PMI Asia Pacific Global Congress – Days 2 and 3


I’m back home in fabulous New Vegas (Oklahoma City). I keep denying any form of jet lag, but I also seem to be suffering from bouts of uncontrollable narcolepsy, where I drop off in mid sentence and pass out for a few minutes. Luckily, this hasn’t happened while driving … yet.


Being able to attend the Leadership and GC events is always a incredible learning experience and I am definitely of the camp that believes you learn as much, or more, in the halls talking to people, than you do in the sessions.


I did spend most of the 2nd and 3rd days in the booth, but I was able to break away to see our Asia Pacific Regional Director, SK Khor’s talk on Risk Management. The IT&T SIG is very fortunate to be graced with SK. He is a human networking machine and watching him work is both awesome and dizzying. Even better, however, is listening to him speak. SK’s presentation was not only informative; it was really funny as well – especially the firewall bit.


Mark, SK and I all got to meet a lot of great folks at our booth. For those of you who volunteered to help the SIG, rest assured, we’ll be calling. We are also going to try and work out a way to establish something local – either through webinars scheduled for an AP timezone, or some type of local user group.


This was my first time attending a PMI event in Asia Pacific. There is definitely something to be said for the non-US PMI events. They are more intimate and in a lot of ways, that makes it easier to develop relationships with the folks who attend.


My final thoughts, shout-outs and favorite moments:

• Having the opportunity to sit with some folks and listen to stories about project managing software projects back in the day of punch-cards was one of my all time high moments. I will be steadily working on my bridge game and am looking forward to more stories for the podcast in Malta.
  
  
• The Palm T3 (god rest its’ electronic soul) was the greatest PDA ever made.
  
  
• David Goh and Tarnbir Kaur’s talk on cultural diversity was worth the entire trip for me. I am hoping to be able to interview Tarnbir very soon for some information specifically targeted at addressing very specific cultural project issues that often impact PMs and development teams in North America.
  
  
• Iain, thank you for being such a good sport about the podcast. It will be posted very soon.
  
  
• Michael Young, thanks for joining us late night for drinks and for offering to help out – we will be in touch very soon.
  
  
• Rob Posener – It was great to be able to talk to you after so long.
  
  
• Mrs. T – Thank you, as always, for the great advice. It is appreciated beyond words.