It’s a small little cute town in the ‘hintertaunus’ a hilly country side close to Frankfurt Germany. Thats where the yearly small boutique project management conference is taking place, hosted by the largest project management organisation in Germany, the GPM (Gesellschaft für Projekt Management).

The concept is a little different from other conferences, as collaboration and different formats are being used to bring participants together and let them interact in different ways. The ‘open space’ format, where attendees can decide on the topic they want to discuss and the ‘interdisziplinaere werkstatt’ are to formats that foster a different way of communication and result and interest driven collaboration.

To set the scene and to provide impulses 40 minutes presentation are being held in three streams. This years overall topic was about the balancing act between agile and the industrial approach.

I was there to present and my talk had the title ‘Gelungener Spagat zwischen Agilität und Wasserfall am Beispiel der SAP Einführung
bei der Deutschen Bank AG‘

Der Vortrag beschreibt am Beispiel der SAP-Einführung bei der Deutschen Bank, unter welchen
Voraussetzungen agile Methoden innerhalb eines klassischen Projektansatzes (Wasserfall) eingesetzt werden können. Er skizziert den Kontext des Gesamtvorhabens und die Herausforderungen, die zu meistern sind, erläutert die kritischen Erfolgsfaktoren und konkrete
Vorgehensweise sowie deren Vorteile.

Loved the talk, loved the reaction and resonance to it and I am looking forward to present it in other formats and to various audiences in the near future.

About 100 people from what I was seeing attended the conference. How ever the big plus is the book that is being produced and published and handed over to all participants based on the abstracts that each presenter had to provide upfront. A USP that I haven’t seen at other conferences so far. Far more valuable and haptical different to DVDs or printouts that usually are provided. Thx for that.

Looking forward to attend next years conference again.

First the NEXT conference, a social media conference hosted by SinnerSchrader, which has been established 6 years ago and moved to Berlin two years ago.

Berlin is a great location for that kind of conference, beside all the visionary and creative people it provides a beautiful scenery that if you are from Frankfurt you are desperate for :-)

This years conference attracted more than 2.000 participants and heaps of talks, discussions and workshops as well as a start competition and to not miss out on the party, took place.

Check out the full program right here

I was the for the full days and tried to visit as much talks and workshops that I could.

The most interesting for me was the talk from two authors and the founder of a creative agency called AKQA called ‘Velocity‘.

Whatever you do and wherever you are, Velocity is coming to get you. Don’t hesitate and get taken by surprise. Evolve now, rise to the challenge and create a better, smarter and more inspiring future.

Digital technology is changing the way we do business in every way imaginable and if there is anything worth knowing about how to use it to innovate and grow, Stefan Olander and Ajaz Ahmed know it. Stefan Olander is the vice-president of Digital Sport at Nike and Ajaz Ahmed is the founder of legendary independent innovation agency AKQA. Between them they have invented some of the most influential and iconic work for many of the world’s leading brands. Written as a conversation between Olander and Ahmed, Velocity is a highly perceptive manifesto for a world gone digital.

Charged with cutting-edge content and ideas, Velocity presents the seven new laws all businesses need to face to thrive, including ‘Convenient is the Enemy of Right’, ‘It’s Easier Done Than Said’ and ‘Have a Purpose Larger Than Yourself’. Highly thought-provoking and utterly engaging,Velocity will turn your perceptions about digital on their head, and arm you with the knowledge to define your future and leave your competitors behind.

Here are the seven laws in a nutshell and some other quotes that had an impact on me.

Have a Passion as much as for profits

Change is often seen as a threat, but to an entrepreneur it’s oxygen (Richard Branson)

First law

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces

On the day Kodak filed for bankruptcy, instagram sold for 1 billion dollar

Second law

It’s easier done then said

Get going. Then get better.

Role your sleeves up and do it.

