Ching organized the TOC Down-Under Summit 2021, an online conference bringing together fifteen Australian and New Zealand-based TOC experts (plus one Brazilian participant). The event streamed during the Australian/New Zealand work day and the US Pacific afternoon, was free to attend, and all sessions were recorded for asynchronous viewing.
Significance
This event is notable because Ching served as organizer rather than just speaker -- a shift from conference participant to conference builder. After relocating from Scotland to Nelson, New Zealand, Ching needed to embed himself in the Australasian TOC and Agile communities. Organizing a summit was a faster path to that than waiting for invitations.
The event occurred in the same year that Ching appeared at Scrum Australia 2021 as a speaker, suggesting a deliberate campaign to establish presence in the regional community during this period of the bottleneck-guy-brand-period.
Justin Roff-Marsh delivered the opening keynote ("Three Big Questions in TOC"), and the programme included sessions from practitioners across the Australasian TOC community. The event's existence reflects the global spread of TOC practice beyond its North American and European strongholds, and Ching's role as connector and community organizer -- a function he had previously performed through his chairmanship of agile-scotland.