PMPC 2012

Today was Day 1 of Project Management Practitioners' Conference 2012 here in Bangalore. It was held at Nimhans Convention Center. More than 750 attended today's event.

Dr. Trivedi, Secretary, Govt. of India, Cabinet Secretariat, gave an introduction to Results Framework Document (RFD) - their website is here.This is the framework that is used to measure performance of Govt. ministries.

Bhaskar Bhat, MD of TITAN, gave a speech on Industry perspective of Project Management. He gave example of TATA projects - Tanish (jewelry) that failed initially and then picked up after understanding the market requirements. He emphasized that we learn more from failed projects than successful projects.

Dr. Mohan Sundara Rajan, Science Writer ended the day's proceedings with his talk on Nano technology. With lot of humor and interesting words, his speech was very entertaining (I should say, infotainment).

Few quotes from the day:
One person asked, "Why have train time table when all trains always run late?"
Answer: We should have a time table. That will give us a comparison to tell if trains are really running late.

It was during Nehru's time IITs were started and given full support. He used to say, "You IITians must build the nation." (He forgot to tell 'which' nation. That is why most of IITians are abroad).

Few years ago when nano-technology was coming in, a group of scientists went to Haryana Govt. and said, "We want to build a semi-conductor industry here. Please help us." The minister replied, "No, no. Not required. All our buses are having full fledged conductors. No need for semi conductors."


In Project Management and entrepreneur talks, it is a mantra to say, "think big."
But, in early days of nano-technology, people started saying, "think small" to get chips as small as possible.

It is said, Indian bureaucracy was opposing to color TVs to come to India. Both politicians and bureaucrats were made dumb to this idea. But, Vasant Sathe (read about him here)  convinced Indira Gandhi to get color TV in India!


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