PMI Global Insights

The PMI EMEA Conference is just a few weeks away! As a lot of attendees are already preparing and thinking about the sessions that they want to attend or what are the best ways to network at the conference, I thought that I'd take a step back and ask my followers on Twitter what are the essentials that they take to any conference and more specifically for PMI EMEA. Here are some of the answers and I'd love to hear from you what you think and what's on your must-take list for a conference.

I know that a lot of us are smart phone addicts so I'd really like to know if any of you can recommend good apps for staying efficient and making the most of out a conference. What do you use? I'm sure that the EMEA Conference App will be really popular again this year and I highly recommend downloading this app and connecting with our participants before the event.

Here are a few initial recommendations/thoughts:

1. Business Cards. Makes sure that you have enough to connect with your peers. I always like to make notes on Business cards so I can remember someone/ important information (e.g. if I need to email them with something important etc).

2. Camera: Sometimes a phone camera isn't enough or it drains my Phone battery too much to use effectively.

3. Scarf/ Spare jumper: Conference centres can get very chilly so I try to dress with plenty of layers in case it gets too hot/cold.

4. Registration Confirmation: Make sure that you've printed out your confirmation and have it available for when you check in. This is vital to a prompt and easy access to the conference. I forgot it once before and it took a lot longer to get processed and through.

Here's a few recommendations from my post on Twitter.

@fabiorigamonti says that a good notepad is vital for him. He uses moleskin but I'm a fan of a good spiral bound notepad where I can easily rip out pages etc. I'll also add to this that I always carry at least 3 pens and highlighters (ideally all different colours) so  that i'm able to track/ highlight anything important. This could be important take-aways from a session or something that I want to ask/follow up on later.

@LetsGrowLeaders recommends bringing a Tripod with them for recording or videoing during the conference. This can be great for presenters but might be a bit cumbersome for attendees to bring.

@KarthikPMO Agrees with my suggestion of bringing at least one powerbank with you! He also adds to make sure that you have enough travel connectors for all of your devices. At a recent conference, I saw one Project Manager with an extender cable that had 5 sockets attached to it. He soon became the best friend of a few power hungry people!

So, what is important for you? What can you not be without during a conference? Please comment below!

Please don't forget to follow me and my fellow representatives from the online Community for updates during the conference itself. They'll be announcing themselves during the next few days.

For the past year, PMI has been going undergoing a strategic transformation to be able to support Project Managers in every aspect of their career journey.

This has really made me think about myself and my own career journey and I've asked myself: What am I doing to invest in myself? What am I doing to become a stronger, better Project Manager? Here are a few suggestions that I'd recommend

1. Develop your career strategy

One thing that I'd recommend you start with is looking at where you want your career to go. If you can see where you want to be in 3,5,10 years then it'll help you analyse how you can get there. Do you want to move towards Program Management? Diversify your skills as a Project Manager and become an expert in a specific area (agile/ transformation etc)? 

2. Know your resources!

Your PMI membership can be a great way for you to know and utilise resources at your fingertips. Free On-Demand Webinars, Virtual conferences, in person conferences and great Career Development blogs are all available for you to be able to support and help you along the way. Don't forget that there are many Vendor offers available for you that might be useful to find available resources.

3. Plan!

When it comes to the renewal cycle for PDUs, I try to plan to achieve a minimum of 20 PDUs every year. Within that, I break it down into topic areas where I want to personally improve and then I look for resources that can support me in this area.  So it could look like this:

4. Ask the right questions:

Here's a few questions that might help you understand / learn where you want to develop/progress to:

• What is important for you in your daily job?
• What do you enjoy doing?
• How are you a champion of change?
• How are you making the Project Management world a better place?
• Where do you see yourself in 3/5/10 years?
• What do you need to achieve your career goals? (e.g. additional qualifications? more experience?)

Why is this important?

I completely agree with the PMI strategy of focusing on the individual Project Manager and their career path. It's important to remember and really look long term about our career path and how we can get there. I also think that it's important to have this discussion with your company/ manager about where you want to go and how you want to develop.

During my recent yearly discussions with my boss I discussed that my interests over this year have developed and change and this is where i'd like to move/develop towards. My company appreciates that I take control of my career path and let them know how this will link with their wider strategy/organisational goals.

Conclusion

When it comes to career planning, I think that it's important that you take the time out of your daily work to think really hard and honestly about the answers and work out what's best for you in your long term career. What does your career plan look like? How do you plan your career development? One great thing is that the PMI will be there to support you on your journey and keep providing you great opportunities to help you be the Best Project Manager that you can be!

Are you a champion of change? Do you set a good example to your team, your colleagues and your company for how change should be managed? During the recent PMI conference, I've been learning more about what i can do to become a champion of change and using what I've learnt at the conference to benefit me and my projects. There was a lot of great presentations and keynotes and for me, it really motivated my desire to push myself to become a better change advocate and "Change-seller". 

During this blog post, I'll give you some ideas for what you can do to become a champion of change and what you can do to make a difference within your own "world" but I'd also like to start a discussion in the chat about what YOU do already to make change work in your projects? What helps makes you unique?

