Monday, November 23, 2009

Social Media and Personal Branding - Part 2
The interview I shot with Brett Pohlman, Social Media Coordinator for the PR firm Schneider and Associates has been posted to the IT&T SIG website and in iTunes. Brett has a lot of good advice about using Social Media - and a great story about how he got his job at Schneider.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Project Potion Episode Zero



This is a new project that the Project Shrink, Bas de Baar and I are working on. We've received some feedback from folks since we shot the initial video last week and will be shooting a new episode today with a focus on Green Project Management.

If you have any feedback, or suggestions for topics, please let us know by posting a comment here or emailing me at dave@mrsungo.com, or Bas at basdebaar@gmail.com.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Updates on the Personal Branding Front...

I just finished watching the Project Shrink's new podcast with Dave Garrett (CEO of Gantthead) talking about Personal Branding. Very cool.

In my own personal efforts on the Personal Branding front, I stumbled a bit this summer. work, the IT&T SIG and P2P 2009 took up most of my "free" time recently, but I'm working on getting back into it. Which brings up another, maybe more common question. When you start working on your personal brand, and you end up going silent for a bit - how do you recover any lost momentum.

I've got the 2nd Personal Branding video ready to go and it should be live this week.

With respect to brand recovery efforts, as a follow up to his manly-man shirtless horseback riding pictures this summer, Vladimir Putin is now also working on developing his cred with the Russian Hip Hop crowd as a way to re-establishing his approval rating. I'm not sure if I am just in awe of it, or if it is more like my weird need to stares out the window at a horrible traffic accident as I drive by - either way - it is worth a quick read.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

P2P 2009, Cairo Egypt
P2P 2009 kicked off today with opening presentations by a number of keynote speakers including Brisk Consulting CEO and event organizer, Emad Aziz, Dr. Gamal Nassar, Chairman of PMI MENA Chapter; Philip Diab, the immediate past Chair of PMI; current PMI Chair, Ricardo Viana Vargas and former Managing Director of the Scrum Alliance, Jim Cundiff. This year P2P is significantly larger than last year. It is being held under the auspices of H.E. Dr. Ahmed Darwish, Minister of State for Administrative Development and H.E. Dr. Hatem El Gabaly, Minister of Health and includes tracks on Technology, Agile and Scrum, Construction, and Oil and Gas.

"Egypt is wonders of the past and investment in the future"

During the opening presentation by Dr. Darwish this morning he talked about the growth of project management in Egypt and the need to develop talent internally so that as Egypt completes the current five year plan in 2012 and moves into the five year plan that will end in 2017, there are PMs who are trained in their craft and experienced and skilled enough to get the work done. PMI Chair, Ricardo Vargas spoke about PMI's commitment to developing PM best practices and awareness in the African region and talked about the work the Project Management Institute Educational Foundation (PMIEF) is doing to promote Project Management training for high-schools. In a presentation on the work of PMIEF, PMI Immediate Past Chair Philip Diab, gave an expanded view into all the great work they are doing to develop scholarships and expanded educational offerings for the underprivileged as well as emerging markets.

After the coffee break, incoming PMI Board Member, Frank Parth, gave a presentation of PMI Standards, how they are defined and developed. Frank was the project manager on PMI's Standard for Program Management, 2nd Edition.

We're only part of the way through Day 1, and I have to get back to the hall to attend the rest of the day's sessions. Over then next three days, sessions will be held by several IT&T SIG Board Members including, IT&T SIG Chair, Petra Goltz; VP of Strategic Marketing, Bob Tarne; VP Professional Development, Marisa Oldnall; VP Operations (and incoming Vice Chair), Andy Maxymillian as well as myself. PMI Agile Community of Practice founder Jesse Fewell will be giving a number of presentations over the next few days as will Jim Cundiff.

If you'd like to follow the events, we are using the hash tag #p2pconf in Twitter.

More to follow