she has overseen the expansion of the partnership network, directed the revamp of the technical curriculum and driven a marked increase in the recruitment of women into the WeThinkCode_ programme. A Chartered Accountant with 11 years of public accounting experience, Nyari has operated as a business executive in the private sector. In 2018 she co-founded FoldLeft, a digital consultancy that uses hypothesis-driven models to design and deliver impactful software solutions in large enterprises. Her expertise lies in bridging the divide between business executives and tech innovators to maximize the value of software.

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Jutta Eckstein

Coach, Consultant AT independent

Jutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She holds a M.A. in Business Coaching & Change Management, a Dipl.Eng. in Product-Engineering, and a B.A. in Education. She has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an Agile transition. She has a unique experience in applying Agile processes within medium-sized to large distributed mission-critical projects. She has published her experience in her books Agile Software Development in the Large, Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams, Retrospectives for Organizational Change, and together with Johanna Rothman Diving for Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio.

Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book on Company-wide Agility. This book focuses on synthesizing Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy, and Agility.

Talk: Addressing Complexity by Learning fast with BOSSA nova

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The pandemic is a stark example of the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (short VUCA) world we currently live in and this world asks for company-wide agility. By synthesizing Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy & Agility, BOSSA nova is one approach to company-wide agility. Yet it is often unclear, where and how to start implementing this approach. As pointed out by the so-called Fearless Change Patterns, it doesn’t help to wait for the perfect moment when you have the resources and knowledge you think you need; instead, take the first baby step and start learning. Thus, for living in the VUCA world an open mindset to learning is essential that can be approached by the concept called probes – small, safe-to-fail experiments based on hypotheses derived from reflection on the current situation as well as on theory. In this session, I will share both the concept and some examples of probes implemented by different companies that can guide the probing in your company to establish a learning organization.

Dénes Kemény

Former Trainer and President of Hungarian Men's Water Polo Team

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Alan Watkins

Founder & CEO AT Complete

Alan is recognised as an international expert on leadership and human performance. He has a broad mix of commercial, academic, scientific and technological abilities. Over the past 24 years he has been a coach to many top business leaders and worked with the GB Olympic squad, coaches and athletes prior to London 20 l 2 and Rio 20 l 6. Originally trained as a medical doctor at Imperial College in London he worked for 11 years in the UK's National Health Service, in primary care in Australia and for a year in academic medical research in the USA. He ended up in Neuroscience research before leaving medicine to work with global business leaders.

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Alex Kudelka

Vice President of Sales AT Bitrise

Alex has spent the last 12+ years in early and growth phase startups, predominantly in SaaS. Before Bitrise he spent his time scaling revenue at Doodle while they made their breakout into B2B. Prior to Doodle he was an early employee at Algolia and managed their global BD team. His passion is deeply rooted in building anything from companies to lego sets, as well as french wine.

Talk: Scaling your revenue organization - what matters and what doesn't in the early days

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Alex will share with us insights on what the best-in-class revenue organizations do to grow their initial revenue organization.

Linda Rising

Independent consultant

Linda Rising has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in the field of object-based design metrics and a background that includes university teaching and industry work in telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems. An internationally known presenter on topics related to patterns, retrospectives, agile development approaches, and the change process, Linda is the author of numerous articles and five books. She was honored by the World Agility Forum in 2020 with their Lifetime Achievement Award.

Talk: Incentives: why or why not?

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It’s surprising how little of the research around incentives has made it into practice. There’s widespread belief that the debate is about carrots vs. sticks or if it’s carrots or sticks, what kind of carrots or sticks. It’s also surprising how the understanding of this fundamental topic eludes many well-respected, experienced practitioners and coaches. There’s considerable research that suggests what incentives work (and don't work) for individuals and teams. Linda will bring in the latest from cognitive neuroscience and help those of us who care about development teams to learn what works best.

Bart den Haak

OKR Coach & Author of Lean OKRs AT Moving the Needle

Bart den Haak is an experienced expert in Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). As a coach and consultant, he has more than 10 years experience in applying OKRs and training professionals. He is the founder and CEO of “Moving the Needle,” helping tech companies to define their most critical Objectives. He has advised executive teams all over the world including Nike, ING, BinckBank (part of SaxoBank), Mural, Jampp, Mambu, Backbase, and Bol.com to use OKRs to their advantage. Bart specializes in Lean and Agile (software) teams to strengthen their current way of working with his revolutionary goal setting methodology: Lean OKRs. With his background in software engineering and Agile Product Development, he is positioned well to advise SaaS companies and their leaders on changing the way they operate for the better. Bart has recently written a book “Moving the Needle with Lean OKRs” that discusses how his Lean approach to OKRs can drive innovation through behavioural changes, empowering and motivating teams and bringing the soul back to OKRs.

Talk: Making OKRs Lean again

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OKRs are a goal-setting, strategy execution tool that involves setting ambitious goals that lead to measurable results. The thing is, over the years, OKRs have gotten too complicated - they need to be put on a diet - and that’s where Lean OKRs step in. They are hyper-focused on one single OKR to rule all others. Often, OKRs are not set up for success and thus tossed aside. I can name four (and a half) common reasons why your OKRs aren’t working. Among them, the importance of finding a rhythm for making OKRs part of your way of working, leading teams with trust, and getting the foundation in place so teams aren’t running before they learn how to walk.

