It's a familiar story: trying to do too much with too little, sorting out the best tools for the job, losing sleep over all of the things thrown at you…and what's that, you'd like to have a rewarding career too?
Here's an idea: instead of trying to figure everything out by yourself, why not just connect with fellow DPM pros, and get a front row seat to all of the latest strategies, tools and resources? In just two months, we're bringing together DPMs from across the world to do exactly that at the Digital PM Summit. Read on for some of the agenda highlights, and what speakers pledge to teach you.
Looking forward to the Summit, we asked a few of our speakers, “What’s one thing about your session that will get attendees excited to join?” Check out what they had to say:
“The sheer amount of work and responsibility on a DPM's plate can be overwhelming. My goal is to help you lighten that load by customizing your process to fit your unique situation. Throughout my career, I've been one DPM for a team of 15, one DPM for 100+ clients and a part-time DPM with a million other responsibilities. Through these experiences, I've found creative ways to stretch my time and effort, so I can keep my sanity while making each project feel like my primary focus.”
— Jillian Warren, Doing a Lot with a Little: Project Management at Scale
“I want attendees to feel empowered to choose the career path that makes sense to them, not based on what others are saying or doing.”
— Crystal Richards, Choose Your Own Adventure: You're the Star of Your Career Journey
“Learning to use JIRA to help internal project managers looking for ways to manage many projects and teams effectively. At Monotype, we have over 30 Agile teams around the world and we are using JIRA to manage that complexity in a very consumable way, both so the stakeholders get the details they need but also so that we can use the data to feed ideas for improvement back into the teams to make them faster and happier.”
— David Harned, Managing Internal Projects & Agile Teams using JIRA
“I am a right-brain, creative, non-detail-oriented person. If I have figured some of this PM stuff out, I KNOW you can. That, and at my session we’ll look at ensuring your hard work actually comes to fruition by managing the client as much as you manage the project.”
— Dean Schuster, Don’t Just Manage Your Team, Manage Your Client
“I think it is a very relatable topic and one that gives permission to be yourself in your workplace.”
— Jenna Trunzo, Bringing Personality to Project Management: Be Soft. Be Unapologetic. Be BIG.
“Christine and I have been running meetups and events together for six years now, and we love getting hands-on in our workshops and presentations. We want to make sure that everyone participating walks away with something tactical and tangible to apply to their own organizations when they leave the Summit, so real change can happen. Design thinking is not just a framework for designers—and we hope to get people excited about applying this framework to the decision making that PMs face in real-life work scenarios.”
— Tracy Hennessy (co-presenting with Christine Holcombe), Driving Consensus: Using Design Thinking to Solve Your Largest PM Problems
“I hope my talk inspires people to think about what values and goals define their role as a DPM.”
— Lynn Winter, Be Bold. Be a Digital PM.
“I give the answer away in like the first five minutes :) But beyond that, my hope is that this talk is going to get DPMs excited to get their hands a little dirty with technology.”
— Matt O’Bryant, How Technical Should a Digital PM Be?
“I think so many people wonder where their career is ultimately going, so hearing where others have gone can be inspiring. You can go back to your job with renewed energy and a better sense of purpose.”
— Patrice Embry, Panel Host: The DPM Career Path; Optional Q&A Session: Freelance DPM
“I love to challenge and so I will be asking the question, ‘What exactly is a digital project manager and how can you tell them apart from an analogue project manager?’ along with ‘What kind of project manager am I?’ I also want to see how I can weave my world of ‘productive laziness’ into the world of the digital project manager.”
— Peter Taylor, Business Agile: Driving a New Way of Delivering Change in the Digital World
“The one thing I’ll cover in my talk that I think will be useful for everyone is that I’ll share my experience on scaling teams and amplifying their impact.”
— Philip Rowe, Design Operations: Scaling Design Teams & Amplifying Impact
There’s a lot to digest in those quotes! But don’t forget, that’s not all! There are so many more sessions and speakers in our lineup to check out. Be sure to review the agenda and find the sessions that matter most to you. Think about what you want to take away and prepare yourself for those sessions, because you’ll have access to the speakers and attendees to ask questions and discuss what’s most important to you—whether that be in the sessions or during the social event. No matter what, you’re bound to get helpful tips and tactics from the many presentations, interactive sessions and breakout discussions.
So, what sessions are you most excited to attend at DPM 2019? Sound off in the comments or in our attendees-only Slack channel! Or, bring it up on one of our upcoming attendee Role Calls scheduled for August 16, September 13 and October 11. The Role Call is a monthly call designed to get our Summit community acclimated and talking about topics in advance of our time together in Orlando. Register for the Summit now and snag your special invite.