“Sustainability Thinking Improves Project Management” – you’d think that would be something we’d say.

And it is.  In fact, it’s the basis of our non-profit startup, the International Society for the Integration of Sustainability in Project Management (or ISIS-PM).

But besides being something we would say, it also is the name of a presentation given at the Queensland Chapter of the Project Management Institute a little less than a year ago.  We just found it today (okay, so we’re a little bit slow), but we’re ironically thrilled in a “great minds think alike” sort of way.

Andrew Wilford, the presenter, is a self-admitted engineer and PM who enjoyed a long career in the aerospace and defense, holding senior positions with Boeing Australia and Air New Zealand. He was also involved with the development of the Complex Project Management competency Standards that have been adopted by the Australian Defence Materiel Organisation. As Clinical Associate Professor of Project Management at Bond University’s Mirvac School of Sustainable Development, Mr Wilford is currently researching project management capability models, leadership systems, complex network-centric operations and the application of sustainability principles in project management.

So we’re glad that he’s covering this topic publicly and well.

PMI’ Queensland chapter has graciously shared the presentation slides here, and you can see a video of the presentation here.

And so, from down under, it’s over and out.

Click on the image to see the video from IIL

For those of you who are project managers, HAPPY IPM DAY!

It’s actually a little late to wish that to you – IPM (International Project Management) Day was actually yesterday, so accept our apologies for being late!  But we are on scope and on budget…

IPM day is meant to be celebrated (see http://internationalpmday.org) with education and sharing of experience amongst project managers.  IIL (the International Institute for Learning) sponsored a web-based event for the ‘holiday’, and amongst the resources at their virtual event was an excellent talk by Greg Balestrero, PMI’s CEO, entitled “What Does Hope Look Like?”.  The subtitle is “Project Management and a Sustainable Future”.  We urge you to have a look at it and provide the link here.

We won’t judge or summarize.  We just invite you to watch and learn.

Duke University, based in Durham, NC, in the United States, is known to many for its basketball team, but it’s also a respected academic institution with 13,000 students and a significant research program.  One aspect of their research is led by the dean of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Enviornment, Bill Chameides.  Bill has his own excellent blog – probably worth bookmarking if you’re interested in the science of the environment.

In any case, although this is all about science and carbon and PCBs and equations at an academic level, there’s more to this than would be enjoyed only by the cast of The Big Bang Theory TVshow.  There’s also some fun to be had.  And it appears that Dean Chameides is a fun-loving guy.  That’s apparent in the video contest they’ve established.  EarthPM plans to produce an entry and we encourage as many project managers out there to take the challenge as well.  Think of it as a little project.

Yeah, yeah, blah blah, blah, so get to the $500 already!

Okay, okay…

The contest invites anyone to submit to the school aa 30-second (or less) video “telling us how you would make the environment better. Nothing is off the table: silly or serious, sizeable or small. Write your 3 words with cereal, scribble them on cards, draw them in the sky. Shoot them with your camera, cell phone, or web cam”.

Here is the information on how to enter the contest:

3 Steps to $500

Step: 1
Register on YouTube and upload
your video here >

Step: 2
Fill out the video submission form here >

Step: 3
Add your video to the Green in 3 group
(details and instructions will be provided
after you submit the entry form)

Good luck.  Expect to see an entry from EarthPM and we expect to see the Project Management discipline well-represented….RIGHT?

…the Boston Globe, that is.

As we move closer towards COP15 in Copenhagen, coverage for the environment will reach a crescendo this week.  You will be inundated with information about the environment, greenhouse gases, trading caps, protests, and so on.  Here at EarthPM we will do our best to sift through the politics and bring you the most scientific and most meaningful-t0-project-managers information on which we can lay our hands.

Case in point: the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe has a nice feature on Page A20, and the online version of the Globe contains a video to which we send you with this link.

If you’d like to read the entire article, here is that link for your convenience.

Enjoy!