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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!.