‘do we have a product?’ Steve jobs

Is it going to work 90 percent of the time for 90 percent of the people

Third law

The best advertising isn’t advertising

Make meaningful connections

Absolute everything that a brand does tells a story

Greatest level of emotional resonance

Nike personal trainer case

Fourth law

Convenient is the enemy of right

Fifth law

Respect human nature

Inspire me. Enable me. Make be better (durch Apple perfekt umgesetzt)

Create wonder. Create moments itil that people will remember for the rest of their life’s

Sixth law

No good joke survives a committee of six

Have the balls to make the calls ( quick decision making and focus on outcomes)

Seventh law

Have a purpose larger then yourself

We should always start with a vision - do you have something to aim for

Something to build that outlasts you

A project must act to inspire what comes next

If you’re not shitting yourself you are not doing something new

No journey worth taking is ever easy

In a nutshell … It was an inspiring conference that will have an impact on what and how i am doing things in the future, which, for the ones that do know, is quite relevant :-)

Definitely see you next year.

How ever the keynotes have been better than yesterday and also used the time that was given instead of running short.

However, today two main speakers will take the stage.

1) Mark A. Langley, the CEO of PMI (Project Management Institute), tailing about Strategic Talent Management and the gap in talented Project Management people

and

2) Robert Lightfoot (his name is his principal), a Top Shot at NASA, that still has to paint room at home :-), talking about his leadership principals

What I have to mention again, both speakers start with a story and have plenty of stories in their pack to get across in their 30 min timeframe.

For the ones that are not as familiar with the storytelling concept, her it is in a nutshell:

• Talk about the situation to set the scene
• Mention the complication to get the problem across
• Raise the question what should or could be done
• Give the insights what you have done and what you have learned
• but remember, always keep it simple and relevant

Both speakers are stars in their story telling capabilities, but lets focus on the topics and the key learnings

Mark Langley, Strategic Talent Management

Key Learnings:

• Yes, there is war for talent
• the economy grows and their is a huge demand for skilled and talented project managers
• the staff is getting older (in the next 10 years, 60% of NASA staff is retiring) and need to be replaced
• there is a shift in skills required to do the job
• its no longer to be able to manage Time, Cost and Scope to deliver the quality expected
• its about technical, leadership and strategic management skills - aha !
• yes, there is a gap in people providing that skill
• so get ready as a company to train your staff and acquire the required skills on the market to be ready
• as a potential employee get ready and skill yourself in all there dimensions
• bottom line: An organization is nothing more than their peoples capability in delivering value

Any news for you ?

Make sure you work with PMI as an organization to find the right strategy to be ready for what is coming.

Make sure you work with PMI as an individual to skill yourself and surround yourself with others to be identified as somebody filling the GAP.

Lets get into the next one.

Robert Lightfoot (his name is his principal), a Top Shot at NASA, that still has to paint room at home :-), talking about his leadership principals

Here again, story telling in perfection and very engaging. He is a leader, at least he is coming across like one.

Key learnings:

What makes a leader

• Backbone (to make tough decisions)
• Vision bone (to think into the future)
• Funny bone (to add a little bit of humor)

Leadership tyrannies (don’t let them suck the life out of you)

• Messages classified as Important / urgent
• To much information (80 page slide deck -> with remark: for your information)
• Discussion either / or driven (if you hear an either / or put an ‘and’ instead)

Than he talked about his leadership principales:

• positive attitude
• you need to have passion
• have a sense of humor
• understand and admit your weaknesses
• listen without the intend of responding (listen to understand not to reply)
• control your emotions
• share what you know to release the power
• recognize the power of workforce diversity
• use your common sense
• demonstrate integrity and humanity
• engage in continuous learnings (learn from your leaders, learn by being led, stay hungry)
• have the courage to handle unjust criticism
• understand communications
• operate similar on all levels
• admit and learn from mistakes
• get out of your office, but don’t be a drive-by leader
• practice situational leadership
• train your replacement
• evaluate risk
• leading change is hard (never, never, never give up)
• keep it up and remember why you are doing this

So what am I taking out of day two

• Story telling is key
• Shitty slides do not support the speaker (to many shitty slides I have seen today)
• NASA got PM toolkits that look like ours, fighting the same problems
• Systems need to more than the sum of their subsystems
• There were to many streams and not enough attendees (especially in the afternoon)
• Listen to understand not to reply !

