Hanna Karlsson

Founder, The Workshopper

Guest speaker

Just add play

Somewhat ironically, we’ve created a world that makes adaptability and creativity paramount, as well as harder. We need healthy organisations to survive and thrive, where playfulness is a key ingredient.

While the benefits of play have been recognised in fields such as psychology and neuroscience, a resistance still remains. Play is often seen as a frivolous activity, less valuable than ‘productive time’. However, play enables us to increase engagement, create psychological safety and it can allow us to embrace ambiguity and creativity.

In this interactive talk, Hanna Karlsson will speak to the importance of playfulness at work, what play indeed is and how it works its magic. Anticipating this will leave you inspired to bring the much needed creativity and silliness into your organisation – play it forward!

About Hanna Karlsson 

Hanna Karlsson is an Agile professional with over ten years’ experience working with teams to facilitate flow, improve engagement and boost customer focus. Originally from Sweden, Hanna has also held a variety of IT roles in the Caribbean and Australia, working in different sized organisations ranging from startups to multinational corporations. She founded The Workshopper, SkillSeekers, and a number of other business ideas that failed fast.

Hanna earned a B.Sc. and MSIS but now her learning focuses on neuroscience and positive psychology — looking in particular at the connections between play and Agile ways of working. Hanna found her experience at Play14 events in Madrid and Hamburg enlightening and thus decided to introduce this ‘unconference’ to Sydney. Ultimately, she hopes to bring more playfulness to Australian working life.