Currently I am preparing a presentation for this years interPM conference in Glashuetten (small little town close to Frankfurt). The topic is something about Risk / Complexity and how to identify, measure, manage and communicate it.

How ever, as I perceive, Germany is still a little behind using real time social media as part of their events like conferences. You do not see many people in the audience with a Laptop, iPhone or other devices to real time blog or tweet (using twitter) about the presentation or event. There are some geeks out there doing this. Thomas Witt (@thomas_witt, blog at www.thomas-witt.com) is one of them as he recently tweeted from the TEDx event in Berlin (#TEDxBerlin).

So I am thinking of making twitter in integral part of my presentation and my slides. What I am thinking of is using that kind of approach and functionality for …

• Receive feedback from the audience based on a predefined hashtag
• Real time voting and polls
• Auto Twitter the slide and notes you are currently presenting on

All this of course is dependent on three things …

• Public WiFi or LAN in the room and Laptop connected to it
• Critical Number of people in the room with a mobile device like Laptop, iPhone, RIM and others
• and of course the Plug-ins for Powerpoint

I can’t really influence the first two. Hope is my only method :-) How ever, the last bullet I am able to influence and therefore I was looking for tools and plug-ins to be able to make that functionality part of my presentation. So I stumbled upon the plug-ins from Timo Elliot, an evangelist for SAP. He has developed some pretty neat tools and Shockwave Plug-Ins for Powerpoint that allow you to exactly to do what I was looking for.

1) Receive feedback from the audience based on a predefined hashtag

The plug-in provides the capability to provide real time tweets based on hash tags (#) and usernames (@), you can configure the format (bubbles or boxes), the refresh rate in seconds, special custom feeds (great for search terms outside the average hash tag approach and you can manual refresh the page.

So if you introduce a specific hash tag at the beginning of your presentation (eg. #TKOinterPM, make sure you make it shorter than I just did) and let people tweet during your presentation you can show the audience what the audience has tweeted about your presentation.

That’s how the page could look like (used the #pmot hashtag for ‘Project Managers on Twitter’)

2) Real time voting and polls

You can ask specific questions and have people vote for one or the other answer. If you really want to have your ass kicked ask how the audience liked your presentation. It could go from ‘lame’ via ‘average’ to ‘autostanding’ or whatever you choose. Here is how it works:

Choose a hashtag for the voting like #voteTJKinterPM and than ask the audience to put a number up in front their tweet representing the vote. Like ‘1 i really like your presentation #voteTJKinterPM’ or ‘1 #voteTJKinterPM’. Wait a couple of seconds depending on the internet speed and show up the slides with the results.

Here is how the result could look like:

3) Auto Twitter the slide and notes you are currently presenting on

If you want to tweet life updates of your presentation, you just need to put <twitter> and </twitter> in your notes page before and after the text you want to be tweeted on twitter. This should be either a small summary of your page or the key facts. You can configure that functionality by connecting to your twitter account and provide the hash tag you want to be connected with your tweets. That allows you to use different hash tags for different presentations with the same slides.

Here is how the configuration screen looks like:

Summary

What a fantastic way to interact with your audience and use the real time social media functionality that changed our world of communication and interaction with others in the recent past. What i explained in this post is one way how YOU could enhance this ‘Game Changer’ to enhance your way of communicating with your audience. Go ahead and try.

Downloads and further information (Thanks to Timo Elliot):

• More detailed Instructions you can find here.
• The Powerpoint Plug-in can be downloaded here.

What do you think? How will these options enhance your way of communication and interaction with your audience? Please comment !

I have been on twitter for the last 2 weeks.

After a friend of mine said to me, that twitter is a great resource and great articles and pearls are referred to, I started to create an account, loaded the great ‘Tweetie 2′ Application onto my iPhone and gave it a go. I looked for public known PMs within twitter, like the ‘pmstudent‘ or ‘CorneliusFicht‘ aka Cornelius Fichtner and started to build my ‘network’ on Twitter. I started following Project Managers and accounts from Companies. During that time Twitter announced the ‘list’ feature, where you are able to categorize Twitter accounts into lists so that you can build areas of interests. So it started to set-up a list which follows great individuals around project management (you can see it on the right side in my blog; an example for the real time web, where all new tweets are published at the very second they are visible on twitter).

So after two weeks I almost posted 200 tweets, more or less in the area of project management, and I do have around 80 followers. I guess most of the followers are not organic, they follow me because of specific key words I have used in my tweets. Those guys are following a couple of thousand accounts or even more, and I am not sure how you can follow more than appr. 200 people. I would call that information overload.

But the best part are the tweets that I am seeing every day (I check them while I am on the train in the morning and in the evening while going to work and back home; wondering sometimes how I get there as I am fully focused on my iPhone :-) )

Out of all these tweets I am getting I do tag the ones as favourites that are focusing on my key areas of interest like ‘pearls in project management‘, ‘social media and project management‘, ‘How to use agile approaches in your projects‘ and other special topics.

As I have written 2 books in the recent past and another one due to be published in December this year, the next book has been planned and kicked off already which will focus on revolutions in project management, twitter has become a key resource for me. Just look at the fantastic pearls I have identified in the various fields over the last two weeks (abstract) thanks to all the great people I am following.

