Host Intro (Gene Kim)

[00:00:01.300] Well, we are here. We are at the end of the conference programming.

[00:00:04.600] Thank you, everyone, for being with us over the last three days. I hope it has been fantastic and worthwhile.

[00:00:11.700] So I personally measure the success of events like this in two dimensions. One is, is it high learning, meaning did I learn a lot of new things that I value and appreciate? And high networking: did I meet a bunch of people who I admire, who are doing amazing things? And I hope it has been the case for you as well.

[00:00:29.300] I hope you have met potential collaborators, fellow travelers, maybe even new friends; that you have connected with existing friends and met people that you admire; that you feel like you have been a part of a community with a sense of shared goals, who love sharing and helping others succeed; that you have been learning from the best in the game; and that you are walking away with a ton of things to read, to watch, things that you feel like you need to learn more about as you try to achieve your own goals, as you try to get from here to there, however you choose to define it.

[00:00:59.800] So two months ago, we had our first in-real-life live conference, the first that we have had in three years, to reunite the community. And this week we used an online conference format, and it has reinforced for me why I am excited that we can use this online conference format to achieve some of our community goals. I think it unlocks some very exciting possibilities.

[00:01:17.600] I am excited that online conferences can enable us to have a higher frequency of events; that we can bring back talks where we can ask our questions to those speakers and have them return with those questions answered. And this week has shown that there is no shortage of stories that are worth sharing and things that we can learn. I am certainly appreciating the medium that we can unlock in this online format.

[00:01:41.800] I am thoroughly excited by the idea of things like quarterly one-day learning days, so we can reunite the community between the physical conferences. So stay tuned for things we would like to try in 2023.

[00:01:53.300] So all of this is made possible by the speakers. So thank you, all the speakers, for teaching us things that we need to learn. Thank you to the entire programming committee. Everything that you have seen here, as well as in the last 16 events, is a result of their work.

[00:02:08.300] I want to thank the online conference ops team. This is Alex and Aaron Montelewski; the Guy One team, this is Arna Metesh and Joshua. They have been handling all the gazillion things that have to go right in order for you to have a seamless online experience.

[00:02:23.800] And of course, I want to thank the entire IT Revolution team. I want to thank my boss and wife, that is Margaret Kim, as well as Molly Coyne and Perry, Alex Broderick-Forster, Margaret Kessler, and Leah, Lucy, and Diana Oh, and my buddy and co-MC Jeff Gallimore.

[00:02:38.100] I want to thank LaunchDarkly and all our other sponsors. And here is a help that I am looking for: feedback is love. Tell us what you loved and ideas on how to improve this conference, and some stories. And if you feel like you can get a video of your CEO presenting on why your work is important, email me. We would love to hear from you and feature you in next year's conference.

[00:02:59.100] Similarly, if you have an exciting story that you want to share within this community, again, we would love to hear from you. And if you have ideas or want to help this community interact outside of the conferences, let me know. Again, we have some exciting ideas we would like to try next year.

[00:03:14.200] And I would like to again thank James Moverly and Nick Eggleston for the help encouraging and experimenting on this slide. You can email me at genek@itrevolution.com.

[00:03:23.600] And there is one more thing that I would love to get your help on. So Dr. Steven Spear and I presented earlier today. And if you have any ideas on better names for the concepts that we used, whether it is dangerous learning versus triumph zone, danger zone versus safe zone, I would love to hear from you.

[00:03:38.200] The point is this: in one configuration, the center is moving slowly, whereas teams at the edge can move fast, locked in, in focus, in flow. In this mode, we liberate leaders so they can work slowly as opposed to doing fast firefighting.

[00:03:56.500] When we are doing firefighting, we have a gross cognitive disadvantage versus our environment. And when they stay in the slow mode of thinking, teams at the edge can be in fast mode, in flow, locked in, focused on the task at hand to better move the needle on the most important goals of the organization.

[00:04:10.600] So with that, thank you so much. See you next year, and I am going to turn it over to Jeff.