Ponder Point

If you are a Project Management professional in Bangalore or anywhere in the Indian sub continent its time - to get out of you cubicles and pause your meetings to block your calendars!

It’s raining PM conferences in Bangalore! - 3 of them this year!

Its a great time for you to get out there and meet your peers from various organizations, share experiences, challenges, share tool expertise and best practices.

All this only indicate the demand for PM practitioners to come together and share. After all Bangalore is the hub of a lot of IT, Space, Construction, Aeronautics among other industries.

PML conference by QAI - May 30 - 31, 2008

This conference by QAI promises 2 days of action packed at Le Meridien with 12 plenary speakers and 18 papers and practices. The highlight of the conference is the Project Management Leadership Award - “Leadership Recognized“. There is a panel discussion on the “Emerging challenges for Indian project managers in global context”. One of the interesting talks is by Tarak Bajaj of Delphi on “Project Management for TATA Nano Electronics cluster”. The conference cover only the IT industry. Conference fee is Rs. 7500. 14 PDUs for participation.

SPM ICON 2008 by QSIT - July 17 - 19, 2008

QSIT’s conference at Leela Palace is 2 day conference with one earlier day covering tutorials. There are 4 tutorials on the 17th of July on rather familiar PM topics. There are 2 key notes - Lakshmi Narayanan (Chairman, NASSCOM) and Raj Kalady (PMI). There are 10 key talks and 12 paper presentations. The is also a panel discussion on the topic “Managing Projects in a Global context” (almost identical to the PML panel discussion!!! sign of the times?!). 26 PDUs for 3 days.

PMPC 2008 by PMI Bangalore - September 18 - 20, 2008

The Project Management Practitioner’s conference 2008 (PMPC) - This is one of the most awaited and prestigious PM conference of the year organized by PMI Bangalore at “The Capitol”. The conference has been announced to be held from 18th to 20th of September this year.

The conference seeks to bring together Project Management practitioners and the key stakeholders namely - Industry, Academia, Government and Society. The conference seeks to brings Project management learnings from large projects from various industries.

Last year’s conference had - 3 days, 7 keynotes, 28 speakers, 3 panel discussions and 10 industries. Some of the key speakers of last year included T.R.Anand (Satyam), N.S.Parthasarathy (MindTree), Dr. Prahlada (DRDO), Sqn. Ldr. B.C. Srikanta (ADA), Stéphane Vesval (EADS) amongst others.

(Disclosure: the blog post author is associated with PMI Bangalore)

More the merrier

The numerous PM conferences only underscore the need for better Program and Project and the huge demand for PM practitioners in the burgeoning IT services industry. And it is interesting to note that vendors like Serena and iPlan are sponsoring more than one event. And don’t be surprised if all of these run full capacity.

The demand for Project management is simply there in abundance to fuel all these conferences!

Tags: ada, Bangalore, conference, delphi, drdo, eads, iplan, nano, nasscom, pm conference, pmi, pmi bangalore, PML, program management, project, Project Management, Qai, Qsit, satyam, serena, SPMICON

Tags: Bangalore, pangea, pangeaday

I came across an interesting global event called Pangea Day that seeks bring people together through films! And you can participate in this from wherever you are in the world. Even back home in Bangalore at the Thoughtworks office at Airport road.

Pangea Day - as the organizers put it - is a global event bringing the world together through film. It seeks to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.

Starting at 18:00 GMT or 11:30 PM India on May 10, 2008 (tonight), locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program (24 films selected globally) being broadcast – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person’s eyes.

Post event, it is expected that those inspired by the event and its messages would participate in community building activities around the world. A very noble and creative idea to galvanize people to do things together to make a difference.

I cant wait to meet people at the event and check out these movies that are meant to inspire. Its 20 mins to the event and I got to get to Thoughtworks.

If cant make it to the event at your city, or online, follow it on twitter!
http://www.twitter.com/pangeaday

Tags: Bangalore, pangeaday, ted

It was my birthday recently and the number of ways I got birthday wishes really set me thinking…. Here goes…

• A few phone calls on my mobile phone that woke me up…
• Calls on my land line wishing me.
• Some friends who walked in to wish me.
• SMS wishes.
• Email - Office email & Personal email on Yahoo and Google.
• Instant Messaging - Yahoo messenger and Gtalk messages chat messages wishing me.
• Twitter messages.
• Social networks - Facebook and Orkut messages.

For want of a better term I call these ways of communication “channels”. That was 8 different channels or means that people used to communicate with me this birthday!

And guess what? - I got no Birthday cards or Electronic Birthday cards this year!
I suppose… The thought is more important than the deed!

It made me stop and think what all this meant. I tried to make sense of it all… And here’s what I concluded.

