Please join us on April 13, 2011 to welcome our guest speaker for the month of April, David Schmaltz, author of The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work, who will be speaking about "The Most Powerful Project Management Tool You’ll Ever Use." We will explore a brief history of the search for this tool and propose a considerably less than cynical future for it...

We're also putting on the "Early Show" at 5:30 PM, with a presentation by Hector Del Castillo on how to boost your job search and market yourself using social media.

Cost of the event, which will be held at the Blair Mansion Inn (7711 Eastern Avenue - Silver Spring, MD 20912), is $35 (payment in advance, or $40 at the door). Sign-in and networking begin at 6:00 pm (or 5:00 pm if you're also coming to the "Early Show"), dinner is at 7:00 pm, and David's presentation begins at 8:00 pm sharp. This event is worth 1.5 PDUs (or 2.5 PDUs if you attend the "Early Show" as well!). For directions to the Blair Mansion Inn, click here. 

PMISSC Early Show: Boost Your Job Search and Marketability Using Social Media (Hector Del Castillo)

Are you currently looking for a new job? Are you a contractor or consultant in between engagements? If you are currently in between jobs, or frustrated in your current job and looking for new job, contract, or consulting opportunity, then this seminar is for you. Hector del Castillo, one of our own chapter members, will discuss how to accelerate your job search and marketability using social media. He will show you how to organize your job search, market yourself, build a network of business contacts, connect with employers, get recommendations, find new leads and career advice using Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and learn how to track companies to identify specific opportunities and network directly with hiring decision makers. He will also talk about how to use professional branding and inbound marketing techniques to get quality job leads to come to you.

To listen to the audio recording of the Early Show, go to the Document Library and navigate to the Monthly-Programs > 2011 > April-13-2011 folder. The Document Library is available here.

Hector Del Castillo

Hector Del Castillo is Director of Program Development at MEI Technologies where he is implementing a business strategy to commercialize products and services profitably. He is also Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Association of International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM). Hector is a Certified Product Manager (CPM) and a Certified Product Marketing Manager (CPMM) with over 10 years experience managing products throughout the development life cycle and directing strategic planning. He helps experienced managers understand the product management process and prepare for certification through practical training courses.

Presentation Overview - The Most Powerful Project Management Tool You’ll Ever Use (David Schmaltz)

In 1962, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara proudly announced that Department of Defense programs would henceforth routinely deliver results at a less than ten percent cost variance over initial estimates.

As Microsoft’s MSProject2000 team was scurrying to meet its delivery date, that project’s PM discovered that the product’s critical path algorithm did not correctly calculate critical path. He reported this shocking discovery to management, and learned that they already knew. “Ship it,” they said.  And he did.

Everyone working in the project management field gets peppered with endless promotions promising better than the old best practices, tools, and techniques; each guaranteed to resolve one or another universal difficulty of project work. Yet the difficulties persist. Just as if they were eternal.

Like the search for the mythical perpetual motion machine, the search for the most powerful project management tool seems to ignore some inevitable features of collective work. The ancient Greeks understood that any method would inevitably become its opposite. And today, we see each successive generation of dramatic improvement take its place in the discredited pile.

It’s enough to render any practitioner cynical.

The purpose of any profession might be to know enough to be cynical, yet choose not to become cynical. Scientific Management neglected to borrow one essential insight from the physical sciences, the one factor that separates understanding from cynical belief: skepticism. Science stands securely upon the shoulders of skeptical practitioners. Maybe project management should stand there too.

This presentation will consider the most powerful project management tool you’ll ever use. We will explore a brief history of the search for it and propose a considerably less than cynical future for it. Recent advancements in management technology aside, we might find this most powerful project management tool more ready-to-hand than any of us expected it to be.

David A. Schmaltz

David A. Schmaltz is the author of The Blind Men and the Elephant, Mastering Project Work- How to Transform Fuzzy Responsibilities into Meaningful Results (Berrett-Koehler 2003) and innumerable articles on project work. He’s a member of Gantthead’s Projects@Work e-zine editorial board. He lives in Takoma Park, MD, where he is in private practice as a consultant, writer, and teacher.