Final thoughts - PMI North America Global Congress

Well I'm back home after the PMI Global Congress in Washington DC (well, actually Oxon Hill Maryland). As with most conferences, there were some good presentations and some that didn't really impact me. Some of my favorites from this year were:

• Jesse Fewell on Modern Agile Contracts. He had some new ideas on contracts and was able to make what could have been a dry topic interesting
• Michele Sliger's Goodbye Scope Creep, Hello Agile.
• Jeff Ottman and Dr Preston Smith on extending agile beyond software development.
• Richard Sheridan's The Keys to a Sustainable Work Pace
• Elizabeth Harrin on social media for project management
• Dr Thomas Juli on collaboration tools

I consider a presentation good if I walk away with 1 or 2 ideas that I can apply back at the office. It also helps if the presenter knows what their doing. Dr Juli wins the award for best slides. He is a fan of Slide:ology, but the ideas are similar to Presentation Zen which I am a fan of. The better presenters also managed to have good levels of interaction, in spite of the size of their audience.

It was interesting to follow the twitter feed throughout the congress. Oddly, it seemed I knew most of the people tweeting. Does that say anything about the type of people I hang out with?

The real benefit of an event like this is the networking. This event was no different. I re-aquanted with old friends, got to know some people I had met in the past better, and met some new people (some that I knew through twitter/blogs etc already).