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IT&T SIG attends the International Wireless Communications Expo

Andy Maxymillian, VP of Operations, and Barbara Porter, VP of Membership, attended the annual International Wireless Communications Expo was held in Las Vegas last week. IWCE is the pre-eminent integrated communications systems event for the working world. With the convergence of two way radios with internet and satellite technologies, this field is evolving in new and exciting ways. The SIG was given the opportunity to run a 4 hour Project Management 101 workshop to introduce these concepts to this audience.

Attendance at the workshop was good relative to the other workshops and conference topics that were presented during the event - about 40 people, however all conference attendees have the ability to download the workshop presentation from the conference's website. Barbara presented the basic principles of PM as defined by the PMBOK, and presented several "exercises" for the attendees to help them learn and apply the concepts, using globally understood concepts such as building a house, planning a wedding, and even making a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The attendees were very engaged during the workshop, many fiercely taking notes, and most interacting during the exercises, and/or asking questions along the way. Unlike other workshops and conference topics, not a single person left mid-presentation - everyone stayed until the end! After the workshop was over, about a dozen attendees approached Barbara for more information about project management, PMI and the SIG.

This is clearly a field under served by the project management community. The members of this field largely come from the two way radio world, which up until recently had little interaction with the IT or Telecom worlds. All of that is changing thanks to evolving technologies such as ROIP (radio over IP). This field is being thrust into technologies it is unfamiliar with, and more importantly for us, are managing projects utilizing these technologies with little to no project management knowledge. Based on the feedback from the workshop, these folks recognize this, and are hungry to learn more.

We envision the next steps to be follow through on contacts made, continued support, and improved marketing. We should make it a priority to follow through on the contacts we made at the workshop. These contacts will increase the visibility of our SIG and PMI as well as increase the chance of adding members. The SIG should continue to support IWCE by hosting the workshop again in 2010. In preparation for the 2010 workshop, we will improve on the marketing efforts put forth for 2009, with a goal of increasing attendance. This increased marketing effort should focus not only on exposure of PMI and the SIG to the wireless community, but exposure of the wireless community to our members. An improved marketing strategy and participation in IWCE 2010 is highly recommended to serve our members and add membership from a relatively untapped industry sector.