#173 | The Making of a Global Virtual Conference: A Behind the Scenes Look Review with Joe Pusz

What does it take to run a global virtual conference with 1,000+ attendees, 75+ volunteers, live translation, and zero paywalls?

In this behind-the-scenes episode, Fatimah Abbouchi (Founder & CEO of AMO) is joined by her co-founder of The PMO Leader community, Joe Pusz—better known as PMO Joe—to unpack how a grassroots movement became a global platform for PMO leadership, learning, and real delivery outcomes.

Together, they explore how The PMO Leader went from a one-hour webinar to a 20-hour, follow-the-sun event built entirely by volunteers—where project managers, executives, and first-time speakers all had a voice. From detailed runbooks to backup decks and real-time incident management, they share what worked, what nearly broke, and what it taught them about leadership at scale.

The conversation also dives into PMBOK 8, the shift from “governance-heavy” to value-first thinking, and why today’s PMO leaders need to integrate deeply with strategy, operations, and change. Joe shares insights from the PMI Global Summit, the current job market for project managers, and how sponsors are shifting from brand exposure to meaningful community investment.

This episode highlights what happens when community drives the agenda: bottom-up strategy, multilingual inclusion, practical tools like PMOpedia, and mentoring programs that now span 40+ countries. If you care about making PMOs more visible, valuable, and connected to real outcomes—this is the inside story.

In this episode, I cover: 

3:13 PMI Summit Trends and PMOBOK 8

8:50 PMO’s Rising Role and Industry Shifts

15:20 Why The PMO Leader Was Created 

22:30 Volunteers, Voice, and Rel Value  

28:20 Building a Follow-The-Sun Conference

35:40 Sponsors, Reach, and ROI

42:05 Global Partnerships and Inclusion

49:10 Trust, Belonging, and Member Care

55:40 Live Ops: When Tech Fails

And more...

🎧 Tune in for lessons you can take straight back to your team.

Visit https://www.thepmoleader.com for more information or follow on LinkedIn here https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-pmo-leader.

If you’d like to get involved in shaping what comes next.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 3:13 PMI Summit Trends And PMBOK 8
• 8:50 PMO’s Rising Role And Industry Shifts
• 15:20 Why The PMO Leader Was Created
• 22:30 Volunteers, Voice, And Real Value
• 28:20 Building A Follow-The-Sun Conference
• 35:40 Sponsors, Reach, And ROI
• 42:05 Global Partnerships And Inclusion
• 49:10 Trust, Belonging, And Member Care
• 55:40 Live Ops: When Tech Fails

Transcript

Fatimah Abbouchi: 0:00

You're listening to Agile Ideas the Podcast, hosted by Fatima Rabucci. For anyone listening out there not having a good day, please know there is help out there.

SPEAKER_03: 0:12

Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Agile Ideas. I'm CEO Fatima at AMO, Mentor Health Ambassador, and your host. On today's episode, this person needs no introduction, but I will give you a little bit of a background about Joe. PMO Joe is an internationally recognized leader in the project management and PMO community. He is a frequent keynote speaker, author, project management innovator, and was also once the America's PMO influencer of the year. Joe speaks on topics of leadership, PMO, purpose-driven mindset, project management journeys, and a variety of other topics. He is also the founder and president of PMO Squad, staffing a Phoenix-based consulting firm servicing clients across the US. His business, the PMO Squad, was also named winner 2022 Small Business Awards by the Phoenix Business Journal. He also was hosting for a really long time Project Management Office Hours radio show, which had over 40 million plays and downloads featuring guests like me from around the world. Joe is also the founder and the brains behind the PMO leader global community, of which five years ago he came to me with this crazy idea and said, let's put together a community around PMO leadership that brings everybody together. And from then it has just evolved and evolved and evolved. And so I'm very pleased to say that Joe is not only a dear friend of mine now, but also very well respected in the industry and really truly lives and breathes all things PMO. So please join me in welcoming Joe to the podcast. Or welcoming him back to the podcast. Joe, welcome back to the podcast. Hello. How are you, Fatima? Oh, good. I was just saying um long time no see because we have our um four nightly calls and we had one yesterday, and then now we're talking again, but we have a lot to talk about all the time. So it works out really well. Um, so we've got lots to get through today. And um, I really wanted to start by asking um, you just came from the big global PMI conference in your hometown, and also you have been very heavily involved in a number of other things going on in this space and our global conference, which we'll get into. But can you maybe just sort of share a lay of the land of what you're hearing, seeing, um, excited about opportunities, challenges for the PMI community based on your extensive expertise in this space?

SPEAKER_00: 3:03

Yeah, of course. Always great to chat with you again. Uh, we we talk all the time, but to be able to share kind of that behind-the-scenes conversations with everybody else is always fun. Uh so yeah, this year the Global Summit was here in Phoenix, where I'm from. It was great not to have to travel and sleep in a hotel room. I could sleep in my own bed for a change. Uh, and lots of energy. Uh of course the PINBOC 8 was announced, and that's going to be a lot of buzz within the industry. We'll let time settle the argument of was it a necessary revision or not, who knows? Um the the concept of more from PMI and you know, this look on as value, really what we're shooting for is governance out the window a little bit, and we're trying to get to the delivery side of things. Um, there was a lot of discussion there about organizations and how the PMO has to fit better into a company, and it can't be a standalone entity to truly provide value and truly align strategy. You can't be an external party. You've got to be part of the organization. You have to integrate with the organization, you have to be trusted by the rest of the organization. And if we kind of go into our own corner, uh, that's hard to accomplish. So a lot of talk about that. Um, and certainly I think there's a lot, here in the States at least, there's a lot of unemployed project managers. Um, so there were unfortunately were a lot of people there networking and and trying to build on the network to be able to utilize their relationships for their next opportunity. Um, so as the global economy is a bit shifting at the moment and and not as stable as it might be, um, how do we get PMs back to work, right? How do we get more people employed in PMOs and contributing on those projects that really make a difference for companies around the world?

