Making It Happen with Jason Zook

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Making It Happen with Jason Zook

You know that idea you had? The one that seemed like it could really make a difference in your life. Then, over a period of time, you convince yourself that it will never work. Why do we do this? Well, one day Jason Zook decided to be a force of nature. He took one of his crazy ideas and decided to launch a company where he was paid to wear t-shirts. And it worked…eventually. Because he did the work. He contacted everyone he knew. And hustled. And after months of not quitting, he got traction. Eventually IWearYourShirt made over a million dollars in revenue. Then he shut it down and forced another crazy idea to work. So why aren't you doing your idea again?

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Setting Expectations

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Setting Expectations

Well, I guess that does it. You’ve clicked on a link and expect to find something. But that’s how expectations work. They start before you realize you are thinking about them and they never stop changing. Why do they matter? Because they set the tone for everything we do.

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AM + PM = DPM  with Brett Harned

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AM + PM = DPM with Brett Harned

Digital project management has been a part of the web from the beginning, even if we didn’t call it that when we started. As the digital services industry matured, we loosely formalized the role of a digital project manager. But the gaps and differences from one shop to another has led to some confusion. Especially with the increase of account managers being brought on at digital agencies. And now, a tangled web of AM, PM and DPM has us all a little confused as to who should do what. Listen in as Brett Harned shares why we should focus on clarifying the role and not the title. And more specifically, the human beings we task with the responsibilities. 

Don't miss your opportunity to be a part of the conversation! Get your ticket for the Digital PM Summit, this October 15-17 in Las Vegas!

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Share Your Thoughts With the Digital PM Community

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Share Your Thoughts With the Digital PM Community

This October marks five years of the Digital PM Summit, and quite possibly the start of an active global community for digital project managers. Over the past five years, the Digital PM Summit has served as a meeting place for people who lead digital projects to learn, share ideas, and meet like-minded industry friends. We’ve explored important topics that have not only strengthened attendees’ skills, but have strengthened our sense of community. This year, we’ll continue with that tradition, but will also celebrate who we are, and where we are now as a greater community. It’s not just about the people who end up in the room during our 2-day event, it’s about the people around the world who are a part of the ongoing conversation via Twitter, blogs, meetups, and other great events that have arisen since then. Read more.

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Honesty and Inclusion with Willie Jackson

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Honesty and Inclusion with Willie Jackson

Diversity. It’s a big word that causes a lot of conversation. Unfortunately, the conversation isn’t leading to action. In fact, it’s leaving some disengaged convinced that others are “fixing” the problems. In this episode of the Bureau Briefing, Willie Jackson shares his thoughts on why we need to get past the concept of diversity and move forward with a focus on inclusion. To do that, we have to accept some uncomfortable truths about how we got here and what we all need to let go of to move forward.

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Back to the Basics with Sam Barnes

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Back to the Basics with Sam Barnes

They call them "the basics". Little, innocuous things that don't seem to really matter. But they do. In fact, something as simple as sending an acknowledgment email to an important message can make all the difference in keeping a team engaged and a client confident. This week Carl and Sam Barnes talk about why getting back to the basics is so important and how to get better at them. And when you do, you can enjoy the positive changes in both your work and your relationships with the people on your team.

Learn more and meet Sam at the Digital PM Summit in Vegas this October!

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Solving Project Challenges at the Digital PM Workshop

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Solving Project Challenges at the Digital PM Workshop

If there is anything a digital project manager can tell you about the role, it’s that each project brings a new challenge. This fact alone makes the job equally exciting and frustrating. Not knowing what could pop up from one minute to the next, and knowing that not all client projects will run the same exact way can be stressful, because there is a level of problem solving that’s always needed. But that’s the way the client service industry works, and good project managers have to think on their feet and always be aware of what’s happening (or not happening). That’s what’s exciting about it: every day brings something new, whether it be a new development, process, or even a challenge. Read more.

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Soft Skills with Peta Kennett-Wilson

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Soft Skills with Peta Kennett-Wilson

Soft skills are rarely discussed in the process focused world of digital project management. But when you spend time understanding the team and the client as humans, an amazing thing can happen. People start to care. They open up and share ideas. They talk about what matters to them. Concerns they may have. Even previous experiences that could impact the way work gets done. With that openness, everything gets better. Even the bottom line. But across cultures, there is a tendency to get a little mechanical. So how can we put people back at the heart of how we approach project management? Peta Kennett-Wilson has some thoughts.

Join Peta's workshop at the Digital PM Summit this October in Vegas.

