Project Management Parade 2008

Today I gave a presentation about the things we can learn from complexity theory, to a number of project managers, on a Dutch seminar called Projectmanagement Parade 2008. The organization (IPMA) put me in the smallest room that they were able to find. (They probably would have preferred to put me in the cloakroom, if that had not turned out to be even spacier.)

Fortunately, this didn’t deter any of the 40+ project managers who wanted to attend my presentation. They simply climbed all over each other to find places to sit or stand and hear what I had to say. It showed that you cannot close the door on good project managers. They won’t take ‘no’ for an answer and usually find ways to get what they want.

The presentation went rather well. I even timed it correctly this time, which was a new experience to me. The PowerPoint slides, full of utterly useless animations, are available for download here. Note that this is the small version, specifically created for this day. I have another (bigger) presentation available for other sessions.

I promise I will tell you some other day about the interesting things I heard during some of the other presentations, regarding best practices, business cases, types of project managers, etc.

All in all, I think it was quite a successful day. I have only three minor gripes about it: a) there were no free candy bars; b) the organization did not give me a thank-you present; c) nobody complimented me on my new Hans Ubbink suit.