SPEAKER_03: 5:05

It's so interesting because you're right, there's been a lot of chatter about the the PINBOC. Um, and there's definitely been a lot of um that I'm getting almost daily, if not two, three times a day, messages of people that are either being displaced or um with you know the whole wave of AI of taking over jobs and all those sort of things. So it's really good to see that this community I think has opened up some doors for some of those people, which I think is really positive. And then also I think it's really interesting to see that the conference itself um is it's um you see these very familiar faces, which means it's very well um, it's a very, the very well connected community of people that are working together to to make it better. And it's so good to see that PMO is more injected into the project management community, which for a long time was sort of like in organizational project delivery, a little bit to the side. So it seems like now it's more more intertwined. So I think that's really positive. I was um talking yesterday as part of the PMO trends for 2026, and one of the things I'd mentioned is that I reckon that PMO itself has probably changed more in the last two years, maybe, than I feel like it has in the last 10, 15. You've been in this space longer than I have. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00: 6:26

Yeah, I think it's been a slow incline in um value to the organization. Certainly Americo, Pinto, and the PMO Global Alliance really had a big part of that. He was trying to bring that to the forefront. PMI's acquisition of PMO GA certainly then helped integrate that into the broader PM community. And then there was this one or two-year period where VMOs and SROs and everybody was arguing over is PMO the right word for it. And I think the unintended benefit of that was it brought the discussion back to what is a PMO and what are they really trying to accomplish. And by doing that, it forced PMOs and PMO leaders to elevate. We need to up our game. We can't just run an isolated department. We're an integrated function that is cross-functional, right? It goes and spans the entire organization. Yet we kept looking inward for solutions and inward for challenges, and because of that, we did isolate. We became disposable. When business goes off, let's get rid of the PMO. We need to cut costs. Well, that's the worst move a company can make, right? That's the cross-functional delivery of your projects, programs, and initiatives. So you're right. Over the past few years, there has been this elevated status of the PMO globally. I think the recognition for that, there's so many different associations out there that have been pushing, House of PMO, of course, Laura Bernard here in the States with us, the PMO officers out of Europe that's working on that, different groups within the Middle East that are winning the annual awards competition for PMOs. Of course, Down Under with you and the work you're doing in Amira and Louise Gardner and others. It's just there's visibility and there's awareness to it now, and everybody wants to kind of fight their way to the top and understand how we can contribute and give value back to the company.

SPEAKER_03: 8:33

And it's so interesting because value comes up a lot. And um, we discussed this yesterday, and many times it comes up. And I think the biggest shift for PMOs I've seen when it comes to the concept of value is I think they're starting to realize that value is not what we as the PMO leaders determine it. It's what value that our stakeholders, be it our delivery teams active gives, actually perceive it to be. And so if they don't see the value, they won't fight for you, they won't, you know, defend you, they won't want to keep you around, so to speak. So um, yeah, interesting discussions, lots of um things happening in this space. So I wanted to delve into now PMO leader. The PMO leader was something that started five years ago with a crazy idea when we're just starting to get to know each other. So um, just for those that are living under a rock and have not heard about the PMO leader, why don't you just tell us about what sparked the idea and what the the concept and thinking behind it was? Because like you said, there's lots of PMO things and groups and communities out there. So what makes the PMO leader different?

SPEAKER_00: 9:35

Yeah, you know, you think back to five years ago when you're dealing with COVID, um, which created this explosion of virtual events around the world. And it allowed people who maybe weren't ever connected to have that opportunity to become connected. You and I may cross paths on LinkedIn or some social platform, but we would never have an opportunity to work together. But as soon as COVID hits and everybody goes virtual, all of a sudden you and I are at the same event and we're speaking at the same event, and you get to know and meet people that you never would have met before, and what a treasure that is for all of us to be able to make those introductions and become friends with people that we never would cross paths with. And when that happens, you start having discussions about what could be better, right? If we could do a retrospective on that association, what about them do we like and what would we improve? And the number one thing we always came back to was everyone's trying to get something from somebody else, but nobody's putting out a platform that people can share. Where can I go to put my organization out there, my course out there? And everybody in the community can benefit from that. And you actually get compensated for what value you bring to the community. Um pitching a certification of some kind. How many certifications do we need? We don't need a hundred. So we said as we were talking about these ideas, let's create something that's based on community, that's not centered on a certification, that doesn't try to create an award for the best of fill-in-the-blank. There were already groups doing that, and they were doing it well. We didn't need to replicate that.

SPEAKER_01: 11:27

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 11:27

But what was missing was there was no platform for the individual, regardless of their location, to go tell their story and to be able to go sell their service and to be able to go learn from others. And that kind of led to the birth of the PMO leader, where the average Jane or John Doe from wherever they are in the world could be equally as valuable as you or me. And most of the other associations out there, the the founder is kind of the face of the entity and they drive it.

SPEAKER_01: 12:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 12:04

I intentionally, I think we intentionally try not to be seen within the community so that the community isn't about us. It's about the community. Finally, right? A community about the community.