A great conference with additional impulses and to get a better feeling how organizations like NASA manage their projects. Unfortunately their is no event planned for next year.

So see you sometime.

The huge ballroom is filling just prior to the keynotes to be held this morning. Almost every seat is taken.

If have planned to attend the Key Notes (shorter than the ones that you might be familiar with) and 6 sessions / speaker opportunities throughout the day including mine. Here is the schedule for today. And for some I will have a more detailed coverage depending on how interesting and new the topics are to me.

1. Key Notes
2. Principles of Project Success at NASA
3. Meeting the Challenges of the Future Now, Lesa Roe
4. 5 Keys to Successful Project Management, Wayne Brantley
5. How to learn from other peoples mistakes, Ed Rodgers
6. New Platform, KSC (Kennedy Space Center) Repurpose

So what am I taking out of the first day.

1. May be the last NASA PM Conference that is being organized due to funding issues and other reasons
2. Project Management Topics in context of Space and Engineering with the aura of the NASA are inspiring
3. Project Management is Project Management is Project Management and nobody is cooking with gas :-)
4. When we think our projects are complex try to manage one with 2 Million separate systems (eg. Apollo Program)
5. For good speakers, Story Telling is key. Most of the good speakers tells stories at the beginning and during their speech, stories that have a meaning and that are getting the speakers message across.
6. Florida is a nice place to hold a conference

So lets look at the keynotes themselves: 3 Speakers at the beginning and the key messages I took away from them

The first one to talk, a Top Shot at NASA, gives an advice that everybody should think about by reflecting what has changed in his view at conferences. People are looking at their computer, blackberry and smartphones instead listening to and looking at the speaker. His advice is, by referring to Ferries Buler (Ferris macht blau), Life is moving fast, if you not look up, you might miss it. So look up, look around, speak to people that you have not planned to speak to, go into a presentation that you have not planned to go to. I will take this into account for my first day and will attend sessions that I have not planned for. Beside that he commenting on his leadership principles that are three fold:

Passion, Energy and a little bit of humor

Then Andy Chaikin is taking the stage, a famous author (Man on the Moon), I am sure that some of you have read some books from him. His recent publication is ‘Voices from the Moon’ where he interviewed the astronauts that went out to the long journey to the moon.

His key message is elaborating on the fact that NASAs objectives are changing and the meaning might or will be different in the future.

They (NASA) went to Space, went to the Moon and built a Space Station (ISS), how ever as the money runs out and available budgets become tighter the meaning of NASA might and will have to be different in the future.

He talks about that every individual has ‘to be part of meaningful narrative’. And by making an impossible dream come true you can’t go back to business as usual (looking at the Apollo Mission, an endeavor that at that point in time nobody thought would be possible.

So looking at the cost situation at NASA, by giving examples like, the shuttle was designed to cost (only half of the required budget of 10 Billion Dollars were granted) and by giving an example that NASA has to change as the are currently perceived as the ‘The self licking ice cone’ to focus on changing the cost side of the cost benefit equation.

To be able to see the Moon and Earth like ‘Messenger’ did when flying to Mars, without achieving these goals the people at NASA will not have a meaningful narrative to go beyond what they already have achieved.

Just arrived at the conference center in Orlando, Florida, for the NASA Project Management Challenge and Conference one day ahead of the game and registered. Beside that, all the rooms were set up already and equipped, but empty. So I took the chance to sneak into my room that I am going to speak in tomorrow. Small projector wall (not seen on the picture and 200 spare seats. How ever, 950 people attending, aprx. 15 parallel streams (average of 60 to 70 participants for each presentation) and about 140 to 150 presentations during the day.

This is the room I am presenting in

and this is the benchmark, the Carribean Ballroom where the keynotes are taking place. May be next time.

