October 2018

PMI Belgium Annual Congress

PM Fair 2018

The project manager’s mission has evolved and facilitation skills have become ever more important and key to the success of the challenging nature of the projects we manage today. The theme of the PM Fair 2018 therefore is aptly:

Facilitation: the Ultimate PM Skill?

If project managers were often coming from the technical and specialised world in the past, they tend now to be more generic, less linked with a product or a technique and be able to change industry while still being competent as project manager.

But what is actually a facilitating project manager?

The facilitating project manager is a complete manager, being able to communicate adequately to every audience, listen and understand stakeholders. He is serious but he also can be playful if the mood changes. He knows the rules and can go beyond them if necessary. He can improvise, reach a decision in a group without imposing his point of view, create solutions while associating different points of view, adapt if things change. He knows that people can grow, he identifies the gaps and help filling them. The facilitating project manager use different techniques like games to help his team grow as a whole and individually.

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About the PM Fair

The PMI Belgium Chapter has a long-standing tradition of organizing an Annual Congress, now known as the PM Fair, in the beginning of October each year.

The event will be set up like a Fair and will offer a fertile ground for professional interaction, networking and knowledge sharing. It will provide an opportunity to exchange ideas, opinions, values and best practices with professionals from different industries/organizations in an informal environment. It will encourage active participation in various PM roles at special booths. It will also allow sponsors/authors to demonstrate their products or services to a targeted group of professionals. In nutshell, it will be a very special, very dynamic and a very friendly “Market” of Project Management.

As Project Management is not limited to any particular business segment or industry, we want to broaden our horizon with this concept to welcome practitioners, academicians, speakers, writers, lecturers, recruiters as well as sponsors from different organizations, industries, professions, universities, etc.
The Market Place consists of making our event a big fair. At the same place, it groups the sponsors, speakers, the persons who are looking for a job and the persons who can share some opportunities. The Market Place must be the central point of our event, the whole day, we must organize animations, entertainment, content, networking. The purpose is to have people the all day long and not just during coffee breaks or lunch. It’s the place to be.

The objective of the PM Fair is to make visible the PMI Belgium Chapter during one full day. The PM Fair must be the reference in the world of the project management in Belgium.

The objective is to regroup the professionals active in project/program/portfolio management in one place where they can share their experience with the others.

At the end of the day, it’s important that each attendee has learnt something, still convinces in his choice of career and still be motivated by the project management. Everybody must be happy at the end of the day and has just one idea: to attend the event of next year.

And icing on the cake, this year, we’ll also celebrate during the PM Fair the 20th Anniversary of the PMI Belgium Chapter.

You can earn 7 PDUs (Professional Development Units) by attending PM Fair 2018.

Applicable to attendees who hold one of the PMI certificates before attending the conference.

Venue

Rue Stroobants 51
1140 Evere
Proximus Lounge

Website

October

Friday

Speakers

Lars Sudmann, Keynote Session

Innovation that sticks!

Project managers need to innovate and experience with new fields and tools. In this highly interactive keynote speech, leadership expert Lars Sudmann will share a fundamental principle of innovation, plus how it can be incorporated into daily project life for the project manager as facilitator. Lars Sudmann is a speaker, facilitator, and consultant on global leadership. He has had a business career of more than 10 years in management and finance with Procter & Gamble, e.g. as the Chief Financial Officer of Belgium, (more…)

and he has lived and worked in Europe and Asia. He is the co-author of the book ‘The Smart Presenter’. He was a TEDx Speaker twice and is a sought-after coach on the subject. Bizz/Trends, the Belgian Business Magazine, has called him a pre-eminent expert on Public Speaking and he is a university lecturer in Aachen and Braunschweig (both Germany). He has a university education in business administration and is a member of the Global Speakers Federation.

www.lars-sudmann.com

Carsten Wendt, Keynote Session

Speak up and step back: Communication is more than information. Be a master of energy

