Written by Valerie Williams-Ndikintum, PMP

Twice monthly PMI Atlanta Toastmasters conduct meetings at 6:30p at Nancy G’s.  The July 10th PMI Atlanta Toastmasters meeting was high in attendance with 11 guests in addition to Toastmasters members.  Guests included professionals, as well as students, most of which were PMI Atlanta members.

Each Toastmasters meeting is led by members who rotate facilitating and driving the meeting.  The different roles, which must be filled at each Toastmasters meeting are:  Sergeant-at-Arms, Toastmaster, Joke Master, General Evaluator, Evaluators, Timer, ‘Ah’ Counter, Topics Master, Grammarian and Vote Counter.

Toastmasters International has two tracks available to members, the Communication Track and the Leadership Track.   New members receive a New Member Kit, including a manual, which serves as a step-by-step guide to speech writing and delivery for each respective track. Each manual walks members through 10 different speech types, all of which members are required to deliver to receive a certificate for their respective track.  

PMI Athens Committee will be hosting a Dinner Meeting at Foundry Park Inn & Spa on Thursday, August 7, 2014, with networking beginning at 5:30pm.  The keynote will be presented by Brad Hunt, Executive Director of IT at Terry College of Business, The University of Georgia. 

Enjoy an opportunity to network, learn new skills, and hear from leading experts in project management.  Earn 1 PDU while supporting project management in your community! The Athens Committee plans to bring many exciting speakers and topics to Athens.  If you have any suggestions, please email us.

Please click here for details.

Greetings Fellow PMI Members,

It has been an eventful 2nd quarter and I am excited to share our success with you.

A new chapter website was launched that includes features such as member counts; online sponsorship registrations and archived newsletters.  The website will result in an estimated savings of 60% over the next 3 to 5 years.   Additionally, internal collaboration and meeting and storage tools were streamlined resulting in a significant reduction in operational cost for the Chapter.

First quarter membership activities were continued including the monthly dinner meeting table networking, recognizing new members with special events and planning the upcoming July career month activities.

In line with our goal of providing premier professional development, we completed our first online PMP Exam Prep course in June, began advertising Certification & Education (C&E) courses via the Monthly Dinner Meeting and offered 11 courses totalling 132 PDUs.

Written by Kimi Hirotsu Ziemski, PMP – President of Energizing Enterprises – Turning behaviors into benefits

You want me to manage what?!

Relationships.

And no, I don’t think you’re a teenager.  You’re a professional, an adult, and often in the position of working with a number of people who have the potential to have even more differences of opinion than there are people on your team.  As a project manager you actually manage relationships all of the time.  The question is:

“Do you do this in a way that is both ethical and professionally productive?”

There are loads of books on the subject of influencing, on negotiations, and what you should do to increase your level of power.