Fatimah Abbouchi: 12:18

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 12:19

And you know, five years later, I think we're killing it. I think it's gone real well.

SPEAKER_03: 12:23

It's so interesting. Um, you're right, because uh one of the things I was thinking is what were some of the non-negotiables that we aligned on before jumping in. And 100% we just said we're not going to go and create a certification. I mean, that may change in the future, who knows? But that was definitely something that I feel and and we agreed was saturated. The market was saturated. And also we we wanted uh communities about truth and trust. And so what we felt was necessary, thinking back to that conversation, was we wanted people, well, first of all, we needed volunteers to support us, and we'll get into that, our great volunteers. But we also didn't think it would be fair to have volunteers come in and join us, only for us to sell a specific product that or that has our faces on it, um, just to further our brands. And I think you and I have a good standing in in the community, you especially with all the work you've done over the years. So it wasn't necessary to be about us, and even till now, there's people that don't even realize um that you or I even co-founded and been part of this community. So I think it's it's fascinating to see that. When we think about um the amazing group of volunteers that we've had um support us from day one, and it's so interesting that people that have volunteered since day one continue to volunteer, which is very rare for people to continue to volunteer five years later. What makes you what what do you think is the reason why our volunteers stay with us this long?

SPEAKER_00: 13:52

Yeah, I I think for in anything in life, people stay with something where they get value out of it. And they recognize that it's something that that benefits them. You know, I'm I'm not somebody that doesn't uh I'm I'm a realist, and I get there's a with them, right? What's in it for me for everybody? And we allow those volunteers to have a voice, right? We have volunteers that sit on our board of advisors who started out maybe just sending in a I want to be a volunteer in the community and have over five years now they are advising on strategic decisions we're making. Um, they have an idea for a show that we could have. Great, let's run with it, let's give it a shot, let's see how it goes. Um, they want to start a new program. Great idea. Let's go start that program, see how it benefits. And by them having an actual voice and them seeing that they can not only be a contributor, but a leader, that's something that they can grow just as the community grows and becomes inspiration for other new community members to be able to come in and do the same thing. So, you know, there's a Linka is with us, right? And and I she's just the best. Alinka started out with, I would like to be a volunteer, however, I could be a volunteer. She now sits on the board of advisors. She ran our global conference one year, she hosted our book club webinar series for a while, and now she contributes behind the scenes wherever needed. Um epitome of what a volunteer is and how they find value out of a community that they're a part of. So it kind of speaks to you know the community as a whole really is about the people and letting them run and build and shape the community, the PMO leader community, because they're leaders, go make it in their own vision as to what it can become.

SPEAKER_03: 15:57

And you said um the key sentence there, how they find value. So again, it's not what we perceive as valuable for them, but it's them creating opportunities. And that's what leadership is all about. You've got people, um, Link is a perfect example as one of our longest-standing volunteers, who's been instrumental in so many areas, but has, like many others, created opportunities or streams of ideas, many that are still going now, like the webinar stream, the podcasting stream, um, some of the um the event stuff that we've been doing, all these ideas, it's probably really difficult as a standalone person to just go and invest the time or have the platform or the resources, or the all the um exchanging of brainstorming and ideas that you and I have every couple of weeks, but by giving them this community, giving them the central platform, by effectively bringing together this volunteer engine, it means that they can um investigate ideas with our full support. And what I love about it is in all of the things that we do as CEOs of our businesses, we often have to control things to make sure that they go in a certain way, that they align strategy, that customers are happy. So we're a little bit maybe a little bit more, I mean, I know I am, but a little bit more controlling in our day-to-day businesses. We have to be. But with this, we're so much more free um and and and more open and a lot more flexible because we appreciate that the community is being built by these volunteers. And if it goes one way, it goes the other, as long as we're learning as we go and people are given opportunities, then people will keep coming back. And so I um I sympathize and align with everything that you've said, and I think that the the conference is probably one of the most heavily involved activities that we do, which I want to get into because I don't think that people understand how much goes on behind the scenes. So I wanted to make it really practical and dive into that now. So why don't we start off with some some stats on what the global conference is when it started, maybe the the number of attendees, the volunteers, how that's grown. Um and I guess probably for those that are not aware, the fact that it runs across three um different uh groups of of countries and regions. So do you want to maybe just give us a little bit of background on that since it was originally your idea?

SPEAKER_00: 18:24

Yeah, I mean, if we go back to year one, the the conference, we we called it a conference, it was a one-hour webinar. Uh, I think with some follow-up afterwards with me, you, I believe Marissa Silva, Peter Taylor, Eileen uh Rodin.

SPEAKER_03: 18:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 18:42

Um and I I don't remember if others were thinking that was it.

SPEAKER_03: 18:46

It was the Audio Five, I believe.

unknown: 18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:49

So we kind of just had five global PMO leaders get together and chat for an hour and talk chop, right? Um, and that went well, and people actually attended and people participated. Um, I was reminded earlier this year that it was the five-year anniversary, and that was our first conference, and I went back and watched it uh a couple months ago, and I was like, boy, have we come a long way. Um But now it's you know, over, I think we have over 1,500 registrations for each of the conferences, over a thousand attendees. There's about 75 or so volunteers working behind the scenes that nobody ever sees. To your point, it's it's we've kind of broken it up into three regions. We've we've been live from every continent except for Antarctica, and that's still the goal. We've we've got to be able to do something live from Antarctica at one point. Um, but we've now introduced multiple languages where we're doing live translations, not a recorded translation after the fact. It's live. While somebody is speaking in Spanish, you can get it in English, or you or they're speaking in English and you can get it in Spanish, in Portuguese, in German, in Arabic this year, um, in French, we've done it. It's truly amazing the amount of effort, people, work, uh that volunteers put forward to go make this conference be successful. And I think at this point in time, we're probably the only conference like this in the world. Um, and and I don't think that's hyperbole. I think we're the only one out there that's dedicated to PMO leaders virtually 20 plus hours in duration, continuously live on a follow-the-sun format that is completely run by volunteers and driven by them. It's an amazing, amazing um event that gets put on, and the work that goes in behind the scenes probably can't be applauded enough or recognized enough for the amount of effort it takes to pull this off every year.

