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This episode is sponsored by Wrike:

This episode is not about project management. It's about how to find your next project management job.

It looks like the economy is recovering. After a couple of years of going down there are now many encouraging signals that indicate an upswing. And that means... there are once again more projects going to be started and companies will start hiring project managers.

If you remember, a few months ago we had a group of recruiting experts on the program who gave us their job search insights. Because I know that so many project managers are looking for a job right now, I decided to invite one of these experts, Tim Tyrell-Smith (www.timsstrategy.com) back onto our program to present to us "30 ideas of a successful job search". Tim collected and published these ideas as part of a book with the same name. But don't worry! We didn't bring onto the program to sell you his book, we brought him here to talk about his ideas. The book itself is free.

You'll hear in the interview that while Tim's book is free he also offers a real paper-based version. And as always... we are giving away 2 copies. One of these copies automatically goes to our premium listeners and the other one is up for grabs for anyone. Are you interested? No problem... just go to www.facebook.com/pmpodcast and look for the announcement with the book giveaway and just add a comment. Anyone who leaves a comment on this book giveaway notice gets a chance to win. And obviously 1 copy is reserved for our premium listeners.

Which brings us to the winners of our last book giveaway: We had two copies of Elizabeth Harrin's book "Social Media for Project Managers" to give away. And the winners are...

• Kareem Shaker was selected at random from among all the people who left a comment on facebook
• And from among our premium listeners the lucky winner is... Josephine Brookes from Surrey in England.

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This episode is sponsored by Wrike:

If you are a regular listener of The PM Podcast, then you know that at the end of the year we always produce a humorous "bloopers" episode, where you can listen in to all those funny moments when things went wrong and nothing worked the way it should have. Unfortunately, we have done this for 5 years now and we're really getting good at not making too many of these bloopers. So in an effort to bring you something new, we decided to create a podcast with predictions from project managers around the world.

We invited 7 guests onto this and next week's episode to give us their predictions for project management in 2011. They are in order of appearance:

• Mark Perry from BOT International at www.botinternational.com
• Tom Mochal from TenStep at www.tenstep.com
• Elizabeth Harrin from rebelsguidetopm.com
• Terry Doerscher from Planview, whose blog you can find at www.planview.com/enterprise-navigator-blog
• Ian Knox, VP Marketing, www.daptiv.com
• Josh Nankivel, from www.pmstudent.com
• Hal Macomber

This episode is reserved for subscribers of the Premium Podcast. Learn how to subscribe to the Premium Podcast to access this interview and transcript...

This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

When I interviewed Elizabeth Harrin on her new book "Social Media for Project Managers" my first question was the skeptics view. I basically asked her "why should I bother with social media on my project because after all... I have to deliver results and not waste my time of Facebook."

Well... we decided that the proof is in the pudding, or rather the proof that social media works on projects is in the case studies.

So in this, the second interview on Social Media and Project Management with Elizabeth Harrin, we are going to present a number of case studies that illustrate nicely, that social media tools can indeed provide value on projects if you apply them appropriately.

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This episode is sponsored by Wrike:

We need your vote:

Do you want more episodes with book reviews from The PMI LA Book Club? Please take our 2 question survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/pmilabookclub (Survey is open until Dec. 31, 2010)

About this episode:

In our last PM Podcast Listener Survey you (the listeners) told me that you would also like to hear book reviews on the podcast.

So we teamed up with The PMI Los Angeles Chapter's Book Club and in Episode 151 we brought you the first 2 book review.

Today, we continue with 2 more books.

1.  “Lean Project Management” by Laurence Leach, reviewed by Mark Layton
2. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars” by Patric Lencioni reviewed by Sani Abdul-Jabbar

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

Social Media is one of the hot topics these days. As a project manager you are bombarded with articles and podcasts that talk about social media and how you as a project manager should embrace these tools.

Really?

