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There is a time in every professional’s life when he is said to be leaving “to pursue other opportunities.” Such occasions are usually characterized by excitement and anticipation, but they are also often accompanied by an element of sadness. That is certainly true for me as I prepare to leave pmforum.org next month “to pursue other opportunities…”
pmforum.org will be in good hands. I will be passing my editorial responsibilities to Interim Managing Editor David Pells who, as President of iWorld Projects & Systems, negotiated the purchase of pmforum.org from founder and long-time editor David Curling at the beginning of 2005 and has served as my boss and mentor for the past 18 months. I know David is anxious to add several new and exciting features to continue to build the reputation and value of pmforum.org.
I will be leaving pmforum.org with pride and gratefulness: pride in what we have accomplished, and gratefulness for the unparalleled opportunity to learn new skills and meet new friends.
Anybody who visited pmforum.org pre 2005 will recognize the considerable changes we have introduced during the last 18 months. We completely redesigned the site, greatly improving the navigation and adding state of the art search capability. We added new features, like Breaking News, the Discussion Center, and Student Papers. We increased the frequency of PM World Today to monthly, thereby doubling the content added to the site each year. And we partnered with organizations like ASMI, Delivering Project Excellence, and the PMI Healthcare SIG, to secure additional sources of information of interest to our readers.
Our readers have clearly noticed the difference, and rewarded us with a substantial jump in traffic: from 40,000 unique visits per month 18 months ago to over 115,000 today.
I came to pmforum.org with considerable expertise in project management but little editorial experience and no familiarity with web technology. I am deeply indebted to a wonderful group of contributing editors and authors with the patience to allow me to learn on the job.
I am also indebted to pmforum.org’s incredible webmaster, Mickie Vest. Mickie came to pmforum.org from the Procter & Gamble Company and HP, and brought with her the customer-centric orientation that characterizes those companies. She insisted we evaluate every idea from the reader’s perspective, resisting the temptation so prevalent in this business to try trendy technologies that do little to improve a visitor’s ability to retrieve information.
I will miss pmforum.org. I will especially miss the daily interaction with our global network of contributors and readers, a network that provides a literally encyclopedic view of project management around the world. I will miss the interaction with our sister publications: MundoPM in Brazil and Project Management in Russia. I will miss the constant stream of reports about projects and project management events that cross my desk daily. I will miss the constant stream of papers that are submitted for publication in PM World Today, many of which describe innovative developments in project management. And I will particularly miss the opportunity to meet new friends, especially as I represent pmforum.org at conferences in such places as Russia, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, India, and throughout the USA.
I will always be grateful I was able to serve as the Managing Editor of pmforum.org, an incredibly interesting position that affords simultaneously a panoramic view of project management and the opportunity to influence it.
But all good things eventually come to an end, and it is now time to move on “to pursue other opportunities…”
Letters to the Editor are readers comments and observations on the Editorial, Viewpoint Columns, articles, papers or other notices of PM happenings appearing in the monthly issues of the Project Management World Today.
Editorial Policy: The PMFORUM® has no connection to any national or international project management organization nor does it reflect the policy of any project management professional or commercial organization. The PMFORUM® maintains an objective and impartial view of project management affairs. In the interests of advancing professional project management the PMFORUM® will publish contending and objective views on issues that reflect collegial differences and perspectives