The Stoos Gathering Participants

These are the people who have committed to attend the Stoos Gathering, on January 6+7, in Switzerland.

It started (for me) during the Scrum Gathering in London, when I enjoyed dinner with Steve Denning and Peter Stevens. We discussed the problem that management around the world is changing too slowly, and we wanted to do something about that. We just didn’t know what.

And so we thought, why not invite a number of people that we know, and discuss this? Maybe together we can figure out how to accelerate change in management. And the idea for a gathering of management thinkers and practitioners was born. We pulled in Franz Röösli as a 4th member of the core team, we picked a date (6+7 January), we picked a location (Stoos, Switzerland), and we started discussing which people to invite.

That was the difficult part.

Constraints

Constraint #1… We want an event at the start of the new year. Many invitees loved the idea, but they had already committed to families or other events in January. And thus we received many replies of the type sad-I-can’t-be-there-but-please-keep-me-posted!

Constraint #2… We want to keep the size of the group small, because groups larger than 20 people find it very hard to reach consensus (see: NewScientist). It turns out we have a little over 20 people now, but I hope some will be skiing when the rest are making world-changing decisions.

Constraint #3… We want a diverse group of people. This meant we couldn’t do an open invitation, because we would surely end up with 3 authors and 17 Agile consultants. We intentionally dug in the darkest corners of our social networks, and came up with some very fine names.

Participants

And so we suggested contacts, voted on favorites, and started sending invites. The result is what you see below. It contains a healthy mix of book authors, bloggers, top managers, coaches, consultants, thought leaders, and idea farmers. And we have both men and women. Which proved quite a challenge!

1. Catherine Louis
   Agile transitions in the scope of complex product development
2. Deborah Hartmann Preuss
   Co-Active Coach, Agile Coach, co-creator of AgileCoachCamp.org
3. Esther Derby
   Co-author of Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
4. Franz Röösli
   Author, Director of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table
5. Heitor Roriz
   Organizing Radical Management Gathering in San Paolo
6. Jay Cross
   Business consultant, author, expert on informal learning.
7. John Styffe
   Co-Author of Was Jetzt? ("What now")
8. Jonas Vonlanthen
   Responsible for Liip Suisse Romande, an agile web dev. company
9. Julian Birkinshaw
   Prof. London Business School, Co-Founder MLab, book author
10. Jurgen Appelo
    Author of Management 3.0, initiator of Agile Lean Europe network
11. Kati Vilkki
    Manager at Nokia Siemens Network 
12. Klaus Leopold
    Kanban coach and trainer
13. Melina McKim
    Diverse background in innovation
14. Michael Spayd
    Org. change & systems coach, co-founder Agile Coaching Institute
15. Peter Hundermark
    Scrum Trainer & Coach, Community Leader, South Africa
16. Peter Stevens
    Scrum Trainer & Coach, Community Leader, Switzerland
17. Philippe Hertig
    Managing Director EZI (Switzerland)
18. Rod Collins
    Former CEO, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Author Leadership in a Wiki World
19. Roy Osherove
    5whys.com blogger, writing 'Notes to a software team leader' book
20. Sanjiv Augustine
    Author of Managing Agile Projects
21. Simon Roberts
    Scrum Trainer & Coach
22. Steve Denning
    Author of Leaders Guide to Radical Management
23. Uli Loth
    Member of Management Team W.L. Gore Europe

These are the people who have committed (with a significant personal investment) to attend the Stoos Gathering. Feel free to pester them with great ideas and useful suggestions, to increase the chance we come down from the mountain with something useful…

p.s. We received dozens of requests from people who would love to attend this gathering. My answer is always a polite “No”. Self-invitations would defy constraints #2 and #3. Sorry! You may harass me later.