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Announcing the Bureau Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship

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Announcing the Bureau Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship

Every year, hundreds of digital professionals improve themselves and their teams by learning, sharing and connecting at Bureau of Digital events. And while the Bureau has grown based on existing connections and relationships, it’s time to expand our efforts to reach people outside of our circles. So today we are excited to announce the Bureau Diversity Scholarship. Combined with our outreach efforts, these scholarships are intended to encourage a more diverse group of digital professionals to join us at our events and help our community to evolve.

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Business Development with Joe Rinaldi

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Business Development with Joe Rinaldi

In the early days of web design, there was more work than any one shop could handle. Everyone was super selective on the clients they took, and project focused. There was no need for a business development person as much as a need for filtering through the mass of inbound leads. If you treated people fairly, did decent work and kept your commitments you would succeed. As they say, those were the days. And they are gone. So now what? What are we hanging on to from the past that's hurting our future? It's time to figure it out because there is a new wave of agencies coming in without the baggage. And if the established shops want to succeed, some changes are in order.

Need to get your biz dev on track? Join us for Biz Dev Camp!

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Plan Your Trip to Vegas

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Plan Your Trip to Vegas

Conferences are great for all the reasons you can think of: learning new things, honing your craft, making new contacts in the industry, reconnecting with old friends, and so much more. But when the conference is in a location that offers some fun, it makes it even better! Every year we aim to take the Digital PM Summit to a city our attendees can explore. This year, for our fifth anniversary, we are leveling up! Read on for more info on things to do in Vegas, our location, and a sweet deal to get yourself some cash to spend during your stay.

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Hacking Agile with Dave Prior

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Hacking Agile with Dave Prior

Fact: Digital agencies struggle with Agile. It feels like a private club with a secret handshake. But if you get in it will open up a world of faster and better project management. The problem is it never quite fits with how a shop works. One solution is to lowercase the "A", or "a" if you will. What does that even mean? Listen in as Dave Prior, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, CSPO, CSP and CST shares his insights from over 20 years of helping teams and individuals manage their work in the most effective way possible.

Want to learn more? Catch Dave's workshop at the Digital PM Summit this October in Vegas!

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Living with Ghosts: How to Deal with a Client Who Left You Hanging

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Living with Ghosts: How to Deal with a Client Who Left You Hanging

Here’s the scenario. A potential client hits you up for a project. You submit your proposal and get the verbal green light so you send off a contract or work agreement and prepare to begin. But then...crickets. Hate to break it to you, but you just got ghosted!

Ghosting, flaking, vanishing - whatever you want to call it, I think we can all agree that it is a pretty uncool thing to do. It’s uncool in your personal relationships and it’s especially uncool in business when time and money are at stake. It’s not something you want to develop a reputation for and it sure isn’t something you want to deal with from someone else. But let’s be real, it happens and sometimes for completely justifiable, unintentional reasons. The question is how do you respond when a ghoster, a flaker or a Houdini comes back around as if nothing ever happened.

Read on to find out what to do...

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Shutting Down with Jess Singer

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Shutting Down with Jess Singer

When you start a business you pour your heart and soul into it. If you’re willing to make the commitment and sacrifices, your business makes it. If you’re really lucky it thrives. But eventually, almost all businesses fail. And when they do it is a horrible, painful and severely depressing experience. Today, Jess Singer shares her story of founding and closing Mamabargains, one of the first and most successful deal sites ever. It had crazy growth, major corporate partnerships, and a huge fan base. So what went wrong? And more importantly, how does a founder recover from failure in the face of success?

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Sound Advice for Digital Project Managers

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Sound Advice for Digital Project Managers

Great advice is hard to come by unless you’ve got the support of a great mentor or community. And guess what, that’s what we’re here for! The Bureau of Digital is a community of like-minded professionals who offer ongoing support to one another on a variety of topics. Plus, we recruit top speakers from across the globe to speak at our events and share their knowledge with our community not only in person at events, but through our blog and our podcast, The Bureau Briefing.

If you’re reading this blog post, you should consider yourself a part of this community. And I hope you’re ready for some great advice from some of our Digital PM Summit 2017 speakers. We asked them, “What is one piece of advice you’d give to a digital project manager?” and the responses are fantastic.

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Puppies, DPMs and Leadership

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Puppies, DPMs and Leadership

Meghan McInerny, the Chief Operating Officer of Clockwork, shares with us the positive impact of puppies to your personal health, the leadership role that is digital pm management, choosing courage over comfort and what it takes to go from good to great as a Digital PM.

Be sure and see Meghan’s talk Level Up: Project Management as a Leadership Role at the Digital PM Summit this October 15-17 in Las Vegas. Get your tickets now!

