Author: Leandro Benda, PMP
Imminent landing in the future of project management, keep your seatbelts fastened and taste it!
On Wednesday September 21, the 11th PMI Switzerland Project Management Conference (PM Conference) took place in the beautiful premises of our sponsor, PwC in Zürich, whom we thank for their valuable contribution. This year we had a future-oriented theme "Innovation in Project Management - Shaping the Future of Projects".
28 volunteers contributed for 4 months to the success of this event under the leadership of the orchestra conductors: Martin Härri, Valerie Pierre and Adi Muslic. A big thank you to all of them for the unfailing commitment shown.
130 participants from different sectors such as IT, consulting, food industry, chemistry, transportation or banking among others, joined us and contributed to make these sessions interactive. A big thank you for your participation.
After the welcome message from our PMI Switzerland Chapter President Stefan Vesenmeier, keynote speaker Marc Lahmann from PwC spoke about the strategic topic of artificial intelligence in project management, giving us the opportunity to better understand why some AI projects have failed in Project Management and how to make AI a success story. This before handing over to Dr. Sebastian Bosse, Transformation Coach & Trusted Advisor at AdEx Partner, who shared his experience on organizational transformation, the secret recipe for sustainable success. His interesting claim was that “organizations must make themselves more agile, adaptable and limitless to face future challenges.” The ability to design such adaptable organizations is becoming more and more a competitive advantage. Fields of action are naturally the structures and end-to-end processes, but above all is the way of working - and thinking - in the company. This does not only have an impact on business, but also poses significant challenges for project managers within these companies.
Following this intense morning, participants were able to enjoy a wonderful lunch and networking opportunity to build up their strength for the afternoon.
Several mini and breakout sessions were on the menu after the lunch break, covering strategic topics such as agile, citizen development, psychological safe environment, project management for social good and an interesting Agile simulation game. We would like to thank our volunteers, sponsors and all speakers for their facilitation of these sessions.
Each session was followed by a coffee break, which was also an opportunity for everyone to share experiences, challenge themselves and obtain advice from other participants.
The closing keynote was given by Vartika Parikh, account executive at Microsoft, who told us about Citizen Development for Project Managers, an opportunity to create and innovate.
During the wrap up provided by our volunteers Valerie Pierre and Adi Muslic, the lottery draw was held and 15 lucky winners were picked. Congratulations to them! An impressive sketchnote of the Conference was presented by speakTure gmbh to close.
To end the day well, there was nothing like a networking opportunity to exchange about the day and to enrich one's address book with precious contacts.
As a volunteer helper and first-time attendee of this conference, I was impressed by the organization, the team spirit and the venue that hosted the conference, even though it is a large and complex event. It was an opportunity to meet people with important professional skills and human values and to challenge my ideas with others.
I came out of it with enriched knowledge and a great teamwork experience. Interviews conducted during the conference will be published on youtube.
I can only recommend that you join PMI Switzerland and attend our future events. Please opt-in to PMI Switzerland’s event notifications and regularly visit the events page to learn more: https://pmi-switzerland.ch/events
Kind regards,
Leandro Benda