I hope you’re looking forward to Agile2017 as much as I am!
As I look over the exciting schedule, my eyes are inevitably drawn to the keynote sessions where we’ll all be together. Seeing the huge room full of agile enthusiasts is heartwarming. There’s so much energy! Every time my gaze passes over the crowd, I wonder how one person manages to speak to all of us at once. I think I’ll never be that good… As attendees, it’s easy to compare ourselves with the accomplished speakers and industry notables who are at the event, making coming up with our own contributions seem more difficult. In my head, I hear, “Look at all these talented people can do! I should be doing more… I should be reading all these references… I should be…” Too many shoulds running around in my head!
That’s why our closing keynote topic is so important. Banish Your Inner Critic v2.0 is all about overcoming these struggles, and I can always use that encouragement. To get a preview, I caught up with Denise Jacobs about how she will help us to put it all together into next steps.
A former cat-herder, er project manager, Denise is no stranger to technology. Focusing on helping teams to do their best work and achieve excellence seems to have just been a first step in her long journey of helping others. She recognized that many things can block creativity and removing them allows focus. On her journey, she developed a set of tools to deal with judging, criticizing, and beating yourself up.
Denise will share her experiences with creativity as a skill that can be developed. She’ll help each of us to recognize that innate skill manifesting in ourselves in different ways. This will allow us to access our brilliance & personal power to be successful contributors in the unique ways only we can bring to our teams.
It’s encouraging to know that even a keynoter has struggled with the creative process. I’m looking forward to hearing Denise’s new lessons learned at Agile2017. Hope to see you there!