SPEAKER_03: 21:01

Oh, 100%. I agree with you. It's so interesting because when we think about um all of those, all of those insights, in addition, the other things that came to my mind was it's effectively us running a decentralized PMO model where each of the continents, and we've got like a lead that sits in there, again a volunteer who is ultimately, and I know in in APAC I have Julie Oliver who's been involved the last three years and helps to guide the journey along with Abby and Sarah and a number of other interns we've had. And then you've got in Europe, you've got leads, and every year there's a changing hand in terms of who's running it, and then in America's as well. It's not like you and I are running these regions, it's actually their vision. And so what we're doing in APAC, especially as we kick off the conference um 9 a.m. Perth time, it actually is sets a foundation for the rest of the conference, but also we have the flexibility to do more or less of things and we decide the agenda. The only thing we're not deciding is the global theme, which all the regions come together and choose. So I think that's really good because then it gives us like this decentralized model and gives the flexibility of that. And that's essential because our volunteers are in so many different time zones. So it would be impossible to expect them all to be at a daily stand-up or at a weekly call at a set time. So I think that's something that people need to understand from a complexity um perspective. And the other thing I was thinking as well, as we were talking about the conference, is when we think about um ultimately where where it starts where it starts. And usually we probably kick off maybe March, April, and then you've got a good six months. You also have someone that effectively coordinates everything, like your PMO manager for all the PM, your head of EPMO. This year we had the lovely Cleo who um done a phenomenal job, kept everyone on track, kept everyone organized, and really made sure that we got the outcomes that we needed to get to. But what would not be possible is the conference without our sponsors. And you've had um such luck in in having some of our sponsors be repeat customers of ours. So what's in it for the sponsors?

SPEAKER_00: 23:14

You know, it's again the fact that there's not really truly a glob a live global project management slash PMO conference anywhere else in the world right now that goes for 20 consecutive hours, it gives them a unique opportunity to participate in something else that doesn't exist. So um Planessware has been there, they're a tremendous partner and supporter of the community, and and they have sponsored multiple years in a row. Sipforma was this recently purchased by PlanView in the past year, and they've been there multiple years in a row, and they keep coming back. They get um time during the conference, they have a booth at the conference, they have the ability to interact live. Depending on the level of sponsorship, the community then hosts a webinar with them, individualized for their product or their demo or the story that they want to tell for our community. We've now opened up to email sponsorships and social media sponsorships. The community has grown to, I don't know, 15,000 plus members, over 20,000 if we take our social and our community membership together. So people are starting to say, hey, wait a second, this little community that started out five years ago with a one-hour webinar is actually an entity that we need to pay attention to. And not only are we able to contribute to them, but they can provide back to us because now they get to see what types of questions are being asked during these sessions. What sort of material are they looking for? What are they asking us about when we query them about our tool and the demos that we provide? So for them, it's a great way to be able to get feedback, it's a great way to try new products and services, it's a great way to spread your message globally because we are a truly global community. It's really been amazing. And we've got a whole bunch of different new sponsorship packages that we're looking at for next year as we continue to grow. We haven't even really looked at sponsorships for our mentoring program, uh, our speaker bureau that we have available, uh, potential job boards that we have coming up in the future, master classes and boot camps that would be out there, not for certifications, but just access to some of the best leaders in the world. So much more on the horizon for our sponsors to get in front of now, as we're still fairly early on in our growth, but can really make a big impact for them and their brand.

SPEAKER_03: 25:46

Oh, a thousand percent. We had some new sponsors this year in our APAC region who have said that had several follow-up conversations that have been really beneficial for them. But um, as you said, without the sponsors, we wouldn't be able to afford the platform. That is um being the one that we've been using for several years now that enables all those translations, it enables the coordination, enables the backstage experience, enables the recording, there's a connection to live um recording on YouTube and all of that sort of fun stuff. So for those thinking about setting up their own conference or webinar, um, webinar, and then eventually a conference, you know, these are some of the things we have to consider. Another thing that I I think is really important for people to understand is as you talk about the global community, it's only global because, as you said, we've got our peers in um a numerous um similar entities like your PMI. We've always had numerous PMI speakers um from different chapters. We have um people from the PMO um APAC hub. We have um we we have, for example, this year we had the president of the PMI Malbourne chapter speak, we've had just such a broad, um broad, diverse perspectives, opinions, ideas, insights. And one of the things that we do behind the scenes for people's awareness is we do look at what are the the specific topics and the types of um conversations we want to have, whether it's a panel, whether it's a lightning talk, whether it's a um a webinar where the the vendor is providing a demo. So we do try to provide that diversity. And then there's the speakers, which all again volunteer their time to have their voices heard, have the recording itself be possible for them to share with others. But to make the the whole speaker journey possible, we also have a partnership with a university, which is funnily enough, in my husband's um home country, El Salvador, who has been with us for what most of the last five years? What did you say?

