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Well, that date is here. Our book is available. We’re of course hoping that there’s a lot of interest, and to that end we are providing with this “launch” post a couple of links to interviews with us and ‘teasers’ from some well-known sites that just popped up in the past few days.

Elizabeth Harrin, blogger extraordinaire , known for her outstanding blog, A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, has interviewed us and that can be found at this Gantthead posting .

And a great growing company called Green Nurture has an interesting post based on a discussion with us – and that can be found here.  This post focuses on the use of our new word, greenality which we are seeing in increasing general use – which is very satisfying for us to observe.

We’re also beginning to hear from professors at major Universities with interest in the book for their green business courses.  Stay tuned, as we are working directly with them to assure that their courses, just being launched themselves, are a good match for our book and vice-versa.

Now.  We’re wiping off that champagne and setting the ship to “cruise”!

ONLY KIDDING – But seriously, we have a gig scheduled in September and more on the horizon.  On September 21st, we’ll be doing a presentation and be available to sign our book at the Boston BioPharmaPM Conference: Delivering Value Through Projects titled “Blue Pill-Green Pill-Chlorophyll-Landfill”.  It’s about sustainability; its importance and applicability to the biopharma industry and how projects within the industry can benefit from green project management.  As always, we’ll have tips and techniques to help you.

Watch our site for we just may be appearing in a “theater” near you.  We’d love to meet you.

Steven Wright is a tremendous comedian.

You should check out some of his work here.

We also provide some text examples as well:

“Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?”
“What’s another word for thesaurus?”
“I bought a house, on a one-way dead-end road; I don’t know how I got there.”
“I wrote a song, but I can’t read music. Every time I hear a new song on the radio I think ‘Hey, maybe I wrote that.
‘”The restaurant’s sign said “Breakfast Anytime.” So I ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.”

And one of our favorites:

• I’ve got some powdered water, but I don’t know what to add to it.

Well, this is s a story about real powdered water.  “Dry water” they’re calling it, and it has the potential to fight climate change, and it may initiate some projects in the pharmaceutical industry that change the way drugs are created.

We aren’t huge fans of games, but this one has a “teachable moment” and a true reward for one lucky winner.

The rules are simple and the prize is flexible.

Let’s start with the prize: it’s a free license to OSP International’s PDU Podcast or the PMP Prepcast – excellent downloadable media products that help you keep your PMP Credential if you already have it, or earn it if you don’t yet have it.  The winner would be saving somewhere between $100 and $200!

Now let’s get to the rules.

As usual, we want each post – even a game – to be educational.  So with this post we expose one of the ideas from our book – the ‘green spectrum’ -  and ask you to comment on this post with a reaction that tells us:

• where you think your current project fits on this spectrum (choose one of the four points below)
• why you think it’s where it is (just a sentence or two)

Here you see a figure from our book, Green Project Management.  You’ll need to read the book for the juicy details.  Here’s a summary: we describe a spectrum of projects – from those that are “Green by Definition”, because the projects themselves have a deliverable related directly to sustainability – such as the turn up of a wind farm – to those projects which may not have any obvious connection to sustainability, like a new software release.  In the text, we describe the PM’s role in each of these four points along the spectrum.

We’re interested to know where you and your project sit on this spectrum.

Respond by answering the two questions above with a comment below, we’ll draw a winner by the end of September.

Continue reading…

In the film Blade Runner (at least the original that I’m familiar with), Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, had a job to do.

From Wikipedia:

The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically engineered organic robots called replicants—visually indistinguishable from adult humans—are manufactured by the all-powerful Tyrell Corporation as well as other mega manufacturers around the world. Their use on Earth is banned, and replicants are exclusively used for dangerous, menial or leisure work on Earth’s off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and “retired” by police special operatives known as “blade runners”. The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of recently escaped replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the burnt out expert blade runner, Rick Deckard, who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment to hunt them down.

As project managers, we’ve also got jobs to do.

Unless we don’t.

Well, thanks to green energy efforts – and in particular, green energy projects, there should be more opportunities for project managers.  Case in point (yes, another ‘blade’ reference) – a recent posting by the energy collective talks about a huge number of green energy jobs coming to Canada, in particular, to Ontario, thanks to huge efforts on solar and wind power projects.

The Ontario government discusses this in detail here in their Green Energy Act in which Ontario has set its intent (and call to arms?) to be the “North American green energy leader”.  Here are the Green Energy Act’s main points:

• Spark growth in clean and renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, hydro, biomass and biogas in Ontario.
• Create the potential for savings and better managed household energy expenditures through a series of conservation measures.
• Create 50,000 jobs for Ontarians in its first three years.

They want to give Ontario the edge.

The key is the 50,000 jobs.  These are project-focused efforts.  So there will be a lot of work for project teams.  And so, there will be many jobs for project managers.

The reference to Blade Runner is mainly from this story in which Siemens will be building a turbine blade factory in southern Ontario.  The project managers overseeing the manufacture and distribution of the product from these factories are today’s blade runners.

The moral of this story?

It underlines our assertion that project managers should be learning about sustainability, building their green vocabulary, and practicing looking through their “green lenses”. You can do that by keeping up to date with our blog here at EarthPM and of course by buying and reading our book.  It will give you an advantage in the coming years that will (we couldn’t help this, sorry) cut like a knife.