Lean Coffee is a structured format for a completely crowdsourced discussion. Attendees suggest topics, stack rank them via a voting process, and then discuss each one in order, using short timeboxes until they reach consensus to move to the next one. We reconvene at the end of the session time to share takeaways. We tried Lean Coffee as an experiment at Seattle Code Camp 2016, focusing on topics of interest around women in tech, and the collaboration was fantastic! Here are the slides we used—setting the stage with principles from Open Space Technology and finishing with a Lean Coffee quick outline—so you can learn more and facilitate a session on your own.

1. Cheryl Hammond
@bsktcase
CTO, Peak Medical Technologies
Women in Tech
mentoring and community via lean coffee

2. four principles and one law
of Open Space
1. Whoever comes is the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that
could have happened.
3. Whenever it starts is the right time.
4. When it’s over, it’s over.

3. law of two feet

4. lean coffee
open
Create a Personal Kanban board
Put your ideas in the Ready column
Introduce yourselves
Introduce the ideas (1-2 sentences)
Vote on topics (2 votes per person)
Stack-rank the Ready column
discuss
Move topic to In Progress
Set a timer for 5 minutes
Discuss
“Roman vote” – up, middle, or down
If up or middle, reset timer for 2 minutes
When done, move topic to Done
close
Share one takeaway (1-2 sentences)

5. resources
openspaceworld.org
leancoffee.org

6. Cheryl Hammond
@bsktcase
CTO, Peak Medical Technologies
Thank you!