Are you Ready for PMI Congress?

 

A few days ago, a tweet posted by Cornelius Fichtner flashed across my feed…How to get the Most out of Attending a Project Management Conference – a rebroadcast of a previous podcast episode.  And in the transcript of this podcast, he provided an extensive checklist to use in preparation of attending a conference.

With PMI Congress fast approaching, I decided to take a look, and I was quite impressed by the length and detail included within.  If you are a detailed planner (as many PMs are), you might want to grab a copy – even if only to get your thoughts going about what you should be trying to get out of a conference. 

It is designed so that you will be well prepared and come away from the conference feeling satisfied that you have achieved everything you came for, and more!

I had of course already done some preliminary planning, and given the time I have left, I decided to take a bit more of an agile approach with this list…

Goals & Metrics

I already have goals in mind for the conference:

• Network and meet some of the influencers and experts who will be at the conference, as well as many others who might share similar experiences or offer new ones
• Humbly provide advice and possible insight into project challenges where I can, for anyone who comes looking for support
• Be present, open and positive, and learn as much as I can – whether that comes from the people I meet, or the sessions I attend!

I won’t set targets on the number of talks to attend, because from experience, I have found that sometimes the best learning comes from personal dialogues as opposed to rushing from talk to talk.  But networking isn’t something everyone is comfortable with either. 

Maybe metrics and targets like number of talks to attend, or number of people to meet, are important to you.  It really depends on what motivates you, how you absorb information, and how open you are to just being flexible too.  If you want to use them, make sure you set them up in advance (as for all projects!)

Risk Avoidance

I scanned the list for anything that might introduce major risks to success – and confirmed that I had accomplished the most critical tasks required to date:

• Confirming travel arrangements – because how can I be successful if I don’t even have that figured out?
• Scheduling committed timeframes into my calendar - being one of the experts at the support booth this year, I felt this was pretty important!
• Progressing tasks associated with networking – social media announcements that I’ll be coming, updating my contacts list with details of people I know I will be meeting with, ensuring I will have business cards and other such things.
• Ensuring my laptop and google folders are up to date with any revised electronic files I might require or want to work on during travel, or in my downtime – after all, work life does still go on, right?

Optimizing Opportunity

Next I looked at items that will help me enjoy my time at the conference:

• Tying up as many loose ends as I can before my departure, including the new tasks (surprise!) that seem to keep appearing this week.
• Thinking of attire designed for business and comfort.
• Browsing through the list of talks and listing the ones I might like to attend, their times and locations.
• Thinking about who is coming that I might want to meet in person, or technologies I might want to explore in the trade show.
• Thinking about questions I want to gain answers to – from who?  Possibly some talks, but this will come as I meander through it all…
• Practicing my elevator pitch? This is a regular thing for me, so CHECK!
• Getting to know some of the people I will be attending with via emails and twitter chat – I haven’t met them face to face yet, so this will be fun!

The Rest? 

It is all up in the air and will ebb and flow as the event proceeds.  I’m flexible, and so long as I am enjoying things, I’ll go with where things fall.  After all, this isn’t a project with life or death risks to manage.

Maybe we will meet and have a great conversation.  Or maybe you can’t make it, and you’ll want to know a bit more about what was missed.  For you, I will share some things:

• Likely I will tweet and blog a bit during the event, although this practice is new to me too (aka, I'm not a mad tweeter - and is that the correct term? you get it...)  In other words, no promises on update frequency!  You can follow me here, if you like, or just search #PMICongress for everyone’s tweets.
• After the event I will author a post or two about thoughts, lessons and new experiences from having attended.  I hope you'll gain some insights from them too!

Maybe it will entice you to come to the next, if you weren’t able to this time around…