Thank you. We have been holding the event every year since 2013, for seven days around Labor Thanksgiving Day. Most of our visitors are in their 20s and 30s, but recently we've seen a sudden increase in people over 55 years old.

They are people who have reached the retirement age for their positions. Looking at their business cards, some of them have titles like "former manager" (laughs). It seems that this is an opportunity for them to think about their way of life, rather than their way of working. TWDW is billed as a "festival of working styles," but its distinctive feature is that it is a place where people can reexamine their way of life and values through the way they work.

It all started with the Great East Japan Earthquake and reading Linda Gratton's Work Shift (President Publishing, 2012). It was a time when the world's values and ways of life were in flux, and I quit the advertising agency where I was working after the earthquake.

I was influenced by people who work in what is now called "Holacracy" style. This refers to people who prefer non-hierarchical or top-down organizations and work independently. I wanted to create a platform that would connect people who work in this way. It started as a study group of 5-6 people, but it gradually grew.

Yes. The core concept is that there is no single way of working, no single title, and no single place of work, but the theme changes every year. The first year, in 2013, was "ARE YOU READY FOR THE FUTURE OF WORK?" This was because there was momentum for a major change in the way people work. Since then, we have changed the theme to suit the times and social climate, such as "Discover the Future of Work" and "Building Creative Leadership!".

The current state of affairs is also reflected in the keywords used by speakers. One year, many people spoke about "community," and there was interest in how workers connect and collaborate both inside and outside the company. However, the following year, the emphasis was on individual initiative, and the keyword "leadership" was heard frequently.

If a title is "doing," then the invisible way you are, the person you are, is "being." It's said that "how you work is an interface to how you live," and how you work is reflected in how you live, and how you live is reflected in how you work.

Some people are so moved by the lectures and workshops that their outlook on life is shaken, and they even begin to cry. Incidentally, the management team is made up of about 150 volunteers, mostly in their 20s, and about 70% of them have decided to change jobs or become independent after becoming involved with TWDW.

The trend from "job titles to roles" will not stop. It is also a trend from "companies to teams." The era of moving work forward in hierarchical organizations is over, and the roles of members will become more important.

A job title is expressed by a "title," but a role is expressed by a "tag." One's interests and strengths, such as "programming," "event production," or "AI," are "tags." When these tags are combined, they become the person's way of working and living. If we let AI analyze tags, we might be able to create a dream team that transcends companies .

It would be nice to have many project rooms. I think that in the future, organizations will not be fixed, but will be freely structured for each project. We could buy an entire building with a karaoke room and use it for each project. It would be like an office with many project rooms like a beehive. It would be nice to have a place like that at every station on the Yamanote Line!

The trend these days is to shorten work hours and increase play time, but I think Japanese people are not very good at playing. Isn't it difficult to play? Premium Friday also advocates "finish work and go out for drinks," but wouldn't it be better to call for "spending time on self-improvement" instead? It's not about "not working," but rather about looking at work in a positive way.

In Japan, the "duty to work" is one of the three major duties of citizens. And there is also a culture where people can show gratitude to each other through work. I think this is a wonderful culture. The theme of TWDW 2017 was "Thank you for work." I feel that work is something precious and makes people happy, especially now that it is said that "people will no longer have to work" due to coexistence with AI.