Day two starts with a room that is not as filled as yesterday. Might be the case that some attendees hat a longer night catching up with each other or because of the more or less disappointing key notes from day one.

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.

After inspecting the facilities yesterday evening I am now looking forward how the venue presents itself and will accommodate more than 950 attendees mostly from NASA and some institutions and companies contracted by NASA. A networking event that will be held the last time for the time being due to budget challenges and going into other networking event options.

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.

… how to speak in front of an non existing audience or in an empty room.

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.

A small little dream came true, I must say. I am not just attending the conference this year, taking place at the Caribe Hotel & Convention Center at the 22nd and 23rd of February, but I am also presenting.

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.