950 delegates attending and about 140 to 150 presentations mostly held by NASA staff. I applied last year in August and got accepted on the back up list and 3 weeks prior to the conference got a spot.

It’s a delegate program with plenty of new impulses and project management practices applied at NASA and companies close to the program.

Just check out the program and you will see what I mean why I a proud to be contributing part of the conference.

Topics like ‘Lessons Learned from the Challenger Launch Decision’ and ‘Managing Space Projects in a Changing Global Environment’ are just two examples I am looking forward to.

How ever, if we think our projects are complex, think about the Apollo Program, yes, the one that went to the moon between 1969 and 1972, they have a Project where the goal is to manage the build, test and assemble of 2 million systems, not parts, but systems. Unbelievable and Impossible…. ? No, just scrap this out of your dictionary. Can’t wait.

• Bestseller-Autorin Corinne Hofmann, einem Millionenpublikum als „Die weiße Massai“ bekannt,
• Uni-Psychologe Paul Jimenez,
• Erfolgsschriftsteller und Weltenbummler FRANZOBEL,
• Albert Holzknecht, Studierendenseelsorger der KHG Graz,
• Der Outdoor- und Projekt Management Enthusiast Torsten J. Koerting (ja, das bin ich)

und durch den Abend führte

• Moderatorin Bettina Zajac-Thelen vom ORF Steiermark.

Angehalten war ich nun eine 10-15 minütige Einstimmung auf den Abend und das Thema zu geben.
Das Video und die verwandten Slides weiter unten.
Wollte ich es nicht missen meiner Tochter wie versprochen eine Freude zu machen und alle Besucher dazu zu bewegen in die Kamera zu winken.
Was mir auch gelang.

Der Raum, professionell gestaltet, war gut gefüllt und um so mehr Freude machte es die einstimmenden Worte zu sprechen. Aber seht selbst:

Und hier die Slides:

Spass hat’s gemacht und danke für die Einladung.

Eine Rückbetrachtung und einige Bilder findet ihr hier.

First of all, teamwork cant be done as it has been done in the past due to vitality and being a global organisation.

It’s hard to raise awareness and get connected with the co workers especially in global line organisations or large size projects.

Micro blogging can solve this issues, by raising the question “What are you working on ?” instead of Twitter asking “Whats happening ?”

So what are the current stats of Deutsche Bank’s micro blogging service ‘The Wire’ as of may 2011.
There are 7.713 Users on the platform, 4.324 of those have posted at least one update and by average around 750 posts are published on a business day.

A special hashtag (#Wirewin) has evolved to recognise a good answer to a specific question.

So what are the roadblocks to make micro blogging a success in a global organisation.

1) casual vs. work: There is professional reputation to loose.
2) US vs. Germany: Cultural differences between countries and various levels of adoption.
3) Bosses Blogging: Employees are checking whether their bosses are blogging and are looking for guidance whether blogging can be perceived as a time waster. If the boss blogs, employees will blog too.
4) Regulation: information provisioning is regulated and the sender has the responsibility to decide.

What are the possibilities and for the future.
Micro blogging has a great potential to change the way we work as it becomes the memory of the organisation.
And if all of your platforms  are able to tweet as you work with them (bug fixed -> tweet; document uploaded -> tweet; answer a question -> tweet aso.)

Bottom Line:
Its hard to establish a micro blogging service, how ever, it can be done, and if you are successful a better sharing and communication culture can be established with great possibilities to generate.

What experiences did you make in your organisation?

There have been some views shared on the internet already:

• Andreas Heilwagen shared his view and gives advice how to prepare for a conference (I liked his red hat)
• Susanne Bartel shared her view on the conference and reflecting on my presentation (Thanks Susanne)

Looking back its has been a great experience where not much can be enhanced. So here is my view

1) Great Keynotes

Just to give you a view examples

• Matthias Horx - Trend und Zukunftsforscher
  Key message: There is a better future after a crisis
• Volker Doekel - Project Manager for the A380 Project at Lufthansa
  Key message: More communication, less tools
• Friedrich Fuehr - Founder of the DESERTEC Foundation
  Key Message: Have a vision and be the change you want to see
• Tom De Marco (definitely another highlight) - author of “Der Termin” - “The Deadline”
  Key Message: Systems became to complex to handle
• Christian Gansch - Vom Solo zur Sinfonie
  Key message: Everybody plays an important part in a project

Just these keynotes have been worth coming to this event

2) Good exibition

Many companies have participated and have been exposed to around 900 visitors.

