First AsanaTogether in japan

On Friday, August 10, 2018, First Asana-Themed event #AsanaTogether was held in Tokyo,Japan.

With the goal of "Improving project management overwhelmingly", we had a pannel discussion and a workshop to share our mutual problem and try to solve it with 16 participants.

Originally I have planed to host just a Meetup of Asana lovers. 
But I realied that the oppotunities to meet and share the knowledge with other company's project managers are very few in Japan.
So for the pannel discussion, I invited some people who use Trello or Remine and can talk about their "excellent management method" they think. It was an interactive session.

Preparing the event

To attract the attendants, I used the event platform "connpass".
It is one of the most popular event platform in Japan, especially for tech people.
And I sent invitations of my team in Asana.
I created some projects on the team and add the information of detailed timeline , Section for introducing theirselves among the participants and Section for storage the materials of panel discussion.

Beginning

At the beginning of the event , I showed the short film that Asana Community team provided.
It was very exciting part because It makes them feel attending the first event as an early adopter.

Pannel discussion

We had 4 presenations.
1. Running and Tracking the Ultra Short-Term Project with Asana and Slack
2. Review Culture to Proceed Projects smoothly with Trello
3. Behold my customized redmine!
4. Automation with Asana + git + instagantt + unito
They had a 5 min presention to share their Tips of their usual work , and had a talk session after their presentation to discuss it deeply.

Running and Tracking the Ultra Short-Term Project with Asana and Slack

She is a designer but she also coordinates projects with clients.
There is no dedicated project manager in her company, And new projects are added everyday, so it is necessary to recognize and comlete tasks in a very short term.
So she use the Slack integration efficiently.
She uses Slack for the conversation with her client and when the client requests a new project , immidiately add the task from the conversation to share and assign it to her teammate.

Review Culture to Proceed Projects smoothly with Trello

He works for a startup company as a project manager.
In his company , They uses very organized template when they request tasks to internal creative teams. It was like a format to request to external vendors.
He said it prevents reworking by misunderstanding and helps new staffs to learn how to proceed the project efficiency.

Behold my customized redmine!

He is an expert with a theorized project management method.
He chooses Redmine that can customize functions by himselves.
Because he need to manage a large number of highly interchanged engineers in his organization.
He showed some function he implemented like a method to manage inquiries with Redmine, a method to support operation, how to effectively use wiki, etc.
Most unique part of his presentation was his analysis of tool selection method for Japanese companies.
He mentioned that many companies have not considered the characteristics of their organization and install the project management tool with the criteria such as "Just Trello for now?"
I realized that this point may be the reason why Japanese companies still use Excel for project management without using tools.

Automation with Asana + git + instagantt + unito

He experienced a situation in which his teammate no longer uses Asana due to variations in the granularity of the tasks that his teammate adds and the discrepancy between the actual work and the added task.
He learned that it is very difficult to train management methods for teammates and decided to automate the adding tasks with git.
He mentioned that project managers should not chase useful tools but focus on incorporating management method into the actual work.

Workshop

After the panel discussion , We separated 3 teams for workshop.
On the workshop , Participants shared some problems of coordination they face in their usual work , and brainstormed to solve it.
We used "Brainstorming Card" developed by Kayac Inc (co-host of this event) to create new ideas.

Most of the participants usually research about work efficiency and productivity by themselves so this workshop was great opportunity and felt high possibility
We found quite a lot of common problems even we work for the other companies.

Next action

At the end of the event, we converted the idea made by brainstorming into a project. So we will continue to deep study with this project with remote and offline events.And we plan to open this project in public to improve project management in Japan. 
I would like to expand Asana's community while involving in these efforts.