SPEAKER_00: 27:47

Yeah, it it's uh my good friend Lucho Godardo out of El Salvador. Um the entire Latin community has Latin American community has been mostly forgotten on a lot of these global platforms. And uh when I met Lucho for the first time, I I realized in a past life he and I were brothers, right? I mean, we I just love that man. He is an amazing individual. And as we got to talking and knowing more about each other, he he volunteers time at SN University in El Salvador, introduced me to the dean, uh the business school there. And they talked about these amazing students that they have that are so thirsty for knowledge and to be able to contribute. And we just immediately opened our arms with this idea of it's whatever community we want to create, that's your idea. And Lucho said, Well, can we provide internship opportunities for some of our students? Yes, let's go do it. Um, and we've done that, and now they are involved in our mentoring program and the conference that we do. Um, I'm trying to employ one of them on my personal company, the PMO Squad staffing right now. We're trying to get one to work with us. There is so much out there in areas that are not being looked at. And when you open up your eyes as to a community, what's available, you can find some amazing things. Going back a little bit to sponsorship. Well, I'm standing in our booth, PMO Squad staffing booth at the PMI conference. Right next to us was Sensei Project Solutions, who sponsored us this year. Behind us was Triscal Software, one of our sponsors this year. Across the hall at on the corner was Plan Assware, which sponsored us. Down that hallway was Meisterplan, who has sponsored in the past. And down a couple more rows was Plan View. And at this giant community event that is hosted by PMI, I'm seeing the PMO leader everywhere I turn. One of the PMI fellows came up to me, and this was last year in LA. We were walking into the conference, day one of the conference. Conference puts his arm around me and he said, I just want to let you know, I attended so many sessions at the PMO leader conference this year. What an amazing job you guys have done. I didn't even know that we had PMI fellows attending our conferences, but they are. And not only are they doing that, they're recognizing the quality we have. So it's just it's kind of humbling when you do something global because we only get to really look in the mirror and see what's around us locally every day. But when we look at the PMO leader and look locally, it's a global picture. We have board members in every continent. Louise Worsley out of South Africa, Cleo out of Northern Africa, ran the conference, Bruno Morgante runs the mentoring program out of Germany. Michael O'Connor is here in the United States with us. Mazangadir is in the Middle East. You're over there in Australia. It's everywhere. Everywhere you look, the PMO leader is there because PMO leaders exist everywhere. And one of our first board members who isn't with us at this point anymore, but she was out of Iran. And at first I thought, how would we have someone from Iran who is not getting the Western exposure that many of our countries get? But we needed that perspective. We needed to hear what it was like running a PMO in a country that we may not have visibility into because their challenges are different. And if we're truly going to be global, we have to open and embrace our community, not because of political ideology and religious ideology and other things. We've had some contention around that as well. But we have to open our arms to everybody and give everybody a choice how they participate, what they participate with, and what stories they can tell. It's their choice. We're the platform, but it's their community.

SPEAKER_03: 32:01

It's amazing because effectively one of the key things of the conference is trust. And we've created this sense of trust, shared ownership across the whole global team of volunteers. They trust each other, they trust in our leadership, they trust in the decision making. They are um, and similar to the comments you had from the PMI fellow, I was actually quite amazed by in our post-implementation review and the feedback we got through surveys where people said this is the most um most exciting conference I look forward to every year. So people that are returning year on year on year. I don't know much that I go to year on year on year because um sometimes things are um you know underwhelming or maybe uh repetitive or boring, but for us, we it never is. And one of the things I'm really proud of this year is at least for our APAC region, I know that one of the things we specifically did is we took very much to heart the feedback we got last year, but there was lots of positive feedback. And I also had some conversations with some of my client past and previous clients that said, you know what, it would have been really great if we had some more executive C level strategic conversations. So I had the ex-VP of McDonald's join us, we had the ex-CIO of Toyota Australia join us, we had the head of EPMO for one of our biggest utility companies join us, we had a general manager who ran the whole of the supply chain procurement for our second largest national retailer join us. And these are all people that are, amongst many others from all of the other continents, have given up their time to share insights on project management, PMO, transformation, leadership, AI, technology, stakeholder engagement, change management, all of these things that are directly going to benefit those that are working in and around projects and PMO, either to be better leaders or in fact to run better functions, whether they're managing them or managing the people or running them themselves. So it's that sense of shared ownership, I think, that really makes people come back.