Definitely a great side activity and creating a creative environment for all the participants.

The food was served close to the exibition and therefore may people hang around there.

3) The speaches and presentations

It’s like with every conference. There are very good speakers, there are good speakers and there are average speakers. At this years PM Forum 2010 there was a good balance. If you were lucky picking the right presentation you could have seen quite some good presentations.

The ones I was impressed by, were the following:

• Wolfram Mueller - Great speech about his well known approach about Critical Chain Projekt Management. Based on a buffer he is adding to the project he is able to manage the portfolio and resources effectively.
• Thomas Roellecke - Talking about opportunities, threats and risks in international projects with international teams. The slides also worked like an abstract. So if you want to read through the 18 items addressed, check out the slides on the PM Forum page (as a participant your able to download them)
• Dr. Lorenz Schneider - Great presentation about the challenges by being responsible building the Shanghai Formula 1 Circuit. Freat pictures, and damm, this guy got experience. Make sure you read his abstract in the conference book.
• Tabita Armbrecht and Monika Ulmer - they gave a great insight in Project Management career development at a large health insurance company in Germany. Great stuff to develop the talent from the inside.

4) Overall

Great event, definitely worthwhile attending

The only thing from my side that was missing.

Please record the presentations and publish them as video podcasts on itunes and on your website. Would have been a great value add. (Spend less money on food and more on recording and documenting.

Next year I will be there.

A special event which took place in 2009 already, as an initiative by the Stfitung Entrepreneurship. The Key member of that foundation is Prof. Dr. Faltin, the author of the book “Kopf schlaegt Kapital“. One of the bestellers at amazon for the last years. He is fostering the idea to work on a business model which is designed by using components that you as the entrepreneur do not have to build but put them together in a way that they work from start to finish. Almost none of the activites relevant to deliver a product to the customer is being performed by you or your company but suppliers delivering specific parts of the supply chain. The benefit of that method is, that you as the founder are focusing on the horizon and the market to be able to adapt your business accordingly. A very interesting approach that has been proven by many entrepreneurs already. The examples often used are Teekampagne (delivering a world-class tee, darjeeling, to customers in bigger packages) and Ratiodrink (delivering juice concentrate to customers in bigger packages) and eBuero (delivering secretary and buero services to companies that are to small to engage them on their own).

After reading his book I was fascinated about that idea, I would have paid 1.000 Euros to attend a workshop just on that topic. How ever, looking at his website I saw the invite for this years summit for 35 Euros for early birds. So I caught the worm and with a friend of mine we travelled to Berlin to the Freie Universitaet with about 1.000 others and got inspired.

Some key presentations have been held. The best one probably from Alex Osterwald, the author of the Book “Business Model Generation”, not another generation beside ‘Generation Y’ but a way to create and change business modells. A fantastic presentation (presentation zen style) and 100 slides he had to squeeze into 20 minutes. Well done Alex. and a great way to explain your way of thinking. Thanks.

The biggest surprise to me was ‘Nena’, speaking about her private school she founded with her husband and two more friends about 3 years ago.

To summarize: Great event, great crowds, creative environment and great impulses by the presentations and workshops. Go for it, and spread the word. And if just 10 ideas make it successful to the market it was worthwhile (out of 100 ideas, 99 fail = 1.000 participants = 10 ideas that will be successful).

During the summit i recorded some pictures and video and during my idle time on the train I created a Video with iMovie on my iPhone4. Its impressive what can be done on a phone within 30 to 60 minutes. Unbelievable. So check it out.