Monica Georgieff's Posts - limitedwipsociety2024-03-28T08:18:34ZMonica Georgieffhttps://limitedwipsociety.ning.com/profile/MonicaGeorgieffhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1554609661?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://limitedwipsociety.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=1fr3rwdxgc20b&xn_auth=noA Games of Thrones Convention is using Kanban for Event Management!tag:limitedwipsociety.ning.com,2015-06-29:6474535:BlogPost:215102015-06-29T09:30:00.000ZMonica Georgieffhttps://limitedwipsociety.ning.com/profile/MonicaGeorgieff
<p>What do Game of Thrones, Nordic countries and sci-fi gatherings have to do with Kanban? Meet <a href="http://www.archipelacon.org/" target="_blank">Archipelacon</a>, a first time sci-fi convention that will bring science fiction fans from all over the world to Finland at the Alandica Culture and Congress Center for a four-day celebration of the fantastic arts this June. The keynote speaker of the event will be now infamous author George R.R Martin of …</p>
<p>What do Game of Thrones, Nordic countries and sci-fi gatherings have to do with Kanban? Meet <a href="http://www.archipelacon.org/" target="_blank">Archipelacon</a>, a first time sci-fi convention that will bring science fiction fans from all over the world to Finland at the Alandica Culture and Congress Center for a four-day celebration of the fantastic arts this June. The keynote speaker of the event will be now infamous author George R.R Martin of <a href="http://www.gameofthrones.com/" target="_blank">The Game of Thrones</a> book and HBO series fame. Over 800 people are expected to attend. If you’re a fantasy junkie, it doesn’t get better than Archipelacon!</p>
<p>We caught up with one of the organizers of the event, Tero Ykspetäjä, to find out how the Nordic team is using Kanban for their workflow surrounding the convention.</p>
<p><strong>What does Archipelacon specialize in?</strong></p>
<p>We are a science fiction convention that will take place in late June this<br/> year. The event spans four days of programming which consists of<br/> presentations, discussions, workshops, and just socializing and<br/> meeting other people who like to read, watch, write, or otherwise are<br/> into science fiction and fantasy.</p>
<p><strong>Is your entire organization using Kanban or just your team? What is your team’s role?</strong></p>
<p>We use <a href="http://www.kanbanize.com" target="_blank">Kanbanize</a> as the to-do board for the whole organization. In<br/> addition, the programming team uses it to plan our program items.</p>
<p><strong>How has using Kanbanize improved your process? What did you use before?</strong></p>
<p>Archipelacon is a one-off event, so we didn’t really have a ‘before’.<br/> But our organizers are experienced conrunners. We’ve used all kinds of<br/> methods, from pen and paper to Excel sheets to some specialized tools<br/> for managing things.</p>
<p><strong>How have you structured your boards within the account? </strong></p>
<p>For the main event: we put ideas that should not be forgotten into<br/> backlog. Things to be worked on next are moved to ‘Requested’. Our ‘in<br/> progress’ is divided into three parts: doing, pending (to indicate<br/> things that require waiting for a 3rd party to do something) and<br/> review (for those things where we want the entire team to look at<br/> something after it’s been done). Done things are, naturally, moved to<br/> ‘done’, and archived after making sure everything is properly<br/> documented that needs to be, etc.</p>
<p>The programme planning board has a backlog of ideas, the requested area<br/> is for ideas to work on next. In progress has a few subcolumns for<br/> approaching people with program ideas, finalizing the item description<br/> for the published program, and confirming with participants. Done has<br/> two columns, ‘Ready to Announce’ (some items are published as teasers<br/> before the whole program has been published) and ‘Done’.</p>
<p><strong>What is the most useful feature of the Kanban method to you and your team?</strong></p>
<p>The visual task board where you can see at a glance how many things<br/> are at which stage, and who is taking care of them. Kanbanize is flexible enough that I think it’s been useful for our case as well.</p>
<p>So, if you’re planning a large or small scale event, Kanban can improve your process and make sure you are productively working towards your goals by getting quality results just in time.</p>
<p>Try it out for your next event!</p>
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