SPEAKER_00: 34:10

Yeah, and the other thing I love about the conferences, many of our speakers, this is this may be the only platform where they'd be able to be a speaker. They wouldn't be accepted because they may not have had an opportunity to speak at other conferences. Right. Right. And some others have challenged me and said, Well, aren't you afraid maybe they're not going to be as composed or they're not going to present as well? And I said, That's exactly what we want. I want a community member to hear from another community member who might be so nervous and stumbling over their words and not advancing their slides the way they need to be. But it's a hundred percent real. Right? I I talk at a lot of places around the world, and when I go, I see a lot of the same people, and we, you know, we've formed friendships and bonds, and those are great. I cherish those connections I've made. But I always wonder why is it always us that's talking? I know there's a lot of other people who have something really important to say. And guess what? I was one of those people at one point, right? Somebody gave me the first opportunity to talk, and I found out, wow, I kind of like this stuff. Maybe people will listen to what I have to say. We want to be that platform that gives people their first chance to be able to share what they have to share. And based on the feedback we get from the audience, we'll know how they did. Should we invite them back? Should we give them more of a platform? And and it builds relationships when you do that, because now people trust, as you just talked about, they trust that you're there for them. What can I do for you? That spirit at the beginning, we said, why do people keep coming back and volunteering? Because we're giving something to them as well. It's not just take, take, take. Not come volunteer for me. It'll be good for you. Sure it will, right? No, this is come volunteer because we're here to support you. And when you're given that chance, you're willing to give up your time to be able to support others as well. Great example. There was a major hurricane that went through the Caribbean this year and kind of major damage to Jamaica. Mark Burnett, one of our ambassadors from the very beginning, hosted a show with us for a long time. I'm reading about this in the news. I send him a text message, I get no response. A few days later, he WhatsApps me, sends us everything's fine, we're trying to clean up, we're trying to care about it. I go out to LinkedIn and there are messages from other PMO leader community members checking up and making sure he's safe and he's okay. That's a community. We care about each other, we're trying to help one another and we're there for one another. It's not about the conference, although we love the conference. It's about the people forming a community to help each other be successful.

SPEAKER_03: 36:58

I love that example. I remember I was I I did message Mark, he was one of one of the ones that um yeah, does definitely stand out. Another one that comes to mind is there was a couple of volunteers of ours that helped us for quite a bit during early years that decided they wanted to write a book about volunteering, coincidentally. And they did put put the effort to put the book together, but obviously they needed contributions and they wanted contributions and from from many people. And one of one of the requests came to me. Now, ordinarily, I I would probably be busy and not really make time for all of the requests that come my way because you just can't help and support everything. But I prioritized that and gave them the time, supported them and contributed to their book. And I wouldn't probably not have ordinarily done that for people I didn't know, but their volunteering contribution meant that that was the case. And there was other examples of that as well, where people have volunteered that then um, as a really good example, there there is some volunteers we've had that are now looking for work. So I'm I'm one of many people that are now resharing their interest in trying to find opportunities or connecting them with people or introducing them to people because we know how they work and we know um that they're you know really good at their job. Um, and so I think those sorts of things um at the end of the conference, and the conference is is sort of the bow tie on the year for us. And I get to the end of the conference, and other than have having to take 24 hours off to recover because of the exhaustion, I don't know how Cleo did it and being online for the whole thing. But by the end of it, you just think you go, this is why, this is why we did it, this is why we love to do it. Um I I think I think these are really great um examples. The other thing I think um that really is important that I think people should understand when when running something as complex as this, a community and the conference, um, is there's a lot of decision making and there's a lot of triaging of decisions, and there's a lot of um consideration for things that people can make decisions for and others that can't. And I think like we've got a very basic framework for this. Um, and I think it's important that people understand that we have to balance some structure, as we talked about briefly, sort of giving some guidance and making sign-offs on key decisions, like you would in any project, um, but then also having the flexibility to enable the the regional leads and their teams to actually make decisions on the fly. And as long as they didn't materially impact the overall um global conference uh outcomes and the other teams, people can make those decisions, and that's what leadership is making decisions when things get hard and when things are challenging. So, what's it what's an example um that we can maybe use about something that maybe was one of the moments where things went off track. I've certainly got some, but is there something for you that stood out either in the Americas region or even globally globally during the last few months as you know, the lead up to the conference um that you could talk about?

SPEAKER_00: 40:10

Well, I'm I'm actually gonna go way back to the beginning of the community being formed because I think it it's the the best reflection of that as you were asking the question. When we started the community, membership was paid. You had to pay to become a member. And we started the community, we launched the community, and I'm sitting there waiting for everybody to sign up, and nobody is signing up. And I'm like, why in the world is nobody signing up for this? Yeah, and it wasn't expensive. You know, there's two memberships, a basic membership and a more advanced one, uh$29 and$99 or whatever it was. And then I started to get email messages and LinkedIn messages. Joe, not everywhere around the world can afford$29 or$99 the way you can in the position that you're in. There's people who want to be a member of this community, but they'll never join because they have to pay for it. If you make them pay, it's not a community, it's a service. And I think it was probably within three months we we had chatted about this and said, boy, we we we we need to get rid of the costs. And we eliminated the the fees. So membership is completely free. Um, and from there it took off, right? Now, again, collectively between social followers and our our members online, we're over 20,000. I don't even remember the number anymore. But I think that was the first misstep, was the actual first step after we created it. And that goes to speak where we listened to people who would be our future community members and gave them what they asked for. Maybe you've got some more recent examples that you said. You could think of some leading up to the conference where were something that you would share.

SPEAKER_03: 41:59

Um, so I think that I mean, one that one that impacted us directly in the conference itself is if you can imagine, um, for those that weren't there, it was nine o'clock and Perth time. We're about to kick off the conference. And remember, everyone, we were about to kick off the whole next 18 hours. So we're the guinea pigs. So things go right or wrong. The Asian pack region is the guinea pigs, and so everything's great. We kick off, we start, and we're realizing there's no engagement in the chat. That's unusual. Our polls aren't working, that's unusual. And as we're hosting a several sessions, I think we got to maybe the second or towards the start of the third, and we realized there's a problem in the platform. Something was going wrong, and we didn't know what it was. And from an administrative perspective, our we were capped out in terms of what we could solve. Now, thankfully for us, we had our amazing um global volunteer team online, coincidentally, and immediately through um quick action and thinking, our team rallied together and we thought of a solution on the spot where we decided to use a different feature in the platform temporarily and kept communicating to the members and attendees, and then we're trying in the background, frantically like a duck on water, to fix it. Because we know that one of the most important things that happens in the conference um and in community in general is the conversation, the questions, the conversation, the response to the speakers, the emojis, the reactions, and we weren't getting that. And for me, during um as the host of the Asia-Pacific region and Julie, my co-host, it was really frustrating, but we couldn't show it. So we were fighting a fire in the middle of it, and we were just um really, really stressed out in that moment because we couldn't communicate with our with our um you know, our colleagues, our our community, our peers. So for me, it was about um everyone, everyone's resilience in that moment. It was PMO and leadership to quickly think of what we're going to do as a backup option. We were quickly coordinating with a global team who happened to be available as a risk mitigation unintentionally because they felt that being on standby would be there to support us. And then they were able to solve it by maybe the third or fourth session. The rest of the conference then went really well, and then it was perfectly set up for uh the AMEA region and America. If we didn't figure out that problem then, it would have impacted and probably hurt the conference.