As a Project Manager, you are in charge not just of processes but of energy: the energy in people, the energy that moves the project forward. But how do you energise people? And when do you need to do that? Do you recognise the moments that matter? And if so, do you know how to confront them? This talk prepares you for the communication moments that matter. Carsten Wendt is a communications trainer, coach and lecturer. His job and passion is to help people develop their full potential as effective, passionate communicators. His clients include stock-listed companies, start-ups, (more…)

international associations and universities. Meet him at www.carstenwendt.com

Harley Lovegrove, Masterclass

Solving tough Problems

There’s nothing worse than a problem that will just not go away. I call these ‘tough problems’. Sometimes they can be rather trivial at other times, extremely serious. In this Masterclass, I will be sharing my proven methodology for solving tough problems. Be they connected to team dynamics, serious disagreements on strategy, (more…)

a lack of leadership engagement or even highly complex, roadblocking technical issues. Now used in many global companies around the world, my methodology can also be used for not for profits and small organizations too. Even for home and family situations. Anywhere where there is confusion, disagreement or argument!

The Masterclass will begin by me briefly talking about the theory and then we will get straight down to business, solving a tough, complex, real-life problem in less than half an hour.

Your take-away will be, an easy to implement, fun and dynamic methodology that you can share with your colleagues in as short a time as this workshop is planned for.

Harley Lovegrove is one of the founders of The Bayard Partnership, a multi-disciplinary group practice specialized in solving complex business problems, either via hands on project and change management or via coaching and consulting. (more…)

He is a thought leader in the field of change, program and project management. He has a very broad experience within both SME’s and large multi-national companies. He is today a business coach and expert in running visionary workshops at all levels in organizations.

Author of four books: ‘The Change Manager’s Handbook’, ‘Transition’, ‘Inspirational Leadership’ and ‘Making a Difference.’ He is a guest lecturer in Change Management at various management schools.

Harley likes to challenge the status-quo in order to ensure that what is needed gets delivered and not necessarily what was originally asked for.

Richard Moret, Workshop

Gamify your project management with board games, computer games and augmented reality

Gamifications are becoming more and more a part of project management. In this presentation the use of board games, computer games and augmented reality in project management is demonstrated. Not only as skill improvements but especially in the execution of projects. Learn and experience for yourself how you can use gamifications in decision taking, risk management, project startups and crisis handling. (More…)

Annette Vendelbo, Workshop

Prioritizing customer value using Kanban: making the most with scarce resources

Kanban controls work not people. Kanban focuses on continuous prioritization done by the sponsor/Service Request Manager, so teams only work on things worthwhile doing. (more…)

Prioritizing is not trivial, but this tough job is a prerequisite for making the right things and making them right the first time around. Annette demonstrates how you, the PM, can focus on ‘upstream Kanban’ to facilitate systematical prioritization and ensure that your team delivers the expected and avoid expensive rework.

After this workshop, the participants will have more knowledge about the Kanban method, and how it guides in the prioritization and decision process to maximize value. They will see how their facilitation skills will help their team to produce value, avoid rework and shorten project lead times. Examples that might inspire them in taking their own application of Kanban further, or to start working with Kanban if they don’t do it already.

Annette has been an IT project manager in large global companies for +20 years. In 2008 she founded Xvoto, a consultancy delivering agile project/program management, agile transformations, and Kanban/Scrum coaching and training. (more…)

The past 10 years she has helped her clients achieve sustainable agile transformations founded in their context, agile readiness and maturity.

Annette has been deeply involved with PMI since 1999. For 10 years she volunteered as board member in PMI Denmark Chapter. In 2015 she was part of PMI’s global agile taskforce and is one of the reviewers of PMI’s agile practice guide published with the PMBoK v6.

Marysia Lachowicz and Kamil Tyburski, Workshop

Design Thinking: why you should start adopting it in your projects?

Design Thinking is a catchy phrase that has been recently used in many presentations and publications. For some people it is a fantastic tool that should be used whenever possible whereas for others it is just another management fad. (more…)

Where does the truth lie? How do you “do” Design Thinking and what can you use it for? How can the method help you achieve project goals? Let’s find out!

