"Visual adventure: story of an accidental side-product" (Lean Startup Day 2017 #LSD17)

Beginning of June, we were brainstorming with Guy Lévi-Bochi, on the organisation of Lean Startup Day 2017 (Thursday, 22nd of June 2017). More precisely, we were looking for venues, speakers, sponsors, and more. Thinking more precisely about a potential talk, rather a return on experience than theory, at the end of the conversation, I went on:

Hey, in my product team, working on the MongooseIM platform, we do regular demos of our progress and value delivery, followed by open discussions. We have not only tech content, but also marketing and sales content... and even external guests, such as startuppers: they come and expose the story of their business, with their many successes and failures. We talk, we learn, we adapt our product. The demo is a side-product.

That was it. But then I added (still don't know why):

I can even make a "visual adventure".

A day later he said: "Hey, interesting return on experience". Ouch, I had to think about it.

A few days later, after sorting out the venue and speakers list, Guy just told me: "OK, you got a slot, do your presentation". Ouch, I had to do it.

That was the call to adventure, I had to cross the threshold.

The delivery

Fast forward, on the Lean Startup Day 2017, on Thursday 22nd of June, I presented our team work. That was in front of 20 persons, in the hot afternoon at Ionis361. We simply started with a selfie ;-)

Here are the slides. These may speak to you, but they are much more valuable with speaker's notes and the real speaker doing actual live human interactions...

On the other side of the room, some tweets:

Many thanks to Benjamin Richy and Arnaud Villenave for live-tweeting.

Even though I spoke in French, the slides were in English, and I a very special attendee... Ash Maurya, author of "Running Lean", "Scaling Lean" and the "Lean Canvas".

Of course, we also finished with a selfie:

Shape, approach, and angle

This is a very visual slidedeck. All visuals are quite symbolic, and to be honest, need some side explanations. I voluntarily confess I am neither an artist nor a graphic designer. But the intent is there.

The goal was to tell a certain story of a team. That was over the course of 2 years, summarised in 45 minutes. You can guess a lot is skipped, and the important parts are covered... somewhat rapidly. But the essence is there.

This tells how with some persistence, problem shaping skills, and collective intelligence, we can come up with an elaborated side product that was not intentional initially. But we have it now, and we should keep on grooming it.

Shameless call for self-promotion

I may have room to tell that story once or twice more. That is 45 minutes long, extensible or shrinkable, with the usual Q&A session at the end.

Do want to share this story with your teams for some inspiration and thought provoking?

Please help me share this article!