Back to the Future - Project Earth Revisited!

By David L. Pells

The Year 1990 was an important milestone in my professional career.  In June 1990 I attended my first major international project management conference, the INTERNET’90 World Congress on Project Management in Vienna, Austria, where the themes were Management by Projects, Project-Oriented Business and Flat Project-based Organization Structures.  That conference, so perfectly managed by Professor Roland Gareis, introduced me to INTERNET (now IPMA) and the fact that there were more than one project management society in the world (other than PMI, to which I had belonged for several years in the USA).  I was also introduced to those themes that have permeated the business world ever since.

Then in October 1990, I attended the PMI’90 Seminars/Symposium (PMI’s annual conference at that time) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  The keynote speaker was Dr. Frank King, Chief Executive Officer of the Calgary Organizing Committee for the XV Olympic Winter Games in 1988, who electrified the plenary session with a fiery speech about the degradation of the Earth – the air, the ground, the water – being caused by our modern consumption-oriented society and petroleum-based industries.  His speech was entitled “Project Earth”; by the time he had finished, he had excited and challenged the audience of project managers to “do something about it!”  I was one of those who felt that call for action, subsequently leading a discussion group on the topic, then a “Project”, and finally PMI’s first chartered specific interest group, the Project Earth SIG.

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