Abstracts for NASA PM Challenge 2009 Due September 12

NASA's Academy of Program, Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL) has issued another reminder that presentation abstracts for the NASA Project Management Challenge 2009 conference are due by 12 September 2008. The Sixth Annual PM Challenge conference, with the theme "Connect and Discover", will be held during February 24-25, 2009 at the Hilton Oceanfront Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida. This location is near the Kennedy Space Center on the Atlantic coast of the USA.

Presentation abstracts for the following track themes are welcome:

Creative Collaboration - This track will explore the myriad ways to effectively collaborate with team members and other stakeholders.

Taking Care of Business - These sessions will cover the latest program and project management tools, trends, and ideas in areas such as earned value management, procurement, scheduling, cost estimating, and budgeting.

Digital Rules - Sessions on new technologies and innovative communication processes, and how to harness technology and digital information to improve your project’s productivity

Flying High - This track will focus on the characteristics of high performing teams, assessing team development, exchanging feedback, developing a collaborative team culture and reducing conflict

Global Perspectives - Successful projects today require collaborative working relationships with international partners and suppliers. These thought-provoking presentations should provide global perspectives on this important topic.

Take A Chance - Projects are confronted by some type of risk every day. How they identify and deal with risk is often the key to success or the reason for failure. These presentations should cover cutting edge techniques and tools for putting the odds of success in a project manager’s favor

Connect and Discover - While we cannot change the past, we can learn from it and do better in the future. These sessions will offer lessons learned from past missions.

Windows of Opportunity - Presentations about successful project management processes and how to apply them on projects.

All Systems Go! - This session will explore lessons learned, new ideas, and innovative approaches for assuring technical excellence in systems engineering and engineering management.

Words of Wisdom - What are the topics and challenges of interest to today’s NASA project teams, and what do the agency’s senior leaders have to say about them? These informal and insightful sessions will allow for meaningful dialogue with NASA management.

Blazing Trails - PM Challenge 2009 features actual experiences and challenges encountered by NASA project teams in a hands-on case study format where the audience plays the roles of key project stakeholders. What would you do in these situations? Find out in these Blazing Trails track sessions.

Key dates:

• September 12, 2008 – Abstracts & Speaker Biographies due

• November 3, 2008 - Registration opens

• December 19, 2008 - Speaker presentations due

• January 30, 2009 - Registration closes

Additional information, including speaker requirements, abstract guidelines and registration can be found at http://pmchallenge.gsfc.nasa.gov/speaker2009.htm. The co-chairs for the NASA PM Challenge 2009 conference are Dorothy Tiffany and Walt Majerowicz.

Presentations for the PM Challenge Conference must not include a sales pitch or advertisement for any company or product, nor any ITAR information. All presentations will be included on the conference CD to be distributed to all attendees and will be posted on the conference website after the conference. All speakers are required to submit their final power point presentations by December 19, 2008.

Under NASA’s Office of the Chief Engineer, the Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership (APPEL) provides leadership, advice, direction, and support for the development and learning of the NASA program/project management and engineering community. APPEL trains the technical workforce through a competency-based and experiential development process; promotes continuous learning through a blended learning model, which leverages the expertise of university and private industry partners; offers performance support to project teams through assessment, workshops, expert consulting, rapid deployment training, coaching, and mentoring; and facilitates the dissemination of lessons learned through online resources and communities of practice. The Director of APPEL is Dr. Edward Hoffman. For more information, visit http://appel.nasa.gov/.

Created in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is America’s focal point for research, development and exploration of outer space. In 2005, the US President and Congress committed the United States to exploring the solar system and beyond: completing assembly of the International Space Station, flying the new Crew Exploration Vehicle no later than 2014, returning astronauts to the moon by the end of the next decade, and sending human missions to Mars and beyond. For over 50 years, NASA has been leading the world in the development and usage of advanced program and project management. Additional information about NASA can be found at www.nasa.gov.

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