What a start to PMIEMEA19!

 

Today was the first day of #PMIEMEA19 and what a great start to this year's conference. I'm not sure if it was the fantastic Irish hospitality and friendliness or it was just how welcoming the PMI is, but this year's conference is really turning into something special! What makes this conference unique is that there are few other conferences in the world where you will get over 800 Project Professionals, from 70 countries and over 500 different organisations. This gives you a great opportunity to network with your peers and learn so much in such a short period of time.

The Keynote session started off with a PMI introduction regarding the aims and celebration that PMI will be doing for their 50th birthday year and including the activities behind the "Year of the volunteer". 

The keynote speaker this year was: Jamil Qureshi who was giving us his three principles for being a success and more importantly what we think, has an impact on how we feel and subsequently act. Everyone that I've spoken to today, has really taken a lot from his talk and more importantly what they can apply to their daily lives.

The next session that I attended was "Influencing without authority. An essential skill for Project Managers". This was run by Pat Lucey and Norma Lynch who gave their presentation to a packed room. One of the most interesting things for me from this talk was "assuming everyone is a potential ally". I had never really considered this in my stakeholder management but it really did make me think about how I could improve my management skills. Based upon the feedback from this community, I managed to interview Pat and Norma after their session to hear what they thought as first time speakers at a PMIEMEA conference.

Next was lunch which is always a great affair during a PMI Conference. It's really nice to see that they have such a great variety of food available which definitely set us up for a great afternoon session.

For me, my next session was Agata Czopek who was giving us advice on how to future proof our career. I really found it interesting to hear how the career path and careers are changing. The main bit of advice that I took from this talk was to: Never stop learning and always be prepared to learn and learn again.

The rest of the afternoon for me were about agile planning and learning from agile mistakes which were of great interest to me. One thing that really stood out to me was just how collaborative everyone is about sharing their knowledge and ideas. It really made each session invaluable.

Another feedback from the community was people wanting to know what happens outside of the sessions and I decided to capture two videos today showing you the Networking event and also interviewing a first timer.

Here are some more pictures from today's networking event:

This was one of the offerings for food:

This is dessert:

I'd love to know what you'd like to see tomorrow? More interviews with people? or videoing the event sessions? Please comment below!

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter at: ProjectMgtcom as well our community correspondents:

Emily

Stephanie 

Karthik

Moritz

During the conference (I - Em_The_PM) will be taking over the Twitter feed of Projectmanagement.com to share with you my views on the conference so I'd love to hear what you'd like to see more of!

Until tomorrow, have a great evening!