SPEAKER_00: 44:36

Yeah, and and I remember this was the first year I couldn't attend the live kickoff. I was flying back from a speaking engagement at one of the PMI chapters here in the US, and I'm on we had we have a bunch of WhatsApp groups set up during the conference for the speakers, for the technical team, and others. And I'm on the plane reading this, knowing I'm completely helpless. There is nothing I can do to help fix this. But our team immediately reached out to the platform uh host that host you know, our platform that we host the conference on, and and she's working the technical side of it in the back end. There's the conversation going back and forth of what you just described and what you're trying to do on the front end. And it was maybe 30 minutes or so, I think, probably a really intense WTF is going on. Um, and the team just did it, right? They just got it done. And to your point, that's what PMO leaders do all the time, every day. We have to figure out how to get it done. Um, so it's it's real life, right? I mean, these conferences aren't like, but to your point, we're the duck paddling water underneath, but up above, you just have to see the beautiful duck, right? And and you don't get to see the panic. But there's real people in the background sweating trying to get this stuff to work the way it needs to.

SPEAKER_03: 46:03

Oh, 100%. Uh I I yeah, you feel the pressure, you're in the kitchen, and people don't realize how much work goes into a webinar, let alone if you add up how many sessions we're at. There's um the the content and the backup files in case somebody can't access, and then it's the behind the scenes with the speakers, which are you know, our teams were like, Can you hear me? And is your microphone working? Can you flick the slides? And the um the making sure that you're responding to people in the chat and engaging with them, and then making sure the polls are integrated and making sure um our sponsors are getting um promoted and and referenced a lot of the time, and and making sure that we then get the recordings that the live transcription to YouTube is happening. So much goes on, and who better than to coordinate than a community of leaders, PMO leaders, and people that are future PMO leaders. Like you can't ask for anything more, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00: 47:00

Yeah, we I think it was I think it was two years ago. Um, again, you had mentioned all of the speakers are volunteers, we don't compensate any of the speakers at the conference, and they put their slide decks together and they have those, and we require that they give us a backup just in case. And and I think it was during the EMIA region, the speaker couldn't access her own slides, it just wouldn't work. And she was getting very flustered, and and we do not want somebody who's presenting to come across looking bad, like they don't know what they're doing. And we have a host on every session, and people have always questioned that why is there a host at every session that's virtual? Just let the person speak. That host immediately went into reactive mode, recognized we had the presentation stored locally within our platform as well, pulled that up, and was able to keep the session on track and give the attendees the presentation that they signed up for. Again, that's real-time thinking, making sure we can solve problems and troubleshoot and get things done. But it's also planning to make sure we've got people available, planning to make sure the presentation has a backup, planning to ensure that we've practiced with the speakers what happens when this occurs. Planning, execution, monitor control, right? All of the different aspects of program, project, and PMO leadership on full display in the middle of a conference, and most people probably have no idea it's happening, right? It has to be seamless that way.

SPEAKER_03: 48:32

You have to make it look easy fundamentally.

SPEAKER_00: 48:34

Yeah, believe me, we're sweating in the background, right? It's like I hope this all works.

SPEAKER_03: 48:39

I know, I know we've got some explanations to do. But sponsors are great as well, like they're all really flexible and adaptive, and and that's been good too. Two things that stand out for me, I think, um, it on the real positive side is um my team um over the the last few years, we've now made the whole um conference a bit of a um a repetitive structure. So we've developed like a run sheet. Uh actually Abby, Abby and my team led that. And so we've been using that and we just constantly improve it. And it's like hundreds of steps in it. But it meant this year we were able to, through um one of the interns we got from a Danish university in our team, be able to lead um a lot of the Asia Pacific activities end to end because of this detailed run sheet that we've now been refining over time, that it's becoming a bit more of a framework for how we run things, which again in in in uh in our day jobs, having something like that really makes the delivery easy. And we prove that by having an intern be able to use that. Um, so I think that's a one. And then the second one that really stands out for me is I genuinely, genuinely, genuinely feel there is no other project, program, team, company I've ever worked for or community I've been part of that genuinely takes the lessons learned and actively applies the lessons for the following um event, conference yeah. We do that, and I think that's phenomenal, and that's why I think it's going from strength to strength to strength. So I wanted to close out on what's next for the PMO leader community community, what are you envisioning? And and then and and if we can sum up um sum up how we feel about it today, five years on, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00: 50:25

