By Martin E. Hansen, Member until 2018

Shindenkan is known far and wide for well-run and successful events that constantly reach new heights, but how can it be done time and time again that it both looks and feels better? There is of course a huge amount of voluntary and unpaid work behind it, where many Shindenkaners are involved from morning to night several days in a row. The just held spring convention was no exception, and built on the very successful Xmas 2016 convention, where a new concept saw the light of day.

For most Shindenkaners, the spring meeting began at 11.00 on Saturday 18 March, when approx. 170 expectant participants stood in neat straight rows in front of the podium, where Kimu Sensei could welcome on one of the first spring days of the year, when the meteorologists had also promised sunshine from around 2 p.m. Not many people notice it, but there are actually both major and minor improvements from event to event, which are added to the eventually all-encompassing event handbook. As early as the week before an event, Kimu Sensei sends out a preliminary rough schedule for the content of the event, and at the same time event manager Søren Renshi sends out the updated event handbook to the selected Shindenkaners, who contribute extra to the voluntary work by participating in the teamwork that is required to get a rally to drive. There are a great many tasks, both small and large, that require good planning and coordination. A good example is the mats used for ukemi training. First, the mats must be booked at DGI, then they must be picked up at Kalvebod, where they are parked in 2 trailers, so it requires 2 cars with tows. When they arrive in the morning on the day of the event (usually around 07:00) they must be unloaded so that they get to room temperature before they are laid out and distributed during the event. After the event, they must then be returned again, first loaded onto trailers and then driven to the Calve stall. It's easy enough, most people think - yes, maybe, but it's just one of many tasks. Added to this are the improvements mentioned before. Kimu Sensei has always said "Just because it's voluntary and unpaid, it doesn't have to be ineffective". "You are never too old to learn" is another of Kimu Sensei's sayings which fits very well with everything that is initiated in the Shindenkan organization, therefore there is always a follow-up after an event has ended, where the learning is collected and applied the next time, if relevant. In addition to what is collected during conventions, courses and other events, there is also feedback from the participants themselves through emails and articles, but also from the instructors. Kimu Sensei accumulates all the knowledge and extracts the essence which is then implemented and tested either, by major changes, as a pilot or directly.

An example of the pilot was precisely the Xmas convention, which came before the just-held spring convention. From the outside, there was perhaps not much of a difference to look at, except for all the new roll-ups and the huge screen that adorned the stage. But if you go behind the scenes, there were significant changes in the planning and the tools that were used and the development of these. First of all, there was a more transparent graduation process directly resulting from the implementation of "Progression after effort", which was also made visible on roll-ups. On the management front, there were changes in the distribution of instructor resources and how the tasks of planning the meeting and teaching were to be carried out. All this to optimize both the use of resources, but also to eliminate errors that cost extra work and thus have more time for training rather than administration.

When the spring meeting was launched, you might not have noticed the improvements that much, unless you looked in detail, where it became clear that the processes around, among other things, had been optimized. mat laying, graduations and the final receipt for graduation, and the latter actually went really quickly compared to the last convention. There is still room for improvement, so the process continues towards the end of the season and the big summer meeting here in the 50th year of Shindenkan's history in Denmark, where we end with a bang of a party.

The spring meeting was just the start of the celebration of the 50th anniversary in Denmark. Shindenkan can be quite proud, as not many martial arts/martial arts organizations have achieved something similar in Denmark. There are many reasons why Shindenkan has managed to survive and significantly outpace growth in recent years. First of all, of course, this is due to the fact that we have a strong leader and martial arts grandmaster in Kimu Sensei, who can offer a true multi-track system at all levels, but also the eternal spiral of improvement, which makes the organization and system agile in relation to society and the practitioners who make up the Shindenkan organization. Add to that all the voluntary forces, both leaders and performers, who want to make a difference and together we can all bring Shindenkan to new heights.

Thank you for a good spring meeting, and congratulations to all the graduates with their new fine belts and degrees. I hope to see you again at the summer meeting and at a party we won't soon forget 🙂