Michael Nir

President AT Sapir Consulting US

Michael Nir, President Sapir Consulting US, is a team and enterprise agile coach; known for his passion, creativity and innovation; His Masters in Engineering and, training in Gestalt balance his technical know-how with emotional intelligence. Michael inspires people and teams to change, experientially and emotionally, while climbing the hill AND reaching the summit. The author of twelve books on influence, consumer experience, and Lean Agile project management, Michael delivers practical skills gained from eighteen years of experience leading change at global organizations in diverse industries.

Talk: Liberate Your Remote Team to High Performance How to revolutionize teams employing liberating structures to produce awesome results?

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Agile, Scrum, DevOps, Lean, Spotify squads and Scaled Agile were built on high contact team interactions leading to extraordinary performance, then Covid came and disrupted our models of face-to-face interactions. Remote and hybrid models are our present and future. As a team member, manager, leader, intrapreneur and change evangelist, do you know how to empower remote team communication to capture room intelligence? Or are your remote interactions basic, excruciating and lack results? Remarkable tools and practices are often hidden in plain sight; Liberating Structures is a framework for facilitation created by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. It consists of 33 microstructures designed to build trust and enhance cooperation and communication between teammates. Participation is the name of the game with Liberating Structures; this framework is built around improving coordination by including and unleashing all participants. Join me as we discover, explore, and experience a world of unexpected engagement, collaboration and guaranteed high performance team results.

You will learn by doing:

• How to harness microstructures to instantly accelerate remote and hybrid team collaboration and trust

• Experience by doing unique and foolproof practices to enhance remote participation among individuals and teams

• Synthesize simple collaboration tools to influence in real-time high-performance team interactions

Amber Vanderburg

Founder AT The Pathwayz Group

Amber Vanderburg is a multi award winning international businessperson, keynote speaker, and founder of The Pathwayz Group. In 2016, she left her job in corporate HR to become the only female, only American, and only blonde Academy elite football coach for the Adidas Gameday Academy/Paris Saint Germain Academy in Bangalore, India. She worked with an international team of coaches to transform the organizational design, training development, and corporate culture to cultivate a higher-performing team. Today, Amber and The Pathwayz Group work with international teams that struggle with co worker tension, inefficient processes, and unmet performance expectations in an action focused approach to guide teams in the path to becoming more effective, more efficient, and more enjoyable.

Talk: How to lead change

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Here, attendees will learn how to lead effective change through ideas put into practical activities. Some change leaders are fantastic leaders while others were fantastic disasters. In both cases it begs us to ask the questions about how to lead effective change. In this chat Attendees will learn: How to effectively build relationships with others in the forming stages for maximum impact and buy in How to engage in healthy conflict and how to provide opportunities for ownership with in the storming stages of change discussions How to boldly make decisions and guide your organization in a path towards success How to maximize performance as a team unit

Allison McMillan

Director of Engineering AT GitHub

Allison McMillan is a Director of Engineering at GitHub. She's worn many hats including community builder at the University of Michigan Hillel, software developer, and Managing Director of a national non-profit. Allison also started a podcast about being a parent in tech, Parent Driven Development. She is an internationally-recognized keynote speaker and speaks on a variety of topics including experiential education for engineers, working remotely, and more. When she's not coding, you can find her encouraging her son's climbing skills, making faces at her toddler daughter, or pretending she has time to bake. Allison lives in the Washington, DC area.

Talk: Offsite Planning for the Faint of Heart

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Over the past year, we’ve all needed to sharpen the tools in our virtual toolbelt. More companies than ever are providing employees with the opportunity to work remotely… but how can we keep those individuals connected - to each other and to the mission of the company and their team? Effective in-person offsites are challenging and now we’re working to achieve the same alignment, engagements, and happiness for our employees virtually. It may seem impossible, but it’s not! In this session, you’ll learn about how to plan an effective offsite (up your in-person game or run one remote) and what specific planning considerations can be made to make your virtual offsite just as good, if not better, than an in-person one. Skeptics welcome!!

Crux Conception

Founder AT Crux Conception

Crux resides in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and has over 20 years of Law Enforcement (LEO), Criminal Profiling and teaching experience.

Law Enforcement experience: Homicide Detective, Criminal Profiler, Gang Unit Specialist Detective, Hostage Negotiator, Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Officer, School Resources Officer (SRO), Five years as a Special Agent with the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND (DHS)

Crux, now retired, worked as a Homicide Detective, Criminal Profiler and Hostage Negotiator with the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Police Dept.

Teaching experience: Currently, Crux is an Adjunct Professor: Psychology, Business Psychology, Social Media Psychology, Criminal Profiling, Criminal Behavior, Computer Psychology, Sociology (Group Dynamics)

Education: Bachelor of Science degree; Criminology (Ball State University, 1994), Master’s degree; Forensic Psychology (Walden University, 2012).

Talk: Enhanced Methods to Recruit Qualified Minorities in The Tech World

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This presentation will discuss how to cope with conversing with those from diverse backgrounds with ease and accomplish your daily connections with co-workers who come from different backgrounds, with a common comprehension goal.

•Necessities that make you distinct, skills that make you stand out. The diversities that make us rare and unique, if it’s your ethnic background, race, ethnic customs, religious beliefs, sex, sexuality, or form of individuality, may also be a cause of contention.

•Discover how to bring out that which is already within you and communicate, work with diverse individuals, and strike up a great conversation with one another.

•Also, this presentation will also contribute to your attendees fostering a positive change and cultivating a more inviting place of work.

•This presentation will discuss the impacts of diversity collectively, identifying what variety can be combined with how it affects a business.

•The presentation will assist with explaining what it signifies to be an inclusive place of work, offer comprehensive measures to assess best what degree one’s place of work fosters inclusion and diversity.