For five days last October in Dallas, Texas, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) held their annual conference. Over two thousand participants attend this conference every year, including long-time experienced Lean professionals and people just starting their KAIZEN™ journey.

Two of our business units were represented with booths at the conference, Kaizen Institute North America and KAIZEN™ Online, staffed by Mike Micklewright and Jeff Dewar. We had two adjacent booths but both business units were treated as just one unified Kaizen Institute. There were approximately 50 exhibitors at the conference; the exhibits were open for two-and-a-half days.

We came away with lots of valuable contacts and ideas about how to make the booth more engaging as people walk by. The challenge is to visually tell people what Kaizen Institute does—in three seconds, as you have only a moment to get them interested.