I’m back from what was the most intensive event I’ve been to in a long, long time. Lean Kanban Central Europe (LKCE) has a special place in my heart. If I were to pick one from all the global communities, it would be the Lean Kanban community. LKCE is consistently exposing me to new ideas. It is a place where my network of connections systematically grows – a list of people who I have first met there is so long that I won’t even dare to try to mention them all as I would inevitably forget someone.

Last but not least, I’m the part of the program board so there’s a little bit of my input in how the events have been shaped over the years.

This year’s conference (LKCE14) was special in a way that we decided to have tracks. On one hand that meant that the program board members had a lot authority in shaping how our parts of the event looked like. On the other it meant quite a lot of work during the conference.

That’s not all. I had two presentations at LKCE14: a regular one on leadership and a pecha kucha on learning.

If that wasn’t enough I stayed for two days more for Don Reinertsen’s super-intensive product development workshop. After the whole week my life force has literally been spent.

I am a happy bunny though. I’ve had a lot of great discussions. I’ve met new people and had a chance to catch up with some old friends. Even though I had limited freedom in choosing the sessions because of my hosting duties I managed to attended a bunch of great presentations. I ran a leadership track which worked out exactly the way I wanted. I’ve learned a ton. I spent a couple of days at a workshop with a guy who knows more about product development than I will likely learn through my entire life. I had an insane amount of awesome German beer.

So, here are a few of my highlights of the event.

Martin Jensen ran a fantastic session on organizational culture. If that wasn’t enough we went even deeper discussing the topic late at night in a hotel bar and, obviously, having beers.

Organizational culture was one the themes of the whole event. There was Martin. There was, awesome as always, Kathrine Kirk. There was Marc Burgauer, who I had pleasure to host on my track. I did add my two cents worth with my presentation.

The leadership track. OK, I am mentally programmed not to brag about myself and to focus on the areas of improvement. I can’t help it though – when the track was finished I felt really proud of myself and happy. This is also an opportunity to thank Esther Derby, Liz Keogh and Marc Burgauer for being my guests and speakers on the track. You really made my day. You’re awesome.

Don Reinertsen’s workshop. I’ve been his fanboy for some time already so I had a lot of expectations. Don definitely matched them and went even further. What I will say now is that every organization that builds products should send product people to one of his workshops.

Pecha kuchas were, as always, one of the best moments of the event. The very constraining format of the session results in a lot of creativity and very focused messages. And Markus Andrezak produced pure magic by hosting the show. If not for him my stress level before popping up on the stage would likely have been unbearable.

One of the measures I use to track how much I liked an event is how little I slept. At LKCE14 I went below 6 hours a night. As if that wasn’t enough I didn’t have a single hour of wake time when I wasn’t doing something related to the event. It was super-intensive indeed.

I am already looking forward to Lean Kanban Central Europe 2015.