Marysia Lachowicz is a hybrid of a Project Manager (PMP) and Agile & PM trainer with 10+ years experience in both areas. (more…)

Marysia Lochowicz is always looking for better ways of doing things, especially in the area of user experience and communication loves to keep things as simple as possible. A keen KANBAN enthusiast (indoctrinates even her own daughter), passionate traveller, amateur photographer and a poor climber.

Kamil Tyburski User Experience Designer who fell in love at first sight with the agile culture and the design thinking method. Evangelizes, teaches and implements the best design practices. Restless spirit and creative mind who constantly sets new goals to accomplish in various areas. For many years he led design department in SayOh! Agency. He is passionate about yoga and Swedish cars.

Jean Debrosse, Workshop

Leadership Presence-A Leader in every chair @ work in Project Management

Innovation in general and in projects is associated with the socio-emotional maturity and inner freedom of the leader/team. Referring to research and built up experience on the socio-emotional development of the adult applied to Leaders and to teams permits to manage projects in modern, effective and efficient ways. Applying the popular theory U, Circle process, Holacracy principles, Leadership Presence from artists, and tools 2.0 allow to engage people and go far beyond current project boundaries and practices.

Erik van Hurck, Workshop

Virtual Reality and AI will maximize the impact of the Project Manager

-Agile, hybrid and other trends (more…)

Showcase: AI and BOT technologies; your ticket to easy resource management.
Showcase: Virtual PMO – Experience Project and portfolio work in a virtual world.

Erik van Hurck is a Microsoft MVP with the focus on anything related to Project and Portfolio Management. As a Senior Consultant, he is a trusted Advisor for some of the largest companies in the Netherlands and in Northern Europe. Projectum, is a leading global Microsoft PPM Partner, and Erik has an outstanding track record providing solutions that exceed expectations. DenamingNader K. Rad

Nader K. Rad, Presentation

Improve Reasoning and Communication with the Denaming Technique

“Project Manager”, “Agile”, “PMI, “Value”,” Startup”, “Success”, “Lean”,etc. We name things and ideas. This can make it much easier to think and talk about them, and also makes them more “official”. (more…)

However, sometimes, these names block proper thinking and communications, and we end up thinking about a wrong thing, or talk, without communicating real meaning. We’ll explore the dynamics behind this problem, and see how the Denaming technique can help us.

Nader K. Rad is a project management author, speaker, and adviser at Management Plaza. His career started in 1997, and he has been involved in many projects in different industries, including IT development, construction, and process plants since then. (more…)

Nader is focused on helping project leaders improve their systems and get better results through coaching and training, with a focus on critical thinking and practical knowledge. He has designed many project management courses, prepared multiple e-learning courses, and written more than 40 books.

He’s an expert on the history, evolution, and nature of methodologies and their practical consequences, as well as the techniques and practices that accompany them. He has been an official reviewer or contributor for PRINCE2® 2017, PRINCE2 Agile®, P3.express, and EXIN Agile Scrum Master.

More: nader.pm

Thomas Hijl, Presentation

Your best performed project – manage it like a light switch – ON | OFF

Pressure cooker experience for personal development, immersive group facilitation and game changing communication. Boost your energy and project results by extraordinary empowerment of the people in your team. Valuable for any project or program manager that wants to make an impression you can’t refuse. Thomas Hijl is an enterprising mentor and messaging artist as well as a human resource advisor at vidaXL. One and a half years ago he resigned from being solely a project and program manager and switched to following his heart, (more…)

using his top talents and that gives him energy to perform at his best. This change brought him back to his roots of who he really is as a person and brought him back on stage. Today he uses his 20 years of management experience in combination with his music experience, knowledge and talents to develop teams and individuals. Empowering and energizing them to make full 100% use of their energy and talents. He feels for people and especially the less fortunate in our world, which is valued and appreciated by the numerous children he helped with his charity projects. His personal drive is to make others feel “It’s a beautiful day”! This specific sentence connects him with Freddie Mercury who is an example and source of inspiration to him in many ways. The title of “Dutch Freddie Mercury” once given to him by the Dutch DJ Giel Beelen makes him proud and determined to “Give it all, every day!”