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The Great Debate: Time & Materials Versus Value Pricing

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The Great Debate: Time & Materials Versus Value Pricing

At Owner Summit 2017, titans of the industry, Dan “The Value Man” Mall and Rob “Mr. T (and M)” Harr, squared off in the most friendly and professional way to make the case for their preferred style of pricing. Moderated by Carl “The Truth” Smith, Rob and Dan present compelling arguments for both Time & Materials and Value Pricing that could help you decide which method is right for your agency.

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The Impact of Improv with Gary Ware

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The Impact of Improv with Gary Ware

Over the past few years, improv has become more and more accepted in the business world. Not only is it seen as a way for teams to connect on a deeper level but also as a way for everyone in an organization to improve how they work together. On today's show, Gary Ware shares his story of finding improv and embracing its powerful and positive impact on collaboration and culture.

Be sure and see Gary's talk on Leveraging Improvisation to Improve Collaboration Across Teams at the Digital PM Summit this October 15-17 in Las Vegas. Get your tickets now!

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Top Challenges Digital PMs Face at Work

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Top Challenges Digital PMs Face at Work

Every job comes with its challenges, and the digital project management role is certainly no exception. If there’s one thing attendees of the Digital PM Summit find, it’s that they face similar challenges to one another. That’s what makes the event so valuable. It’s a place to not only learn from presentations, but a place to get together and discuss challenges and share solutions in groups, and leave feeling prepared to approach those issues in a new way. It’s pretty empowering.

This year, we’ve assembled an agenda that will address challenges and provide valuable solutions and tactics, because our speakers understand our attendees. In fact, our speakers all have project experience as DPMs and design and content specialists. So, we asked them, “What do you see as a big challenge for digital project managers?” Check out their responses below, and feel free to leave a comment with a challenge you are facing, and we’ll work it into our breakout sessions or ask a speaker to reply here.


“Adapting to the changing face of digital. We’re still a young industry relatively speaking, and I think things change more quickly than we can almost keep up with. Methodologies like Agile, which are ways of working that a lot of organisations are still trying to implement, are now being questioned. Role definitions are changing with the focus away from management to producing, project to product. I think we’re still in the infancy of our profession, which is challenging in terms of constantly needing to adapt – but also exciting!” - Suzanna Haworth

“Grappling with the tendency to feel like a jack of all trades, master of none, and recognizing that being a great Digital PM IS mastering a trade.” - Abby Fretz

“Being pushed and pulled in a million different directions on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Aside from having to somehow keep everyone happy despite them having directly opposing priorities at times, also a big challenge is simply keeping up with so many different trends and technologies when you barely have enough time to pick your nose.” - Sam Barnes

“The nature of the relationship with the client and the history of how they have evolved the way they work together presents specific challenges to any digital organization trying to adopt an Agile approach to client work.” - Dave Prior

“I feel that if you're doing your job well, the process should feel integrated and nearly invisible to the team and stakeholders. However, that's not only monumentally difficult, but if you achieve something close to it, others might breeze by your hard work. Quantifying the work of a PM is really important to me to show value!” - Amanda Costello

“The world of digital often comes with uncertain technical nuances and blurry areas of scope. We are often dealing with Designers, Marketing Managers, etc. on the stakeholder side who may not know or care what it really takes to produce a specific feature and function. The resulting challenge we regularly face is having to break down the complexity of what we are producing into simple, digestible, and easy to understand information that leads to a common understanding of the actual effort it takes to produce that result. They don’t know what they don’t know - and we have to educate them, and keep them informed them along they way.” - Greg Ryder

“One of the challenges I regularly see with digital project managers is that DPMs and organizations focus on the development of technical project management skills but without the same investment in leadership or strategic business skills. While hard project skills are necessary to our jobs, they themselves are insufficient to deliver truly amazing projects.” - Peta Kennett-Wilson

“They have to be able to effectively work with so many different communication styles. Designers and developers don't always speak the same as executives, and project managers.” - Gary Ware


For me, it feels like every day brings a new challenge: people, projects, technology. The list goes on. But balancing all of the issues and details of several projects can be mind boggling, and it's sometimes hard to know when you've just got too many projects on your plate. For me a barometer of too much work is when I realize I haven't gotten up from my desk for hours on end, because I'm responding to emails, IMs, updating plans, etc. If you don't have the time to walk around, relax your brain, and talk to your team, you're creating more challenges.

If you'd like help solving your digital project management challenges, grab your tickets now and join us at the Digital PM Summit.

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