Wow, that that's that's a loaded question right there, right? Um I think next for me is the PMO leader community has been an amazing launch pad for many things, individuals' careers, uh the ability to interact and everything. But there's something else that's been produced, and it's our PMO leader mentoring program. There isn't another one in the world that's at the scale, the depth, and the quality of what we've been able to produce in such a short amount of time. Right now, that's available for people to be able to go sign up. If you are a PMO leader and you want to mentor a future PMO leader, or maybe a current PMO leader who's just starting out, you may connect with somebody that, again, you've never known before in a different part of the world, and you're gonna go thinking they're you're going to help coach and teach them something, and I guarantee you you're gonna learn something new. Right? Take time to commit and go be a member of this PMO Leader mentoring program. I think we're now in over 40 different countries, there's over 200 or so different people who've participated over the years. It's just an amazing program. So that's coming. What's coming next? Um uh stay tuned. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but we've got a couple of bigger things that we're working on for the coming year. Obviously, the conference will be back. We're looking at a bunch of different things with people's careers that we may be able to help with. Um, if you're a speaker and you want access to other communities around the world, every month we're getting companies that come to the PMO Leader website because we have a speakers bureau up there and they're asking for our speakers to talk at their companies. Again, I don't know where else that's happening anywhere in the world for PMO leaders. Um there's talk of master classes and boot camps and a whole bunch of different things related to that. Um, we're trying to find more opportunities for sponsors to gain value out of their investment into our community without invading the time and privacy of our members. So it's a win-win for everybody involved. We want to bring platforms and technology and awareness to everybody. It's just a lot going on. Um, and again, I we have a board of advisors. We're gonna be meeting in December in a few weeks. We'll get their input as to what they think we should be doing with our next steps, and we'll follow the lead, right? I mean, it's not we may be the co-founders, but it's not our community. It's the community's community, and they're gonna point us in the direction. We have PMOpedia, right? Wikipedia for PMOs. Remco out of the Netherlands has done an amazing job establishing this, getting it off the ground. And I think it's just in its infancy. I think the potential there is great as we introduce AI capabilities into that and make it available to more people around the world. So there's so much that's out there. I'm I'm I'm so excited as to what's coming. I don't know what's coming, but I'm excited to know because the people that are part of the community are going to make sure it's high quality and value add for everybody.

SPEAKER_03: 53:46

It's um so refreshing hearing all of that, obviously um being involved day to day, and and you like I said, you and I are meeting every four every couple of weeks. But one of the things that um I think people may hear from that, or maybe not know from hearing that rather, is unlike your traditional organization, maybe like our own businesses, where we set strategy from the top down, we sort of change the strategy based on the community wants. And so it is bottom-up, um, which is very unique. So, yes, we've got some big picture visions of where this could go, and we've got some strategic um decisions and input from the board of advisors, but also there are people that are suggesting ideas and coming up with um ideas for us to explore or to um amplify, and this is coming from the community, which means we're actually doing strategy from the bottom up as well, which I have to admit is quite unique, and that never happened.

SPEAKER_00: 54:43

So the mentoring program is Bruno's idea, right? Bruno is is a strong mentoring advocate globally, and he said, How about we introduce within the community? And I was like, Yeah, run with it, let's go. Um, you know, the internship program from SN University, Lucho had brought that up and said, Are you interested in this? Absolutely, run with it, let's go. Um we don't know what's coming next. We'll find out probably at the board meeting some other ideas that they have for us. I don't know, but they were the platform to make it possible.

SPEAKER_03: 55:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 55:15

Because it's not about trying to draw a certain amount of revenue, it's not trying to draw a certain amount of certification holders. Um, it's not about knocking any other association out there. I think we're friends with everybody. We want to promote everybody else's group because it's about more tools, more knowledge, more awareness for our community members to be successful. We don't have to wrap our arms around our community and say only us.

SPEAKER_01: 55:42

No.

SPEAKER_00: 55:42

No. We open our arms to every community and say, come join us, right? That's I think another really important component about what we do is it's not about competing. It's about cooperating. It's about bringing community globally and saying it's not us or you, it's us and you. And and that's been really well received by our members as well.

SPEAKER_03: 56:07

And and you didn't um mention this specifically, but the mentoring program, the PMOpedia, the all of that, that's that there's no charge there. So it no one's paying. I mean, our sponsors enable it, but it's it's free for mentors, free for mentees. Um, so again, we're not we're not selling to these things. Um, so I think that's really important. But you wrapped it up perfectly. I um appreciate uh you um thinking through thinking of the idea and then and then uh collaborating with me on it over the last five years. I'm excited for what the next five years is going to bring. And if I had to sum up in one word, I think everything we've talked about beyond community is collaboration. And to me, that's what's gonna make this community grow. So um I think this has been invaluable once again, always full of knowledge. And you're probably sick of me now two days in a row. So we'll I'll I'll let it leave it there and and then we can talk again in two weeks.

SPEAKER_00: 57:00

I love it. Thank you for everything for team it again. This isn't about us, no, right? We may be the spokesperson, but it's so much about everybody else.

SPEAKER_03: 57:10

Absolutely. And if anyone's got any suggestions, ideas, or um wants to be involved, they can go to the PMOleader.com website. They can also reach out to us or any of our volunteers as well. But otherwise, thank you and um more to come. Stay tuned, everyone.

SPEAKER_01: 57:26

Yeah, absolutely.

Fatimah Abbouchi: 57:29

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Please share this with someone or rate it if you enjoyed it. Don't forget to follow us on social media and to stay up to date with all things agile ideas. Go to our website www.agile managementoffice.com. I hope you've been able to learn, feel, or be inspired today. Until next time, what's your agile idea?