Updated 15 August with 10 Year Reflections sessions info.

Happy birthday to us!

Ten years ago, today…150 adventurous folks gathered at Swinburne for the first, LAST Conf. The collage above has some of only a few decent photos I could find from 27 July 2012. To see a bunch of photos from LAST Conferences over the years, go look at this Flickr Group and this Google Photos album.

There have been thousands of participants, hundreds of session leaders, dozens of volunteers and helpers, plus numerous companies that have sustained the events. Thanks to all of them, even if we haven't managed to name you all below.

The origins of LAST and some other notes

2012-2016

Prior to the 2012 first edition, one of the co-founders did a writeup about why LAST Conference was started. It took inspiration from the burgeoning meetup community, founded by Martin Kearns, in Melbourne and also the first edition in 2011 of Agile Tour Sydney, organised by Jeremie Benazra....

It's quite early in the process, so we don't know what form a collaboration with Norman will take yet…but we want to give you an insight on what we have been talking to Norman about with regard to his digital library. We are really excited about the prospect of helping him to share some of this valuable knowledge with people. Please let us know by using the form below, whether you are interested in future news about the Bodek Digital Library.

The video is 2:25mins and he talks about the trove of documents that he scanned before his recent move from the US to Japan. As he mentions, this includes information from the likes of Dr. Shigeo Shingo, Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, Taiichi Ohno and more.

Important: please check your email inbox, as we will send you a confirmation with a link that you must click to receive further info.

If you don't know Norman, take a quick look at my previous post, and here's some other biographical info about him…

In 1979, after...

This blog post explains what I think the next stage of LAST is shaping up to look like. We are creating something that is going to be called LAST Clubhouse.

I am going to start off with a story about a man who likes ducks…Simon Wardley.

In about 2009, I went to a conference in London that was called The Future of Web Apps. Amongst the more frivolous Web 2.0 subject matter like social networking for dogs and cats, was a talk from Simon Wardley. His talk was a diamond in the rough that covered the commoditization of technologies; how to identify when to build something from scratch, as opposed to using something that someone else has already built, for example.

The talk really stuck with me. I introduced myself to him afterwards and have followed him on Twitter ever since, interested in what followed. What Simon has developed is something that is known as Wardley Mapping.

Above: In 2019, Simon and I coincided at the Lean Agile Scotland conference. I re-introduced myself, and...