PMI Congress North America kicked off properly yesterday in Orlando, with the Sunday morning breakfast panel being a discussion of the history of PMI from the PMI Founders. It’s 40 years since they got together over dinner and came up with the idea for PMI, so it was interesting to hear how they feel it has evolved over time.



From there people went straight into the first Sunday session, and I was presenting on why project managers should care about social media. The room was full, with a couple of people standing at the back, and we had members of the PMI New Media Council discussing a variety of online tools to help project managers do their jobs more effectively. Some interesting questions were asked, including concerns about security of corporate data online in the cloud. It’s an issue for each company to weigh up, and while there are secure solutions with internal hosting options, essentially it is your decision on how best to implement social media and Web 2.0 tools to best meet your needs – whatever risk profile your company might have. You can see a summary of our presentation on the PM Voices blog.



Ricardo Viana Vargas, the outgoing Chair of the PMI Directors, opened the afternoon’s plenary session. He talked about the challenges we face today, namely a global economy in recession and the trillions invested in economic stimulus, allocated by governments without a mature project management approach to support it. He said that this has created an environment where there is an urgent need for good, high-performing project managers and project management. He added that it was possible to get away with poor project management practice when the time and money are available – but that isn’t the case today.



The big event of yesterday was the keynote presentation from T. Boone Pickens, founder and chairman of BP Capital Management and author of The First Billion is the Hardest. He spoke about the challenges facing the US due to their dependence on imported oil. Green projects have become a focus area in recent years, and project managers have a role to play in delivering sustainable futures. Monday’s breakfast panel will also be on the topic of global sustainability.



After the keynote speech, the exhibition halls opened. The exhibitors have been working late getting their booths ready, so they were prepared for the onslaught of people descending into the Florida Exhibit Halls for dinner and a look around the stalls. The ice cream stations were excellent: with cream and other ingredients being frozen in front of us with liquid nitrogen: instant ice cream! The halls are packed with vendors and education providers, and, as last year, the book stall takes up a large floor space.



The PMI’s latest book, Project Management Circa 2025, was also launched yesterday evening at the evening reception, so the book stand was busy with people buying copies, entering the prize draw and hanging around to meet the editors – David Cleland, PhD, and Bopaya Bidanda, PhD - and authors and have their books signed.