Benoit Schmitt, Presentation

Research Portfolio Dynamics & Management in a Fast-Changing Biotech Setting

The presentation will describe the process and tool we implemented to manage our resources pool. The process and tool have enabled an understanding of our research project portfolio and allowed us to build an organizational agility to manage resources. (more…)

The presentation will share a real-life example of implementation of resources management process in a medium-size biotech (250FTEs pool over 25 projects).

Benoit Schmitt joined Galapagos in 2006 and currently serves as Senior Portfolio & Alliance manager. In this capacity Benoit is responsible for the research portfolio processes linked to resources forecasting, (more…)

planning, budgeting and reporting. In this role he also manages cross-functional projects aiming at operational excellence. Before joining the portfolio management group that he helped to set-up, Benoit spent 6 years within the chemistry department having increasing responsibilities up to principal Scientist. Benoit earned both an Engineering degree in Chemistry and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Strasbourg University. He also holds a PMP certification and two masters of science.

Marysia Lachowicz, Presentation

Design Thinking: why you should start adopting it in your projects?

Where does the truth lie? How do you “do” Design Thinking and what can you use it for? How can the method help you achieve project goals? Let’s find out!

Marysia Lachowicz is a hybrid of a Project Manager (PMP) and Agile & PM trainer with 10+ years experience in both areas. Always looking for better ways of doing things, especially in the area of user experience and communication loves to keep things as simple as possible. (more…)

A keen KANBAN enthusiast (indoctrinates even her own daughter), passionate traveller, amateur photographer and a poor climber.

Katia Van Belle, Presentation

Breakthrough or waste of time? Lessons learned from project facilitation

I learned it the hard way: facilitating workshops is not something that you just do (and hope for the best). (more…)

Success comes from careful preparation, alignment with your sponsor, awareness of what’s happening in the room, and being prepared to be surprised. I want to share with you my lessons learned about facilitating important workshops with 20 or more people in the room. And I’ll spice that with some research findings about large group facilitation.

Katia Van Belle takes participants on an inspiring journey of learning, experimenting and growing. Katia has acquired more than ten years of experience in logistical management and project leadership before starting Propellor. Valuing personal development, she invests every year in advanced training programs for herself. Katia is commercial engineer, JCI international Graduate, PMP (PMI), Agile PM and Open Space Agility practitioner.

Frank Habermann, Presentation

Wanna be agile? First, tell me how you handle coffee

Being agile means putting customers at the heart of what you are doing. This doesn’t sound very complicated – until someone asks you to actually do it. Frank Habermann undertook an experiment. (more…)

He invited teams to design a concrete project, because this challenge reveals unexpected truth about how we deal with project customers. Learn how to benefit from an „awesome coffee experience”and hear Habermann’s surprising insights from observing thousands of project managers interact with their customers.

got into organizational learning, became a consultant, manager, entrepreneur, professor (in this sequence), and had a hell of fun with an awesome crowd of highly passionate people.

In 2013, Frank co-founded “Over the Fence”, an international community for “people in projects”. His work has been awarded with a variety of prizes. Frank works and lives in Berlin.

Kamil Mroz, Presentation

SOARing into your Project Kick-off

Many projects are typically kicked off with a meeting where the Project Manager runs through the Project Charter, which outlines the project objectives goals, roles and responsibilities, identifies the main stakeholders, and the level of authority of a project manager. Aren’t those kick-off meetings sometimes dry and un-engaging? (more…)

Wouldn’t it be great to SOAR into your next kick-off using a facilitated approach bringing out the strengths, opportunities and aspirations of your project team, while also extracting a purpose-driven project objective to ensure commitment? If you answered yes, then I would like to share with you an approach that uses facilitation, the balanced scorecard method and visual mapping to kick in style – and extract the values, purpose and commitment of your project team members to delivering above and beyond time, budget and scope requirements!

