I really didn’t want to be another of those “sign of things to come” chirping crickets. Seriously.
But consider the opening frustrations we faced Thursday on the way to what seemed like an uplifting second day of Project Challenge 2011: a traffic jam caused primarily by a one-lane lorry hauling a two-lane, inescapable, unpass-able, would-be Tonka truck as we counted the number of times we’d hear the name “Moussa Koussa” in the 5Live radio traffic reports (unofficial count = 6).
Although my colleague, Lindsay Scott, spoke eloquently and brilliantly to a captive, seats-filled audience Thursday
that is just what a conference wants to have, Project Challenge 2011 deserves some analysis for the nature of the attendance numbers. Granted, the afternoon of the second day of two is not the best way to gauge the true reflection/nature of attendance, but no one we talked to seemed to convince us that it wasn’t somewhat lacking this year.
In terms of marketing the event, Project Challenge’s attempts were adequate, but the forums for contact seem mostly traditional and not entirely fool-proof. Here at the Arras office, consultants, directors and marketing yokels like me have all attended PC in the past. We’ve all been contacted in recent weeks almost daily and without fail, via email. Project Challenge organisers maintained contact with the past going forward, and on the email front busted their collective bums to get the word out.
But what about the 2.0 outlets and social media? Seems that Project Challenge has a handle on Twitter, but I was extremely concerned to learn that there were no new tweets since 20th Feb. With no Facebook group/page, or even a blog it can call its own, they’ve missed a trick here. Since 21st February, it’s been all email contact, direct link to the website, or bypass the middleman for non-prior attendees and find the website. Considering email is their strong suit and that the diminishing influence of the public sector in projects may hold some clue into the NEC’s sparse crowds…
- Is it safe to say that most of those emails are now cluttering more and more junk filters than ever?
- Without an active social media plan to get fresh and find the younger generation of project personnel, should we continue to expect such small turnouts going forward?
- If you don’t have many of the popular social media spheres covered, what can possibly justify more than a month without tweets LEADING UP TO YOUR EVENT?
But let’s re-deflect some of this approach to the people who aren’t showing up like in years’ past. If you consider yourself a project person who values communication and just happens to be unemployed or between contracts over a longer basis than normal, can you really find it in your best interests to be staying away in droves from a free networking event that features the presence of APM and PMI, among many others? To my mind, it seems rather careless and self-defeating. Just because I’m asking Project Challenge to update its social media profile doesn’t mean resourceful project personnel should have forgotten where to find out about a premier event like Challenge.
And as for that opening about a sign of things to come? When we arrived at Project Challenge 2011 in Birmingham last Thursday afternoon, there was the big welcoming billboard on the other side of the glass at the NEC. Sets of double doors adorned that glass, plus an out of the way main entrance that just seemed, well, pointless to go over to with all the possibilities directly in front of you.
True to form, none of those possibilities worked. They funneled all traffic through the main entrance. A sign, indeed.
Twitter: jugglingsand
I totally agree with your comments Dan, although I think that the issue wasn’t just that the whole thing wasn’t hyped enough.
Although many companies are unhappy to lose people for a day, anyone who attended would have picked up enough information from the seminars to make it well worth the day of downtime.
I went on the first day and I would say that it was a great opportunity to learn from some clever people from the project world. It wasn’t empty in there, but it certainly wasn’t all that busy either. You’d have seen the same sort of apathy at the average APM meeting about 6 months ago, before the RPP hype really started to kick in.
One of my other learning strands is a part-time MSc in Project Management which costs me about £2500 per year, but there was equal value to the lectures at Project Challenge, and the lectures there were free!
Perhaps others aren’t like me and already know everything that the lecturers are saying, but even if I went to something I had heard before, I’d still pick something new up.
As APM and PMI are both keen to encourage CPD, it makes sense to go to something that you can get about 6 hours of the best stuff within one day.
So, I hope that I’ve enthused a few people. Hope to see you all there next year!!
Twitter: adedayoaluko
It was a wonderful event.I learnt lots of new things there and I was able to make sound decision about my career goal as a result of attending the conference.
I believe I could not have had a better opportunity than what I got from the programme.
Its not all about crowd but Quality of information generated from it
Twitter: projectmgmt
I agree with both Dave and Adedayo in terms of it costs nothing (other than travel and out of office time) and there was some real value to be had from some of the presentations (a few comments from other attendees was that 3 out of the 4 presentations were worth it). From a business point of view and choosing to exhibt there, not so good – so IMO there has to be the right balance otherwise events like this won’t happen in the future.