• “Impersonal” is now becoming “personal” - Wishing is becoming more and more impersonal… And so are many relationships and acquaintances. It is now normal to receive an offline IM birthday message. Communication is getting asynchronous even when it could have be synchronous. An offline IM message, or SMS or facebook message instead of a call.
• The onus of picking the wishes is “yours” - You don’t “pick”
  your wishes you don’t get it. What this essentially means is you don’t
  log on to Facebook for a week you get your wishes “late”.
• It is getting tougher to acknowledge wishes - You need to reply and acknowledge wishes on all these many channels. Even if you find sending an SMS back boring. After all your acknowledgment mean a lot to the sender.
• More social channels => the more connected you are - The more social channels you are on the more you might get wishes. I got wishes from people I would never have expected earlier.
• Channel usage patterns are changing - For many Twitter is almost email, thought it was never meant to be. The usage patterns between some channels are blurring.
• They still care for you no matter the channel - The important fact is people want to wish you and that is what matters. it doesn’t matter if its impersonal.
• You are really old fashioned if you expect Birthday cards!

No matter how much I adopt technology or geeky I get, the charm of being wished by some one in person or receiving a “real” greeting card is unmatched.

And of course as always, many others who simply forgot my birthday despite all these channels.

A week after Barcamp Bangalore 2007 winter edition aka BCB5, the team that worked behind the scenes to put it together met up at Rendezvous at Koramangala to chill out and have fun post event. After BCB5 tag line was “chill out”!

Its a great team and we all enjoy great camaraderie and team spirit. Every one of these guys has a busy week day. Come weekend we all came together to think BCB and its execution.

The picture says it all - the energy, the spirit and the passion to team and make a difference.

From left clock wise…. Amit Singh (green jacket), Arun Ramarathnam (yours truly!), Kesava Reddy, Shourya Sarcar (red tee), Suresh B, Kiran Jonnalagadda (face partially hidden), Aashish Solanki, Pradeep BV (struggling to raise his face), Akash Mahajan, Nishant Baranwal, Srinivas Yelandur and Harinath Pudipeddi (hand in pocket).

It is one great team that rocks!

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Tags: Bangalore, Barcamp, barcampbangalore, barcampbangalore5, bcb5, team, unconference

I am looking forward to KAMP today. KAMP is an event using the barcamp format focussed and themed on Knowledge Management.

This going to be very interesting. A quick look at the registrants gives me a feeling that many of the participants are from a “corporate” background and may not be familiar with the barcamp format or philosophy. It would interesting to see how things play out at the event. I am looking forward to the event and sessions since the KM is of interest to me.

My interest in KM is centered around how KM methods can be used in the context of managing strategic accounts that run over a few years. Such accounts tend to be a microcosm in themselves and poses a unique set of challenges.
I have also been experimenting with some FOSS tools to put together a compelling model for addressing some of these challenges. Looking forward to sharing experiences and learnings with folks interested in the topic.

After being part of putting together last weeks Barcamp Bangalore 5 , two other barcamps this year and PMPC 2007, I am looking forward to being an active participant! I would have *all* the time to discuss and meet interesting people. If you are attending KAMP and are interested in similar themes, lets catch up by the sidelines.

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Tags: Barcamp, KAMP, kamp-blr, knowledge management

BoKs or the “Body of Knowledge”. Does this ring a bell? I am sure it does… Remember the PMBOK from PMI?

How many BoKs do you think there are in vogue? Here are some that I know…

• PMBOK - Project Management BoK from the Project Management Institute (PMI).
• SWEBOK - Software Engineering BoK from IEEE.
• Usability - Usability BoK from the Usability Professionals’ Association
• PDMA BOK - BoK for Product Development from Product Development and Management Association (PDMA).
• CST CBOK - The Certified Software Tester BoK from QAI.

And then there is the International Institute of Business Analysis’ (IIBA) BABOK for Business Analysts gaining prevalence and traction.

The BABOK intends to be a standard for Business Analysts. It defines Business Analysis, The BA profession, Knowledge Areas and key skills required for a BA. Certifications based on the BABOK are now being offered in the US. Certified BA are called Certified Business Analysis Professionals (CBAP™ ). IIBA model is similar to that of PMI at a macro level with regional chapters for professionals to network and interact.

The interesting thing about all BoKs is the following:

• they bring standardized definitions and terms for the profession.
• they rally the community of professional around the standard.
• they create local communities of professionals in the field to meetup and network.
• they are built around a certification model.

and most importantly certification is a measure of awareness of the profession but by no means a measure of guaranteed results.

What are  you experiences with BoKs? Are there any other you have come across besides the above?

EDIT:

Came across a few other attempts at BoKs that might one might find of interest…

• New Product BoK  from DRM Associates
• Computer Science BoK from ACM SIGCSE
• KM-CBK from KM Network

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Barcamps are now spreading like wild fire in the country. After the usual suspects - New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune - we now move on to a Barcamp at GOD’s own country - Kerala!

And typical of all things I have know with Keralites, the creativity flows… Check out the Barcamp campaign poster…. Its awesome!

