From Whiskey to Virtual Team Development. Another packed day at PMIEMEA19

 

Day 2 has really kicked off with a bang! This morning, I joined one of the offsite activities that PMI offers at their EMEA Conference. The options available were: A visit to the Microsoft Campus, A visit to the Royal College of Surgeons and finally a trip to Teeling Whiskey Distillery. As a fan of Whiskey, this last option was the biggest highlight for me!

Everyone was really excited and enthused to go to the distillery! I presented a video live from the Distillery on Twitter for everyone and I hope some of you managed to see it! The Distillery tour itself took you through how Whiskey is made but on a boarder level about how the Teeling company has overcome a lot of adversity and challenges to be in the strong market position they are in today and what this means for us as Project Managers. The biggest takeaways for me can be summed up in this picture.

After coming back from the Distillery, it was already time for lunch and I love being able to use this time to Network with other PMs. I always find a table of people that I have never met and just start talking to them about their morning session. It was really fun to be able to see how different people take in different things from each session. During this networking break, we had quite an open discussion about the functionality and practicality of hotdesking/open space working in a project team environment and what worked for them in their projects. I find it fascinating to see how many different ways people can approach challenges in their projects and organisations.

After Lunch, it was time to for us to contribute in the Virtual working /leadership session. I really liked that there was such a large audience interaction and participation in this session as it really showed the wealth of knowledge and experience in the room but also the facilitation skills of the speakers to be able to handle such a passionate group of Project Managers. It was a constant stream of sharing knowledge/ asking questions and giving their feedback which really made this session very worthwhile. I posted a series of pictures live on my Twitter feed (@Em_The_PM) that I can strongly recommend that you look at.

The final session of the day was: Why women make better Project Managers and I felt that this title was a big misleading for the topic that it covered as it was more about the Leadership style needed for 21st Century projects and although the topic was well covered from a Leadership perspective, I wished there would have been more of some takeaways for why and how you can utilise women in your project teams/environments.

The day ended with a fabulous celebration from PMI for their 50th Birthday and what a celebration it was! Live music, acrobatics, fabulous food and networking. This was a really lovely end to the day and although you can see that everyone is very tired from an intense two days of conference, they are really emboldened by what's to come!

It's going to be the last day of the conference today and we are looking forward to some more great sessions and what we're able to learn in this last jam packed day! I'm really looking forward to the TED Talks closing ceremony and can't wait to see what more I can learn today!

Please don't forget to follow me and the other correspondents on Twitter and make sure you're checking the Projectmanagement.com Twitter for the latest snippets!