A blogging lunch

February 16th, 2009

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I had lunch today with Soma and her sister. It’s Soma’s first trip to the UK and she has been out and about seeing the sites of London: Buckingham Palace, the parks, the London Eye, a river cruise – packing more tourist things into 10 days than I have in the 18 months I have lived here. I think her sister was exhausted from it all.

Soma gave me some lovely placemats and a notebook from India and they both made me feel really important and made me sign “autographs”, which was a bit embarrassing! When I was introduced to Andy Murray at the BPUG Congress last week, I was on the other side of that tongue-tied feeling. Andy Murray, the lead author on PRINCE2:2009! I am not worthy.

Seriously, one of the best things about Congress and other PM networking events is being able to meet people in person. It was great to meet a fellow blogger in Soma (and another one of the UK blogging clan was there too: Patrick Mayfield). So much of what we do is online conversation, and that is good, but it only goes so far. I was surprised that after my presentation no one asked me whether I thought all this modern technology would replace face-to-face interaction. I don’t think it will. It’s a supplement to faciliate interaction where face-to-face isn’t possible or desirable for whatever reason. It can be faster and more efficient, but for project work Web 2.0 tools like blogs and collaboration workspaces will never replace the human touch completely.

You can do a lot of things electronically, but you can’t share a jacket potato and a sandwich.

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3 people have left a comment on this post

» Kate Winter said: { 17 Feb, 2009 - 08:02 }

Elizabeth – I just wanted to say it’s always incredibly challenging to do the last session of a two day conference! So, although you didn’t get any questions on the day I think you will find that lots of people have been discussing what you said, and thinking about how they can utilise the new technologies available to them. What is lovely is that you yourself are a shining example of sharing what you know through the online forum you have created. You and people like Soma, Andy Murray and Patrick Mayfield are all helping the community to think a little deeper about project management.
Best wishes
Kate Winter

» Elizabeth said: { 17 Feb, 2009 - 08:02 }

Thanks, Kate! I think there is a small but growing contingent of project and programme managers intent on challenging the status quo: not in a radical way – I’m still a big fan of PRINCE2 – but in a kicking-and-screaming-into-the-21st-century way.

» Soma said: { 18 Feb, 2009 - 03:02 }

Elizabeth- It was lovely meeting you, I think tools like Twitter or blogging for that matter is a great way to meet people with similar interest even when they are continents apart.