Goodbye 2019! I will miss you...

I was not planning to write a summary for 2019 until I sat down to plan 2020. After one hour of reflection, I had to admit - wow it was a fabulous year! Even more, these time-traveling exercises helped me to think about future goals and take (even more) control over my time and development. So, if you haven’t done your summary yet, please do ;) HIGHLY recommended. Here are some of my highlights of the year!

Speaker’s experience:

• I had an amazing opportunity to speak and share my stories at 3 international conferences: Scrum Day UA????, Agile on the Beach???? and Flowcon????.
• I ran workshops at the Agile on the Boat Conference in Wroclaw and spoke at the Spark Conference at BBH.

Kudos to all organizers and thank you for all of your great work! I know how hard it is to put a huge conference together, make speakers feel welcome, satisfy attendees’ needs and create a safe and welcoming atmosphere for everyone.

My challenge of 2019!

I became a podcaster! Following Paul's idea, we started the Agile Book Club podcast. We recorded 14 episodes, got more than 5000 listeners and interviewed my personal superheroes and authors of the #mustread books in the Agile world and Tech industry: Klaus Leopold, Dominica DeGrandis, Marc Loeffler, Daniel Vacanti, Mike Burrows, Clarke Ching and Debbie Madden.

Conferences and community:

• The biggest ACE! Conference yet! Over 450 attendees from 13 countries, 28 speakers, a Women in Tech event during the conference and extra workshops organized by Adobe for our attendees after the conference.

• The first ACE! Express conference dedicated to our community! The idea of this event is to host it yearly in a different city and bring more and more experience and knowledge to our community! See you in Gdańsk in August 2020.

Training:

• My first Kanban Leadership Retreat in Mayrhofen and the idea of creating the #KanbanPoland community. It was a wonderful start of our cooperation with Radek Orszewski.
• Kanban Professional Management Classes with Paul Klipp. I still can’t believe that after 4 years of working together, there are stories that I’ve never heard. And a big chunk of knowledge that is still coming my way!
• Flight Levels Training with Klaus Leopold in London. Two days of knowledge and experience. The first full Flight Level implantation is coming to life in 2020! 
• Training From the Back of the Room with Thorsten Oliver Kalnin. Truly mind-blowing! 
• I learned about the new level of business agility thanks to 3 days of Master Classes with Patrick Steyaert.
• Becoming a certified trainer of Training from the Back of the Room! It is still something super new! I've already announced the first TBR classes in Poland.

The success of the year:

It was a big honor to become one of the first Flight Level Guides in Europe! It was a big honor! If I may give a little spoiler for 2020 - big, big, big changes in business agility are coming!

Consulting:

I used to help and consult startups to bring better products to the market. It has always been an amazing adventure and a fun ride. But this year, I feel that I’ve done it on a new and higher level! Thanks to SmartRecruiters, Micha? Nowak and Agata ?ladowska, I had a chance to introduce Kanban into their engineering department at the team level! It was an extensive experience, one of the best lessons in my professional and personal life and a wonderful opportunity to work across teams and influence such a complex system!

Wawel Hill:

Here I could make another post… but just to keep it simple:

• Please welcome our new colleague and a source of creativity- Edyta Hopcia?! After a few months of working with us, she joined us full time! I feel like I’m creating Wawelhill’s superhero crew!
• KanbanQuest - the role-playing game to introduce Kanban to teams by Paul! I could not help a lot at the beginning of the process, but I have some fair share in the product creation! :) Observing Paul in the creation process would be a great topic for a book (one day), working on the design with Edyta (was a creativity thunderstorm), and playing games for the first time with our workshop attendees was literally learning by fun and games.

• Work. Life. Balance. Conversation starter cards that we used during the ACE! Conference. A big surprise was the number of people who wanted to buy cards afterward. Good news, in 2020, we are going to make them available for sale ;) 

• Around 120 people trained during our private and public training! Mostly run by Paul and organized by me :) Such a perfect duet!

• 5 Women in Agile events. A huge thank you to GE Healthcare, GrandParade, SmartRecruiters and hub:raum for your help and support!

It was a busy, but extremely happy year! A big thank you to all for making it with me, for me, because of me :) I would never ever accomplish anything like that without all of the supportive, smart and fun people around me... Especially, the business partner of the year: Paul Klipp.

See you in 2020!