International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL) is pleased to include Michael O’Connor, PhD in its lineup of presenters at this year’s IPM Day online conference on November 2, 2017. With over 27 years of experience in the medical device industry, Dr. O’Connor is being recognized as the winner of the PMI Educational Foundation Kerzner Award for Excellence in Project Management. As the Director, Strategy and Project Management for Medtronic, he works with senior management to manage, guide, and provide oversight on high value programs.

Dr. O’Connor will be presenting, Enhancing Project Management Rigor for Innovation, advocating that organizations enhance their Project and Portfolio Management frameworks to improve innovation output—ultimately producing devices, therapies and services that better serve patients around the world.

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There’s been a lot of press about Blockchain technology in recent months. Simply stated, Blockchain enables and manages transactions and data sharing—bringing an unprecedented level of security, transparency, and efficiency never before possible. Given how fundamental ‘transactions’ are to how we function in society, this evolutional technology will have a transformative effect, not just on business, but also on how we live.

With over 20 years of experience in the technology field, Mark Parzygnat, Program Director, IBM Blockchain, and Presenter at IPM Day 2017 shares his enthusiasm, “Blockchain is the most exciting technology to come along in my entire career. For the past three years, I’ve devoted my efforts to championing IBM’s internal use and application development efforts, as well as promoting Blockchain to the world through academia, industry conferences, and the Linux Foundation.”

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New York, NY – (October 12, 2017)— International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL) is pleased to announce Clarizen, Inc. as a Platinum Sponsor of its upcoming 14th annual IPM Day Online Conference taking place on Thursday, November 2, 2017. This year’s conference features 26 presenters, including six keynote speakers. The conference is expected to attract 50,000 attendees from over 100 countries.

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Historically, Project Management was an activity that supported engineering related projects in aerospace, defense, and heavy construction. Naturally, most project manager practitioners had advanced degrees in a technical discipline. What has happened is that the role of the PM has changed. Today, Project Management is used to manage the business—think of your entire business as a project. In fact, everything you do can be characterized as a project; therefore, as a PM today you are not only making project based decisions, but also business decisions, whereas in the past, business decisions went to senior management.

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Predictions for the Future of Project Management

Like many highly successful individuals, Maxine Hill, Vice President at WSP USA, was initially inspired by her boss and mentor at the beginning of her career, when she was a Civil Engineer at a small Construction Company in the UK. Early on, her boss shared what he believed to be the most important aspects of his job. Not schedules, budgets, or work, but rather the job of motivating individuals, no matter how busy he was or how bad of a day he had. He strongly felt that if your people were happy and motivated, your projects would go well.

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Diepak Kasi is one of IIL’s featured presenters at IPM Day 2017. His topic, The Power of Vision in the Digital Age, focuses on using vision as a path to fulfilling a higher level of satisfaction—both on the job and in one’s personal life. According to Diepak, “Many people do not have inspiring long-term goals or motivations. They perform their jobs and collect their paychecks without really questioning why they are doing what they do. However, a life without inspiration or the joy of making a contribution bigger than oneself results in feeling unfulfilled in the long term. On the other hand, if you have a vision—where you want to go and how you would like to contribute to society—you will be inspired to make that vision a reality and you can enjoy a higher level of fulfillment and satisfaction.”

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How Do You Solve Today’s Ecological, Health, and Planetary Challenges…in Two Days? Ask Dr. Shobhana Gupta, AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at NASA.

The short answer to this question is by participating in NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge. ‘Space Apps’ is a hackathon that occurs over a 48 hour-period in cities around the world. This year’s event, Space Apps’s 6th anniversary, attracted over 25,000 participants from 69 countries. Coders, scientists, designers, storytellers, builders, technologists, and pretty much anyone else who is enthusiastic about space came together to address some of the toughest challenges we face on Earth and in space!

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International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL) is pleased to announce its line up of Keynote Speakers and Corporate Sponsors for the upcoming 14th annual IPM Day Online Conference taking place on Thursday, November 2, 2017. The conference is tailored to project management and agile professionals, as well as other business leaders who utilize project management principles to achieve business success. IPM Day is expected to attract 50,000 attendees representing the most respected companies around the world.

IIL’s distinguished line-up of keynote speakers includes leaders and innovators in their respective fields. Dr. Shobhana Gupta, AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, NASA, will present Inspiring Innovation, featuring her role as Project Manager for NASA’s ‘Space Apps’ international hackathon contest. Maxine Hill, Vice President, WSP US Transportation Business, will present The Unwritten Rules of Project Management. Dr. Harold Kerzner, futurist and Senior Executive Director at IIL will present, How Changes in Project Management Support Agile and Scrum Methodologies. Dr. Jeff Sutherland, Inventor, Co-Creator, and CEO, Scrum, Inc. will present, The Path to Agile.

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If you were to have a conversation with Joanna Durand about her career and her wealth of accomplishments, you would think that everything was perfectly planned and executed—just like an ideal project. However, Joanna more accurately ‘fell into’ project management as part of a career change from stockbroker to supporting a merger between two financial institutions. As part of that learning experience, she had the opportunity to gain knowledge from one of the Big 5 Consulting Firms, Accenture. Under their tutelage, Joanna began to learn the job of project manager, without knowing that it was an important profession—one that would soon define her fast-paced career.

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In addition to its rugby roots, Scrum also can attribute its beginnings to two Japanese thought leaders. Scrum was modeled after “The New New Product Development Game” by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, published in the Harvard Business Review in 1986. Nonaka was hired by the Japanese government after World War II to help analyze why they lost the war. Takeuchi is considered to be one of the top ten business school professors in the world.

According to Dr. Jeff Sutherland, “Together their formal model has led us down the path to an extraordinary implementation of their vision of Scrum project management. Both of these teachers are surprised and impressed with the wide-spread adoption of Scrum in software.”

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