Wow, just came across this one. There is a PMI Chapter in Canada, Calgary, (Souther Alberta Chapter) that has just organized a Conference with more than 500 project managers to attend. Everybody who has ever organized an event or a conference does know how much efforts gos into it. Venue, Speakers, Registration, the whole caring about delegates, accommodation, sponsorships, guidelines, speakers and their papers, website, content, etc etc etc.

So these guys now managed to organize the whole conference called PMI SAC Conference. Even if the program looks great by covering all areas of leadership, coaching, influencing, self-promotion and how to create winning projects. A two day conference for less than a 1.000 Dollars.

Program packed with good stuff and great presentation on the website with all the details.

Neil Sanderson, President of the Local Chapter is reffering to the demand on well trained project managers.

There is no lack of work all over the world for professional project managers. There is always a huge demand for professionally trained project managers, and, in these uncertain economic times, the demand is even greater.

I heard these things for the last 3 month a couple of times. When the going gets rough the tough gets going. Meaning that if there is a downturn in economy, projects are getting cut and therefore he demand is slowing down the demand for training is getting higher. As the Project Manager has the time to train as well as needs to catch up with certifications and special skills and has to get ahead of the ‘competition’.

Richard Egelstaff referred to that in his presentation at the PMI Queensland Chapter in September this year and mentioned that now is the perfect time to attend training. And whether its a training course or a conference the result will put you as a potential candidate for a role ahead of your competition applying for the same role.

How ever, great example how to organize a very successful conference and how to create a great website supporting that initiative.

Just returned from the IQPC Project Risk Management Conference with Food for Thought and a Summary on all 4 days that I attended and participated in.



1) Masterclass by Kathleen  Kuryl

A very well conducted and facilitated Workshop by Kathy (President of the Tasmanian AIPM Chapter) and even if she was that nervous that she had to get up at 0530 in the morning you could see a thing of that . We got a lot of insights of the Project Methodology that has been put together by her and her team and is fully available on their website. The session was very much focused on the Risk Management component of the method itself. Kathy printed a lot of material and provided that as a hand out for the participants (overall around 7). The Masterclass was very intimate due to the fact that we just had a small audience like this and Kathy got a very good discussion going which helped us to understand how Risk Management is being applied by other industries. Another perception was that Government and Construction was very well represented in the Masterclass and in the overall conference. 

In the Afternoon we focused on a couple of areas. 

• How to present a risk profile to various audiences like stakeholders, steering group members, team members etc. (will have another post on that soon)?
• How to practical apply Risk Management in you day to day project management work?
• How to facilitate a risk assessment with an immature audience?

Another good point, that was raised, was that Lessons Learnt that you do after a project or a phase / stage has finished should drive and influence future risk assessments. So a two page summary of the outcome of a lessons learnt session was recommended (1. Area of project to get the reader to understand if they run a similiar project, set the context etc.; 2. Circumstances and Situation the project was running in; 3. Scope of project; 4. The Lessons Learnt summary)

2) Two days of conference

11 presentations and two interactive discussions, and each one of them scheduled for 45 minutes, plenty of time and opportunities to network was the structure for these days. Around 50 to 60 participants and everyone of them actively working in the Project Risk Management area, in one or the other role.

The three presentation highlights for me have been

1. Liam Wallace from ASC - about Comprehensive Risk Identification, Analysis and Planning
   Liam came across very knowledgeable and for sure coming out of a mature organisation where Risk Management is enforced and embraced. He has given us practical examples of risk registers, presentation options of risk profiles, their risk appetite and how they change the risk appetite according to the project. The “Heat Map” was definitely a very valuable tool that ASC is using to present risks to board members. He also referred to that how to identify risks constantly and how you can keep that simple. The slides have been great in a way they can be used for further reference, depending on how much he was allowed to put on the CD that was handed out.
    
2. Eddie Stewart from Newcastle City Council - about Applying Project Structure
   Eddie was talking about how Project Management Frameworks and Risk Management Strategies go together and his slides were just great as they provide a great reference to how the Newcastle City Council does Project Management and how they run projects and, most interesting, what projects they are running, which for somebody like me out of the private business environment was quite interesting. From an asset management side of thinks IT people often just think about PCs and Monitors and that such as assets, but for the City Council there are more than 70.000 trees and every tree is treated as an asset with additional information about size and age etc. Make sure you get a hands on the slides as they provide a good point of reference.
    
3. Rob Loader - Analysing the complexity of stakeholder management
   Rob was talking about the difficulties as well as critical success factors around Stakeholder Management in the context of risk management and was referring to the challenges how to understand your stakeholder, why you need to understand them and how. So referring to the question how you can understand a stakeholder that you never get exposed to he gave a couple of examples like waiting at the elevator until he shows up and give him the “elevator pitch” or wait for him at the car park near his car and give him the “car pitch” or just go and constantly ask for 15 minutes of his time. But clear advice was, you need to understand him and do everything to achieve that. His slides are another good point of reference. Clearly visible that Rob has done plenty of presentations in his career.

Regarding the interactive discussions about budget forecasting and software for risk management I dont know whether the delegates got much out of that. Haven’t had and heard much feedback around that area, but at least the crowd was engaged and shared experiences to the audience. Which helped for the networking as you knew whom to talk to about specific topics.

