The 1st UTD Project Management Symposium held on 6 August 2007 in Plano, Texas was declared a resounding success by conference organizers. The Symposium was the first in a series of annual project management conferences planned by the Graduate Program in Project Management in the School of Management’s Executive Education Center at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). The 2007 symposium, which was co-sponsored by the Dallas Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and PMForum, Inc., was intended as a pilot to determine whether a major conventional project management conference could be supported in North Texas.
According to James Joiner, conference chair and director of UTD’s graduate program in project management, “We set out to hold the first real project management conference in the Dallas area since the PMI’91 Symposium 16 years ago. We organized a team and set the infrastructure and systems in place to make this an annual event. We just needed to prove that there is a demand and real need for this type of event. Based on the attendance, high quality of presentations and positive feedback, with only limited local marketing, we’re pretty happy.”
The conference team included staff from UTD’s graduate program in project management and volunteers from the Dallas PMI chapter. The UTD representatives managed the registration process, coordinated and monitored the daily activities, provided gifts to speakers and presenters, and ran the event. The Dallas PMI chapter provided volunteers to coordinate and administer the six professional tracks where 24 papers presentations occurred over the day. PMForum provided assistance with keynote speakers, general coordination, and live promotion – three breaking news articles were published on
www.pmforum.org from the event, with several more following its conclusion. All three organizations also had tables for information in the vendor area.
The PMI Dallas Chapter was represented by Dwaraka Iyengar, current chapter president, John Baley, immediate past president and current Regional Mentor for PMI, and a number of volunteers. “We are happy that this symposium was so successful,” declared Dwaraka. “We are also pleased to be on this team with UTD and PMForum, and hope to continue the partnership in the future. I think that this can be one of the premier events in the PM community in Texas; it’s very good for both the PM profession and local companies.”
David Pells, PMForum’s president and managing editor, agreed, “UTD is the leading university in the Dallas area. It is an honor and a privilege to work with them on this important conference. Since we have access to some of the world’s leading figures in project management, and because we can publicize the event on a global basis, we think we have something to offer. We can also publish some of the results on both our news website and in the monthly eJournal PM World Today, so teaming up with UTD and the Dallas PMI Chapter should be really powerful!”
The 1st UTD Project Management Symposium was held on Monday 6 August 2007, from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., at the Plano Centre in Plano, Texas, USA. The 1 day symposium included keynote speeches in the morning by Alain Bensoussan, PhD, Distinguished Research Professor and Director of the International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis (ICDRiA) at UTD and former Chair of the European Space Agency, and Karen Tate, Director-at-Large and member of the Board of Directors of the Project Management Institute (PMI®). Adesh Jain, current chair of the International Project Management Association (IPMA), delivered the closing keynote speech on Monday afternoon.
During the middle of the day, the Symposium featured 24 professional presentations and discussions in the following tracks:
Track 1 – Program & Portfolio Management
Track 2 – Project Management: Critical Organization Success Factor
Track 3 – Software Development & Agile Project Management
Track 4 – PM for Product Development, including small projects
Track 5 – The Role of Project Management in Corporate Governance
Track 6 – Project Management in the Global Economy
Copies of presentations and papers can be found on the symposium website, at
http://som.utdallas.edu/project/project-symp.htm. Other conference features included a vendor exhibition, book signings, coffee breaks for networking, and lunch in the vendors’ exhibition area.
David Pells of PM Forum with Jim Joiner of UTD and Dwaraka Iyengar, PMI Dallas Chapter President, conference sponsors
During the closing ceremony, UTD’s Joiner announced, “We now want to inform you that the 2nd UTD Project Management Symposium is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, August 4th and 5th, 2008. Everyone attending this year will receive a 10% discount on next year’s admission. If you bring five others, they will also receive a 10% discount. We expect this annual conference to be the biggest PM event in north Texas by this time next year!”
The August 6th PM Symposium was sponsored by the Graduate Program in Project Management in the School of Management’s Executive Education Center at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), (
http://som.utdallas.edu/project/); along with the PMI Dallas Chapter (
http://www.pmidallas.org/index.phtml); and PMForum, Inc. (
www.pmforum.org).
