I’ve just got back from the PMI Netherlands Summit held in Spant! Bussum (near Amsterdam, the Netherlands). I attended with several colleagues and this year’s conference focused on: The Human Factor in Project Management. This is a really important topic for me and one that I really appreciate the PMI NL Chapter taking the time to devote on this topic.

The conference was held in the great conference centre of Spant! and I was really impressed by the professionalism of the organisation and how slick the team were! The girls from CKCSeminars really did excel today. There were a series of keynotes throughout the day sharing a lot of valuable knowledge and insights.

During the first keynote called: “It is all about MONKEY BUSINESS – why dealing with human behaviour is key to survive in a changing world”. Patrick van Veen presented some really funny insights from the animal world and how it applies to our lives in projects. There were some really interesting tit-bits such as: “Females are the strongest as they connect and bond to each other…” and that “…a low stress environment is a precursor to personal happiness…and it’s a community action to achieve it”. I spoke to some attendees after this session and it really made a lot of us think about the importance of the team and ‘working family’.

Over lunch I spoke to several people about how they could implement and use the knowledge that we’ve learnt during the morning and a lot of people mentioned how we work with our team and the importance of the ‘non meeting’ interactions.

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to talk and present a topic about the “Questions you should be asking your team”. This is one of my favourite topics to present as I love hearing what questions the audience ask and what they think of the changes that I suggest.

Speaking to attendees after this session they told me that one reason why my session was so invaluable to them was because the changes were so easy to perform and implement in their projects.

This is really a good conference to attend if you’re in the Netherlands in September and I highly recommend you including it on your list!