Isn't social media just another way of communicating? Do we really need and believe in all this hoopla and hype? To discuss this a bit more in detail we met up with Elizabeth Harrin who is the author of the book called "Social Media for Project Managers". We discuss how social media is transforming project management these days, how we need to adapt, how social media will drive efficiencies in our work, the "7 C's of social media" and much more. Project manager coaching and mentoring doesn't often address this topic, so I'm delighted to be bringing you something that is at the forefront of the way we work.

As always, when we have an author on the program we are giving away two copies of the book. One is reserved to our premium listeners and the other is up for grabs for everyone. To participate, please go to our Facebook Fan Page, look for the note where we mention this giveaway and add a comment. Oh... and click the "like" button too.

Before the interview with Elizabeth we also had the announcement from Terry Doerscher for all those among you who work in a PMO and who would like to participate in an upcoming webcast held by him and Mark Perry. [Updated: the The web page is no longer available so we removed the link so has been removed.]

One thing that is worth mentioning is that social media as a way to communicate is relevant to all project approaches. Whether you are trying to stay in touch with your waterfall team, or you work in the role of project manager in SAFe agile environment, or any other type of iterative or even hybrid project delivery context, then this episode is relevant to you. After all, we all need to talk to each other, right? Social media is just one more tool for the toolbox. Let's get into the interview now.

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

As a recap...: Earlier this year PMI announced that CEO Gregory Balestrero was going to step down. Later on it was further announced that COO Mark Langley had been named as his successor.

At the 2010 PMI® North American Congress in Washington D.C. the members of PMI's New Media Council, which I am a part of, had the opportunity to sit down with Greg and Mark to discuss the past and the future. I brought my recording equipment and today you'll hear part 1 of this interview. Part 2 will come your way next week.

And just for your information, the members of the New Media Council that you'll hear asking questions are Josh Nankivel, Dave Garret, Bas deBaar, Chalyce Nollsch and Cornelius Fichtner.

Part 2 of the interview picks up with Greg recounting a story showing how project management has come a long way in the past 9 years...

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This episode is sponsored by The PDU Podcast:

Earlier this year PMI announced that CEO Gregory Balestrero was going to step down. Later on it was further announced that COO Mark Langley had been named as his successor.

At the 2010 PMI® North American Congress in Washington D.C. the members of PMI's New Media Council, which I am a part of, had the opportunity to sit down with Greg and Mark to discuss the past and the future. I brought my recording equipment and today you'll hear part 1 of this interview. Part 2 will come your way next week.

And just for your information, the members of the New Media Council that you'll hear asking questions are Josh Nankivel, Dave Garret, Bas deBaar, Chalyce Nollsch and Cornelius Fichtner.

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This episode is sponsored by https://www.pducast.com:

Let's face it: The economy has seen better times and many of my project management colleagues are out of work looking for a new job. Only a few short years ago, I had been in that very same position: I had just lost my PM job with an internet startup company and for the first time in my life I had to go out and look for work. This was mainly because I was in a new part of the world, I didn't have a network of colleagues built up and everything about the job market and job search was new to me.

Eventually, I found a fantastic job. But it took a lot of hard work on my part and trying to figure out the best approaches of job hunting. And of course, it was all learning by doing and more often than not it was "failing by not doing it right".

That's what this episode of The PM Podcast is going to help you with. We have 3 interviews with staffing experts: Tim Tyrell-Smith (www.timsstrategy.com), Melanie McCarthy (LinkedIn Profile) and Jack Molisani (www.prospringstaffing.com) were speakers at the recent PMI OC "Evening of Transition". This is a yearly event in my chapter's events calendar and I took the opportunity to ask each of these experts a number of questions about how we project managers should best approach our job search in today's market.

Click here to read the Project Management Interview Questions that we mention during the podcast...

This episode is reserved for subscribers of the Premium Podcast. Learn how to subscribe to the Premium Podcast to access this interview and transcript...

This episode is sponsored by http://www.pm-summit.de:

Mark Phillips, Lead Evangelist of Vertabase, is our guest today and he makes an interesting statement. He claims that all project managers are agents for Economic Growth. Really? Cause I've managed mostly small and medium sized project thoughout my career and I didn't see myself as an economic growth agent. And most of the companies I've worked for also didn't have the appropriate corporate culture to make me one.