The event is on the 24th of November at Trivandrum at the technopark. With 60 plus registrations the barcamp seems set just right for all the action.

The event is being put together by this passionate team… Vishnu, Pratap, Sreekanth & Raj.

I wish I could teleport myself for the day and attend the camp sipping a “Tellicherry timebomb” cocktail! If wishes were horses…

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If you haven’t heard about it yet…. here’s what you should know….

Barcamp Bangalore (BCB) is back! - it christened the 2007 Winter edition! After Barcamp Bangalore 4 (BCB4 for some), we decided that BCB ought to be regular periodic event. Something that the tech community would look forward to… to participate and share…. to meeting exciting people, talk about exciting technologies, talk about about possibilities, meet entrepreneurs and have a lot of fun!

There have been some who have been critical and other who have been happy with the going ons….

Having been associated with BCB over a few editions… we have come a long way… and some distance to go… What has kept me going is the sheer energy, passion and enthusiasm all around in the team. Each edition bring in new enthusiasts who want to give it their bit for BCB. Those who enjoyed the previous one and who want to make a difference chipping in this time…. It is this never ending energy/fuel that keep Barcamp Bangalore running… And every BCB is testimony to this passion to set aside time… take time off weekends and personal commitments… and the never say die attitude!

Each BCB has tackled new challenges…

The first BCB held at Yahoo was one of getting off the blocks and make it work… Dealing with something really new!

The second BCB at Thoughtworks had to deal with the buzz the first one had created in Blogosphere and those that wanted to get a first hand feel of the event….

Both editions had to reckon with security restrictions that the host had to put in place while they were gracious enough to allow the tech community to use their office space. At BCB2 at Thoughtworks cameras were not allowed but for a few “official” photographers. Many participants didn’t like it.

For many open and great discussions & debate, wifi, photography, live blogging and networking have become essential ingredients of Barcamps.

For many BCB1 and BCB2 still bring back great memories of the “classic” BCBs. The discussions were primarily focussed on the Internet, Web 2.0 and mobile. Many Startups demoed their fledgling products to get community feedback.

But getting a BCB off the ground meant…. fixing a venue, ensuring wifi and decent bandwidth, organising some food and finding a sponsor (s) to defray basic costs. Many of us were wondering what could be done to make things easy to get a BCB organized. Fixing a venue was the biggest problem…

BCB3 made us look for a venue and thats when the IIMB support came along and along with it went away the challenge of physical and network security restrictions. We decided to make IIMB the fixed venue for future BCBs. For BCB3, the initial thinking was to theme the focus on Social Tech - How technology impacts society. The community didn’t seem to fancy such a dramatic change in theming. This led to the re-theming of BCB3 to include Internet, Mobile and Social Tech as the three broad themes for discussion.

With BCB4 the team wondered if it would be useful to let people suggest what they wanted to talk about (themes) and interact with like minded folks pre-event (on the wiki). We called these “Collectives”. All along we were careful to not to drive any content but only suggest. The collectives took of in a manner that surprised many of us. There were 30 something collectives and they ranged from mobile, startups through bicycling! And the smaller collectives had loads of fun. We believed we had “democratized” content by allowing special interest groups to form, organize and run themselves through collectives. And we had the venue and the infrastructure issues out of the way with a standard venue. ANd by BCB4 we had a few steady and repeat sponsors in Yahoo, Thoughtworks and TCS. Sponsorship is never easy to come by but repeat sponsors were obviously coming back because sponsors were seeing value.

BCB3 and BCB4 saw the rise in scale. This was good in one way since the event was being look forward to by many and at the same time it posed the typical problems of scale - varied expectations, communication and logistics challenges. Some even felt that the overall content was dropping. We decided to organize the event every 4 months and call them the summer, monsoon and winter editions. It was felt that having periodic BCBs would build the “ongoing ecosystem” that would foster exchange of ideas, ideation and possible realization of these ideas.

BCB5 is carrying forward the things that have worked over barcamps and hopes to get the collectives approach / model work more effectively. BCB5 saw the introduction of forums in addition to the wiki to allow collectives to discuss and interact prior to the event.

By any means BCB has come long way from BCB1. With everyones support, passion and ideas we hope make it better and better. See you at BCB5. Its on the 17th and 18th of November (2007)!

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It was a good two hour long meeting with the IT secretary of Karnataka M.N Vidyashankar last evening. The meeting was called for by the IT secretary to reach out to Bloggers in the city and share his vision for IT initiatives in the state and BangaloreIT.in in particular.

It was a nice gesture on his part to reach out to bloggers and take out two hours from his schedule. We had an open discussion on the various initiatives. He was very open to ideas, suggestions and critical opinion.

It was a great evening and I would make a detailed post on this soon….

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Tags: Bangalore, bangaloreit.in, bloggers, it.com, karnataka, mn vidyashankar, vidyashankar