Kamil Mroz is a certified PRINCE2 Trainer and Lean Six Sigma professional combining with many years of experience leading projects in the Biotech & Pharma sector. (more…)

Currently he is working at GSK in Belgium as a Senior Manager in Performance, Process & Risk Management. He is deeply involved and passionate about contributing to the PM community by regularly speaking at PM conferences, actively contributing to publications and enthusiastically sharing his experience with the next generation of project managers. Since 2016, he is also organizing a monthly networking event for PMs in Belgium called “Pint of PM”. In 2013 he received the prestigious International Project Management Association (IPMA) Young Project Manager of the Year Award for outstanding leadership and project management excellence, and since then he has been part of the yearly Global IPMA Jury to select future winners. Follow him on

Linkedin at: be.linkedin.com/in/kamil-mroz-31b3762

Michèle Longpre, Presentation

About this presentation: Stakeholder Engagement: Facilitating the Transition and Making it Stick

Early and Active Stakeholder engagement is one of the most important success criteria of any project or change initiative, yet it is often subsidiary to other processes or delegated downward to managers and staff. Worse yet, it can be set up as a step-by-step, mechanical or uni-directional push communication process. Engaging stakeholders is a planned and highly adaptive organic process that seeks to touch each individual impacted by the change. (more…(

Successful stakeholder engagement guides individuals to find and communicate their own motivation, embrace the change, and carry it forward. It is that dynamic that causes the change to happen and progress. Project and Change Managers must facilitate this engagement.

Through an award-winning project at a large international airline, impacting 22,000 employees and 147 nationalities, I’ll demonstrate the stakeholder engagement tools and techniques I used to align the organization (from the executive team through all departments and divisions) and lead them through this change journey.

Michèle designs and leads transformational and cultural changes in organizations. She applies hands-on experience in aligning performance management and organizational development with the organization’s strategy to achieve its vision. (more…)

One of her latest initiative has been recognized by the Middle East HR Excellence Awards, and MENA HR Excellence Awards as well as through numerous internal credits and accolades. Michèle is Canadian and Swiss and has worked and led projects in multi-cultural environments throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Master in Education Management (M.Ed.), College Degree in Avionics Maintenance, PMP, Certified AeC DISC
Facilitator, Trainer, and Instructional Designer

Inspiration Hall

As the talks in the main hall are ongoing, the Inspiration Hall will be opened for business with complementary content. It is hard to capture the idea of the Inspiration Hall, but we have tried in the following paragraph:

The inspiration hall is not a common marketplace.
It is the place to encounter new ideas. The inspiration hall is not just a collection of informative stands.
It offers the opportunity to engage in new concepts. The Inspiration Hall doesn’t follow a script.
It is meant for the adventurous, the curious and the rebels,
Seeking new skills and surprising practices. It is a ship sailing for new shores in search of the one thing:
A new and better version of you

For PMI Belgium, the concept of the Inspiration Hall is key to its identity. The members of PMI Belgium and the attendees of the PM Fair are very much 21st century minded professionals, where critical thinking, creativity and collaboration are important values. Therefore, to cater for these adventurous, curious and even rebellious attendees of the PM Fair, we have a place for them where they can make their own way through all the content available. Every visitor of the Inspiration Hall will travel an individual journey collecting the specific value they are looking for.

Inspiration Hall Speakers

Karen Schmidt

PROJECT CANVAS – A visual tool for customer-oriented project design

In this session, you will experience how to design a customer-oriented project – in just 90 minutes. The session introduces the project canvas as a visual tool and powerful dialogue format to help diverse project teams to “think better together”. (more…)

Several teams will apply the Project Canvas to real projects. After this session, you will be able to employ the approach effectively in your own context. The Project Canvas is freely available at http://overthefence.com.de.

Learning objectives:

simple yet powerful techniques for customer-oriented project design
new and innovative ideas for leading interdisciplinary teams

3. visualize projects – demystified and buzzword-free

Karen facilitates challenging projects. She helps diverse teams to work with courage, curiosity, and creativity to achieve outstanding results. In her 20 years management and consulting career, she has supported people in projects and C-level executives in all kinds of organizations across Europe. (more…)

She connects project superpowers, leadership and facilitation skills with agile and positive change practices.