So you can guess that I was a bit skeptical, when Mark first suggested this topic. Let's hear what he has to say about these arguments and what skills and mindset such a Project Management Agent of Economic Growth needs.

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This episode is sponsored by http://www.pm-summit.de:

The international project management is happening every year on the first Thursday of November. This means that this year "our" day is on November 4th.

Happy international project management day to you all!

The founder of the international PM day is Frank Saladis. In today's episode you are going to first hear my interview with Frank in which we learn more about the international PM day. And then following the interview you are going to hear Frank sing because he wrote "The Project Manager Blues". It's a good song, it's a lot of fun (at least if you are a PM) and Frank kindly allowed me to play it for you.

Click to download the video:

Written and sung by Frank Saladis, PMP. Frank is a project management author, trainer, and consultant.... and also very entertaining.

Visit the store at www.successfulprojects.com to order this and other Frank Saladis programs such as the International Project Management Day DVD, Leadership with a View PhotoShow, and other project management training products.

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This episode is sponsored by http://www.pm-summit.de:

Listen to the "Gizmo" Interview in this episode to learn more about our sponsor!

How would you feel, if you only had 140 characters (just like on Twitter) to give a status report to each of your project stakeholders? At first, you'd probably complain that 140 characters isn't enough and then you'd put a lot of effort into customizing the 140 characters you have to the person receiving it. Your internal sponsor would receive a different Message than your external customer and the message would look even different for your project oversight committee chair.

Don't worry... we aren't going to ask you to use Twitter on your projects. In fact, my interview with Mark Phillips, Lead Evangelist of Vertabase, only briefly mentions Twitter and then we discuss why and how you should both customize and contextualize all your project communications. We look at the role we PMs play in this, what skills we need and what you can do to improve the contextualization of your project communications.

We also have a correction to make. After the Gizmo interview with Jason Westland about projectmanager.com in Episode 154  we announced that we were giving away 2 licenses of their web based tool projectmanager.com. Well... it turns out that we misunderstood. The 2 licenses are not for projectmanager.com but instead they are for their PM Methodology called MPMM. So... therefore.. our winners Sandy Koppelmann and Oke Abiodun will receive a license to MPMM in the coming days. Sorry about the mixup!.

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This episode is sponsored by http://www.pm-summit.de:

Steve Kaye has been a guest on our show before and you may know and recognize him as a one of the great experts in the soft skills area - especially when it comes to meeting management and delivering presentations. Steve and I recorded today's interview right after we had finished recording a webinar for our sister podcast, The PDU Podcast. That was the 2nd webinar that Steve did for us over there so we wanted to give you a few tips and tricks in regards to meeting management and effective presentations.

We will look at why they are important for your career, Steve's top 3 tips for for improving both skills, and his recommendation for what you can do tomorrow to have a better meeting and to improve you presentations.

In the past 3 episodes I told you that we were giving away 2 licenses to www.projectmanager.com. And the winners are:

• Sandra Koppelman from Pennsylvania, she is one of our premium podcast subscribers
• Oke Abiodun, who listens to our free Podcast and left the very creative comment on facebook: "mine,mine,mine,mine!!!!!" he said. His name was randomly picked from among everyone who left a comment on our giveaway post.

Congratulations to both of you.

Click to download the video:

These are some impressions from my first day at the PMI® Global Congress North America 2010. You'll see Bas de Baar, Frank Saladis, Elizabeth Harrin, Josh Nankivel, Peter Taylor, Dux Raymond Sy, Derek Huether, Chalyce Nollsh and many more.

Click to download the video:

These are some impressions from my second day at the PMI® Global Congress North America 2010. You'll see Gregory Ballesteros, Bas de Baar, Mark Langley, Dave Garrett, Elizabeth Harrin, Josh Nankivel, Derek Huether, R. Camper Bull and many more. In particular: check out the final few seconds of the video... now THAT'S a congress I'd like to attend!

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