Edinburgh, Scotland, was the host city for PMI's well attended Global Congress EMEA last month, a Congress which featured PMI's usual eclectic mix of glitz and substance, and Edinburgh's persistent rain.

The Congress opened Monday afternoon with traditional Scottish bagpipes followed closely by senior PMI staff and Board members dressed in traditional Scottish costume. The participants were then welcomed to Edinburgh by the Scottish Minister of Finance and Public Service Reform. Declaring Scotland to be "one of the best small countries in the world" he went on to describe the construction of the new Scottish Parliament Building. While he proudly described it as a "stunning and visionary building", he admitted it had been a troubled project. The cost ballooned from £55 million to over £430 million during construction.

The keynote speaker was David Taylor, author of The Naked Leader. Taylor captivated the audience with an entertaining discussion of leadership and success, interspersed with examples from his personal experience as an IT director. Unlike many other authors on leadership, Taylor claims that everything a person needs to be anything they want, they already have within them. But he did assert that success is a formula with four steps:

1. Know where you want to be.
2. Know where you are now.
3. Know how to get there.
4. Do it.

For the next two days, the attendees enjoyed some excellent presentations grouped into eight separate tracks such as Project Management Basics, Globalisation and Outsourcing, and Project Management Maturity, and presented by some of project management's leading thinkers, including Peter Morris, Terry Cooke-Davies, Michel Thiry, and Ginger Levin.

The reception Monday evening was in the exhibit hall, giving the participants an opportunity to visit the PMI Bookstore as well as the 16 exhibiting companies. Tuesday evening's reception, "A Taste of Scotland", featured Scottish cuisine and regional entertainment.

There was room for improvement of course. PMI continues to price many potential participants out of its events by choosing expensive cities and expensive hotels. The "PMI-negotiated" rate for a single room at the conference hotel (the only hotel available through PMI's Registration and Housing) was a whopping £170. And for the second year in a row, PMI scheduled its European congress to conflict with another major event in the same city, resulting in scarce accommodation at any price. This year, Europe's Heineken Cup was held in Edinburgh Sunday May 22, the day the Congress opened, drawing an attendance of 51,236, many from France, the home of both teams.

Nevertheless, it was an excellent Congress. At least, that was the consensus on the top deck of my bus to the airport Wednesday evening... in the rain!

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