I’m so excited that September 9th is almost here because Greg Balestrero, the CEO of PMI will soon be here to visit the South Florida Chapter. The Chapter has been working extremely hard to plan our special series of events on that day when Mr. Balestrero takes time out of his busy schedule of travel around the globe!  You really don’t want to miss out on the special dinner meeting our Chapter is hosting with the Construction Specification Institute (CSI) on September 9th at the Signature Grand where Mr. Balestrero will speak on "The Battle for Talent: Dealing with the shortage of Project Managers across the globe".  Registration will be available on our website for only a few more days! We’re expecting about 200 people and there will be lots of great raffle prizes from our sponsors. 

The Executive Breakfast we have planned with Mr. Balestrero for that day should be a huge success!  I’m looking forward to personally welcoming quite a number of executives who have signed up for the invitation only event.  That will make for a unique chance for these leaders to ask him questions related to Project Management in their businesses.  I also can’t wait for the Association Leadership Reception that our Chapter is hosting in the afternoon with the Construction Specification Institute (CSI).  Leaders from professional associations like PMI will have a chance to share nonprofit organization learning experiences with Mr. Balestrero. 

Did you know that we promote events for other Chapters in our website event calendar that can provide you with opportunities to earn PDUs?  For example, there’s a symposium in Tampa Bay in late September where you can earn up to 14 PDUs.  You never know what you’ll find so keep checking us out.

The Center of Excellence Program will be introduced at the Sept. 9th dinner meeting, too. The goal of the Program is to facilitate the sharing of project management best practices between South Florida Project Managers.  I want to personally thank the volunteers who are helping to put this program together.  The results of the program will include road show presentations for executives, lunch and learn roundtable discussions on PM topics of interest and a knowledge base of project managers and their best practices and methodology capabilities.
 
Chapter Elections are upon us and I’m pleased to announce that we had a large number of responses to our call for volunteers.  By now, you should have received your invitation to vote and I hope you will take this privilege seriously; our members should realize their voice makes a difference.   Results of the election will be announced at the October dinner meetings.

I haven’t received any submission for Project of the Year yet.  Therefore, I will extend the deadline from September 1st to October 1st.  Don’t forget, if you have a project you would like to have considered for PMI Project of the Year and Chapter Project of the Year next year, please submit your project to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by October 1, 2008.  The project selected as the winning entry by the Chapter Board will be submitted to PMI and awarded Chapter Project of the Year next year at our award ceremony.

Our Chapter will be holding our annual Strategic Planning session in early November.  This is a wonderful opportunity for our Board of Directors to plan out programs and strategies for next year.  Please let me know if there is something you would like to see us talk about for next year!  

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