3) The Workshop - How to Identify, Measure and Manage Risk Throughout the Life Cycle of the Poject

We had a couple of cases prepared for this conference plus a short introduction of the Diamond Model based on the book “Reinventing Project Management” by Aaron J. Shenhar and Dov Dvir and how it could be used as tool to start facilitating a risk assessment and to present a risk profile of a project. A great discussion we had, around the model its use and how different industries and their projects are related to the model and how the projects could be mapped with the model. After that we had another very good discussion around how to embed a simple risk process in your day to day work and how to present risks to various audiences and several great ideas got shared between the attendees. Again, a very intimate workshop which was probably the biggest asset as this helped to facilitate a good discussion and sharing of ideas amongst the participants. The area around how to present risks created so many ideas that i need to summarize them later on in a different post.

Bottom Line

I perception is that the concept of a boutique conference style focused on niche topics really works. You find your audience (Gavin Halling for example is selling a risk management tool and he cant get a better audience than this for selling it), you find your peers to talk about issues and getting ideas how to resolve them, you build your network to be able to be more successful in your role and depending on the topics and speakers you might get great content and knowledge you can walk away with. The only downside is, that the conference has a price which some might not be willing to or even cant afford. Thats why we havent seen many people out of IT and other industries beside Construction, Engineering and Government. So here is my advice, if you have your Company paying for it -> GO, if you do not or you cant afford it your self -> PRESENT as you are able to get to the conference for free.

There three conferences coming up late September and early to mid October in Australia and New Zealand that I am currently aware of.

Brisbane, September 22nd to 25th, Project Risk Management Conference

First of all in late September the IPQC organized Project Risk Management Conference 2008 is coming up. Claimed to be the one and only Conference in Project Management focusing on Risk Management it will take place in Brisbane starting on the 22nd of September with a Master Class, 2 day conference afterwards and workshops on the 4th day.

The price ranges from $2.999+GST for the conference only to $5.995+GST for the whole lot plus another $799+GST for the DVD incl all the papers.

Canberra, October 12th to 15th, AIPM Conference 2008

Starting with a welcome reception on Sunday the 12th, leading into a packed conference program from the 13 th to the 15th. Framed into Keynotes in the morning and the afternoon an inspiring program has been put together. Keynote Speakers like Andrew Look, John Lloyd, Rodney Turner and Miriam Baltuck have been locked and the program is full of industry recognised speakers.

The price ranges from $650 for a student to $1.295 for a non AIPM member for the full conference.

Auckland, New Zealand, October 06th to 08th, PMI NZ Natyional Conference 2008

PMI NZ is well know for the conferences with a great inspiring attitude, a great social program and great speakers. This years Conference will drive that perception even further. The conference will start of on Ocotber 6th with Workshops on eXtreme Project Management, Agile Project Management and a radical Bootcamp for Project Managers, a On Site Visit Programme in the afternoon and the registration for the conference opens in the evening plus the icebreaker cocktail function. Tuesday and Wednesday are fully packed with great keynotes and presentations. Have a look at the programme.

The Social Prorgamme will focus on the “Carnival” Conference Dinner with a

superb three course dinner, interspersed with award presentations and more stunning entertainment. Following the formal part of the evening we will be dancing the night away to live music from one of New Zealand’s bands.

The price ranges from $395 to $1.325 for the conference plus $150 for the dinner function.

More on the programs to come as we are moving closer to the events.

Looking back to the PMOZ 2008 i found another interesting article / post on the web that describes a different experience around the conference.

Pat Byrne from holistech held the following presentations

• The Factors Contributing to Project Success (Presentation and Paper)

and

• Understanding the Complexity of Program Management, Co-authored with Graham Durant-Law (Presentation)

and addresses the Co-Conference approach (PMOZ and SEPG) and describes his experience in the in the following way:

Overall, I think the co-conference is a great idea. But there are a few challenges and none of them detract from the co-conference concept.

One of the challenges I suspect from my chats with a few people at the conference and from my experience at other events, is that it is an easy transition from the software/systems engineering perspective to move into a project management forum, because project management is so much a part of software/systems engineering. But the other way around is problematic. If a project manager has experience in the software, defence or aerospace industries, then software/systems engineering isn’t so foreign. But if you are a project manager in say construction or civil engineering, then going to a software/systems engineering presentation at a conference means you can be confronted with gobbledygook.

and

I suspect that PMOz/SEPG got this balance about right, particularly with some of their joint keynotes. But I also suspect that an offering of “systems engineering basics” for project managers may perhaps be useful - more so than “project management basics” for systems engineers (although I do note there were some interesting workshops suitable for either stream).

Pat is absolutely right, the combination is worth doing, but there have been far to many streams in parallel (7 streams) where the co-conference approach doesnt achieve what Pat is mentioning, you have so many topics and by far cant attend as many as you wish and want. Some times more is less what i mentioned in one of my previous posts. An Pat is referring to that as well with the following recommendation:

Perhaps a worthwhile objective would be to have a single stream for the combined conference for refereed academic papers. This might be accompanied by a properly put together electronic journal published by the combined conference. I have no doubt this would be well received and would assist in that integration of theory and practice so necessary for the professions to progress.

And as he says, may be something to consider for 2009.

via Holistech