Here's some of my suggestions:

1) Be active, open and transparent

Change is scary and frightening for most people. But not for you! You thrive on change and to do this, you are active about communicating the change and being transparent about what's going on. This has to happen with everyone you see in your working day to be successful!

2) Show the value

With any sort of change management, you're on a PR selling mission. One way to promote the change is to show the value to the interested parties. Make it relevant to them and relevant to what they need to know and it'll help you get the message across. Perhaps ask yourself the question: "What's in it for them?" and "Why is this important for them?". This always helps me think about how I can best show them the value.

3) Communicate, communicate, communicate! 

One thing that you can't do enough of is communicate. Communicate in an effective manner, in the right ways (for your industry, company) and look at the best way of delivering your message. Communication doesn't just need to be verbal! A recent idea was to communicate the upcoming project go live over the company screensavers. So that every time you shut your PC or were idle, you'd get a visual showing you the Go Live date and some important graphic information. It's given us an additional way of communicating to people and something that they'll see several times in their day. If you can make it eye catching, all the better!

4) "Be the change you want to see in the world" - Ghandi. 

This is true for many areas of your life and especially when it comes to projects! If you're stalling, being negative, talking negatively then it'll transfer to your team and that's not worth it! 

5) Look at what you can do differently

Try different things, different strategies to see if your team/ organisation reacts to that more positively. When I'm coaching Project Managers I say: There is more than one way to get from A to B, if the first way doesn't work, then try another way". Sometimes to see what could be done, you need to think outside of the box for what might work with your team. This could be different visuals, broadcasting in different ways, using other media (instead of powerpoint slides, use video).

Summary:

Being a champion of change is something all of us can strive to achieve and strive to accomplish. How do you make yourself a champion of change? Let's connect and discuss more. 

This is one part of my summary of the PMI Conference. I've been connecting with other Project Managers from the Conference both online and in person and i've been asking a question that i'd like to bring to this community. During this years conference, I (and the other experts) tried to tweet a lot more about what we do during the conference, what it looks like, the people that we speak to etc... but is this what you want? Is there something else that you'd like to see? 

What would bring the conference closer to you? or be an incentive to join so that you can see what goes on and perhaps tempt you to join another future conference.

Would you like to see more articles about what we're doing at the conference? Would you prefer more videos/ pictures? 

Now, my challenge for you is to comment on a minimum of 1 thing that you'd like to see more of during a PMI Conference? 

Let's start a chat so that we can make future conferences as valuable and useful to remote attendees as possible.

- Emily.

I am back to Bollywood after spending a week in Hollywood and what a week it has been :

1. Travelling half the way across the world : a 19-hour flight from Bollywood to Hollywood
2. Participating as a “Expert” for “Ask The Expert” sessions
3. Presenting at my third PMI Congress - "Who Wants to Be a More Successful
4. Project Manager? Here's Your New Lifeline: Ask the Crowd! #askthecrowd
5. Recording live podcast for PMI on my experience as a speaker and as an attendee
6. A great support from the #crowd at the conference
7. Looking at Life as a magic along with  John Dorenbos
8. Collecting "GEMS" from 5 generations at the workplace from Cam Martson
9. Cracking Creativity with Abigail Posner
10. Finally a enjoying a cool sunset by the Pacific Ocean at the Santa Monica Pier

My takeaways ? I have noted them down as quotes that I gathered from the sessions that I attended

1. “I blamed a lot of people when I wasn’t having success, the more I blamed people around me, the more I lost myself, bit by bit, piece by piece.” – John Dorenbos – “Life is a magic” Key note day 1

2. “You will become infinitely more powerful if you can understand your preferences and set them aside and let your colleagues’ preferences shine through,” – Cam Marston

3. “The big part of the equation was to work with the community to understand what veterans wanted in their brand-new veteran’s medical center – Fernando Rivera, Director of Medical center – south Louisiana Veterans health care system, 2018, PMI Project of the year winner Do I hear “crowdsourcing ““Ask the crowd “here as well ?

4. “Creativity changes the world!” – Abigail Posner

My experience at the conference are captured in these blogs

Day 1: #PMICON18 – Day 1 The magic starts!

https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/47192/-PMICON18---Day-1-The-magic-starts--

#PMICON18 – Day 2 Collecting the GEMS of the Generations

https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/47273/-PMICON18---Day-2-Collecting-the-GEMS-of-the-Generations

Day 3: #PMICON18 – Day 3 Invest in the wisdom of the crowd and crack creativity

https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/47341/-PMICON18---Day-3-Invest-in-the-wisdom-of-the-crowd-and-crack-creativity

A yearlong celebration of PMI’s 50^th birthday #PMI50 has already begun. Watch this to know more. We even created a live mosaic billboard with the moments of the #PMICON18

And yes, there is more… The experts from “Ask the Expert” group have created some exclusive content just for you.  My exclusive expert content  Projects in the Real World: Agile and Beyond is here.

With this I sign off from Bollywood. I would love to know your thoughts on the coverage. Do post your comments here, also don’t forget to follow me on  twitter , LinkedIn and  Facebook  for other exciting news from the world of agile and project management.