Perls in Project Management:

1. theplanis : New article: Disaster projects and how to recover them: http://bit.ly/7UAJWF
2. projekt_log : Super Artikel über Festpreisprojekte und Scrum: http://bit.ly/8cqOOQ
3. commsabilities : PMs: practical advice on how to turn projects round using communications http://cli.gs/2QRPj
4. pmstudent :What to Include in Your Project Kickoff Presentation: http://bit.ly/8JWncM #PMOT

Social Media and Project Management:

1. JoachimNiemeier : 12 Adoption Strategies for Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 - http://bit.ly/8HwJgH
2. shim_marom : “Social Media in the work place | quantmleap” ( http://bit.ly/7GY0Pi )
3. tweetmeme : 10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010 http://bit.ly/7vKnms

Agile Approaches:

1. zcope : Turning #Storyboards into #Agile #Requirements http://bit.ly/5lYDtp
2. thepmp : Presentation: Principles and Practices of Lean-Agile Software Development http://bit.ly/4th6kj
3. garmahis : The waterfall trap for “agile” projects http://bit.ly/4JlTwi

Specials:

1. garmahis : Nine Awesome iPhone Apps for Business - ReadWriteEnterprise http://bit.ly/4pUwa2
2. chaoskind : Betrachte nicht müßig den Steinhaufen, sondern frage dich, wen du damit bewerfen kannst. (Persisches Sprichwort)
   
3. PhilipGDavis : Tips For Attractive Book Covers http://bit.ly/8egDWJ

Twitter is wonderful and I am looking forward to receive more perls and to contribute to the #pmot network. Thanks to everybody out there.

Yesterday I attended a presentation session, organized by the GPM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projekt Management), called “Agiles SW-Projektmangement - Ist Softwareprojektmanagement ohne agile Techniken und Werte noch verantwortbar?”, which basically means weather you can ‘afford’ to do Software Development Projects without using Agile Apporaches. Presented by Dipl.-Ing. Bernd Oestereich, Geschäftsführender Gesellschafter oose Innovative Informatik GmbH, based in Hamburg. The outline says:

Aktuelle Studien zeigen, dass agile Methoden wie Scrum, APM und XP sich immer mehr verbreiten. Ebenso bedienen sich auch viele traditionelle Projektmanager immer systematischer bei den vielen einzelnen Techniken aus dem agilen PM. Was dafür sorgt, dass die Übergänge fließend werden.
Statistiken von Standish, Gartner & Co. in den letzten Jahren zunehmend mehr erfolgreichere SW-Projekte ausweisen, so sind die absoluten Zahlen doch weiterhin unbefriedigend. Als ein entscheidender Unterschied zwischen erfolgreichen und weniger erfolgreichen Projekten wird immer wieder das so genannte agile PM angeführt.
Trotzdem ist Agilität kein Allheilmittel. Eine aktuelle gemeinsame Studie von GPM, PMI und oose zu den Erfolgsfaktoren agiler Projekte belegt, dass weniger die Wahl einer Methode wie Scrum, APM etc. erfolgsentscheidend ist, sondern das richtige Verständnis und die richtige Anwendung weniger ausgewählter Konzepte und Techniken. Welche das sind und vor allem, was das bedeutet, stellt Bernd Oestereich in seinem Vortrag dar.

Bottom Line, you should look at Agile Approaches and decide which one could work in your project, like making small iterations rather than slow motion waterfall and other approaches.

Great presentation with lots of facts. I was sitting in the audience and used a different type to minute that presentation. I used twitter to highlight the key messages. Here is the stream:

1. Attending GPM presentation in Frankfurt on agile software project management. Keen. Will start soon.
2. Interesting study results are presented. Agile vs waterfall - succesful vs unsuccessful.
3. It’s all about applying the right agile technics to the approach you are using for your software project.
4. Iterations are short and sweet. Average 4 weeks and certain technics (planning, retrospective, etc.) are to be applied.
5. Changes are welcome in agile. Requirements are designed, developed and presented to customer. Achievements secured.
6. Milestone vs timebox. Deliver a scope or deliver a timebox (things achieved in a certain timeframe).
7. Project level followed by release level followed by team- and iteration level incl feedback loops and propability questioning.
8. From project target via product features via release features and iteration features to the word order.
9. Now we see an example where agile methods have been applied. Container terminal software project in hamburg.
10. Explaining the apm-timebox-iteration-modell. Wow, what a slide @presentationzen wouldn’t like this one.
11. Question on costs. Agile more expensive but higher quality, higher likelihood to be successful, customer receives what expected.
12. Q&A almost over. Question on who would apply the approaches presented … Small number of hands. How ever, great pres.

Interesting way of floowing a presentation and stepping into a discussions with followers on Twitter. Looking forward to the next session.

I just recently learned from Scoble (Famous Blogger in the western hemisphere) that Twitter has introduced Lists. I havent been a big fan of Twitter … yet. But now with this feature it covinced even me to join and to give it a try.

Twitter is not just about following people and yelling out the information that you just had a sandwich and waiting that people start following you. The question how smart they need to be or how much time the must have to follow you to understand when you have had your sandwich.

But there are are really smart people out there twittering about great news and fantastic stuff thay you might never had heard of or way to late, ‘wenn der Zug abgefahren ist’. To follow these guys is smart. Putting them into a list for a specific topic e.g. Project Management. And then, even smarter, to put them on your blog and pimp your blog in that way.

On the right sidebar you can see the new widget that you can customize yourself in twitter. In this list I have added some people that are ‘big’ in project management or in a peer area. They have something to say. They will point you in new directions. And sometimes they might even tell you that they have had a great tasty sandwich. I will increas the list overtime to give all of us the opportunity to learn more faster.