Karen Schmidt is co-founder of “Over the Fence” – an international project community and a book project. They aim to invite people in projects to innovate their project thinking inspired by a variety of disciplines – art, film, sport, technology, design, science – and a big dose of common sense. Their motto is “simple but powerful – demystified and buzzword-free”!

Friederike Abitz

Visual Techniques

Recognition, especially a visual one, ignites pull. People all of a sudden seek you, want you, remember you. It’s because of your own visual style, your trademark that stands out of the flooded terrain of fellow trainers, facilitators and project managers. (more …)

As soon as you get how easy and fun integrating visuals is, you don’t want to miss it. Meetings become more playful, providing the exact right atmosphere for team flow.

Graphic recorder, visual facilitator and trainer Friederike Abitz guides you through the essentials of easy to learn, quick to apply visual techniques in this 45min workshop, endowing you with a brick-solid fundament for future mastery of visual thinking.

No time for the 45min Workshop? Educate yourself and get the bare essentials of creating visuals at the Think!Visual Experience Wall while having a chat and a coffee in the Inspiration Hall.

Freedom seeking soul, engineer turned facilitator, Friederike Abitz creates processes and spaces that enable you and your team to focus on what really matters. (more…)

Quickly grasping where you stand in your journey, she guides you towards your goals, unleashing your knowledge, wisdom and creative potential through easy to integrate techniques.

Trainer for Dragon Dreaming Project Design, Graphic Recorder and Practitioner of Visual Thinking, she has become expert on patterns of self-organization, fluid leadership and community creation.

//friederikeabitz.com

Friederike Abitz

Dragon Dreaming

Karen Schmidt and Frank Habermann, Workshop

Hey, not so fast – Workshop for agile thinking

In his bestseller “Thinking Fast and Slow”, Nobel laureate for economics Daniel Kahneman describes the dichotomy between two systems of thinking. (more…)

This session brings Kahneman’s findings to project practice. You will learn why agile thinking is counter-intuitive, and what you can do to foster better thinking in a project team. The session starts with an interactive presentation (aha-moments guaranteed!). Afterwards, you will work in small groups, and practically apply new techniques for agile thinking.

Karen facilitates challenging projects. She helps diverse teams to work with courage, curiosity, and creativity to achieve outstanding results. (more…)

She has supported people in projects and C-level executives in all kinds of organizations across Europe.

Frank Habermann is an author and professor. Born in 1968, he spent the first stage of his life with playing football. He made it to Germany’s National Youth Team, enjoyed the playful competition, and learned a lot about group dynamics. In the following years, he studied business, got into organizational learning, became a consultant, manager, entrepreneur, professor (in this sequence), and had a hell of fun with an awesome crowd of highly passionate people.

In 2013, Frank co-founded “Over the Fence”, an international community for “people in projects”. His work has been awarded with a variety of prizes. Frank works and lives in Berlin.

Carsten Wendt, Workshop

Dealing with difficult communication moments

Call for Sponsors

The PM Fair is a recurring initiative, thanks to the contribution of our esteemed sponsors! Become yourself a partner of the PM Fair and benefit of a direct visibility to over 3000 Professional Project Managers. Discover our flexible sponsor packages, which include logo sponsoring, booth, sponsor session, coffee break sponsor, booklet sponsor, and conference bag sponsor.

Consult the Call for sponsors for all the detail. If you wish to take advantage of this unique opportunity or need further information, please contact andree-anne.marsan@pmi-belgium.be. We look forward to seeing you among our PM Fair 2018 sponsors!

Organization Team

The organization of the PM Fair is a huge project with varied tasks that requires many skilled hands from start to finish, in order to deliver a high class congress. This important annual event is realized with the help of a dedicated team of volunteers. We are looking for more volunteers to join our passionate PM Fair 2018 team.

Volunteering with PMI can provide you with opportunities that enable you to share your knowledge and experience with other professionals. It will give you a global perspective of how project managers work in various industries. It will also help you to further strengthen your project management skills.

If you wish to join our enthusiastic team, please contact info@pmfair.org.

Contact Us

You can contact us at info@pmfair.org, or using the following form.