At the APM conference
I arrived just at the end of Geoff Whittaker’s presentation on objective-setting for project managers and in time to see the joint Q&A session with Geoff and David Daly, who writes the excellent blog Outside of the Triangle. David’s talk was on the state of project management and while I didn’t get to see it, he had produced a detailed paper which I read through. The audience was asked to vote on some questions as part of the Q&A and only 61% agreed with David’s thoughts that project management has reached a mid-life crisis.
I was one of the 61%, and central to my argument was the fact that we’re not working as smartly as we should be. It was daunting to stand up knowing that 40% of the audience felt that everything was fine in the world of project management and we don’t need to change anything.
After lunch it was my turn, and as I clicked on to my first slide I had the horrible realisation that the version being beamed on to two huge monitors either side of me were from an old version of my presentation. The audio-visual company had had some problems and for whatever reason they hadn’t received the latest copy of my slides. Luckily they hadn’t changed much so I don’t think it bothered the audience at all but it certainly threw me off balance as the version I had on the lectern with all my scribbled notes on wasn’t the same as what was on screen. I wasn’t behind the lectern most of the time anyway, if I’d stood behind it no one would have been able to see me.
I was invited back to the awards dinner last night (thanks, Nick!) but unfortunately the stress of the day took its toll and I left before the end of the ceremony with a killer headache. There’s a full list of winners on the APM website.
There was some interesting feedback from my presentation as the session I shared with Martin Price also had interactive Q&A with an audience vote and I’ll come back to that in another post – and I’ll also put the correct version of the slides here in case you’re interested in what you should have seen!