At our April 3rd dinner meeting in Fort Lauderdale, we held an awards ceremony to recognize individuals and organizations that supported our South Florida Chapter in 2007.  Congratulations to the South Florida Water Management District for winning the first ever CHAPTER PROJECT OF THE YEAR AWARD for their ePermitting Project.  The District submitted this project to the Chapter for consideration in the PMI Project of the Year Competition for last year. The Board of Directors reviewed the entry using PMI-provided judging criteria and submitted the entry to PMI who notified us that the project was not selected as the PMI Project of the Year. Our Chapter Board decided to give the District a Chapter Project of the Year Award to recognize them for their project management excellence. 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 September 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.  I would be thrilled to see loads of projects submitted!  Check out further details at http://www.pmi.org/WhoWeAre/Pages/Project-of-the-Year-Award.aspx. 

Have you noticed that Social Responsibility is becoming increasingly important for corporations, government agencies, and organizations?  The American Society of Association Executives and The Center for Association Leadership are planning a Global Summit on Social Responsibility - http://www.eshow2000.com/gssr/home.cfm - scheduled for 30 April to 2 May in Washington, DC USA.  If you cannot attend, you can participate online from the convenience of your own computer.  As a member of the steering committee for this event, our CEO, Greg Balestrero, is encouraging participation among the PMI community in this event. Check it out!  Your Chapter exhibits social responsibility through our Outreach Program.  Would you like to help?  Let me know or sign up as a volunteer on the web site. The Outreach Program is part of the Marketing Committee’s responsibility.   Join me in welcoming Jack Wilkinson as our new VP of Marketing. He has a strong background in leadership serving as VP of Programs on several other Chapter boards.

There are two excellent opportunities to ‘Connect and Learn’ in early May.
They are: Our May 2nd Professional Development Day (PDD) at the Signature Grand in Davie from 8 am – 5 pm and our sixth annual JOB FAIR planned for May 6th at the Signature Grand in Davie from 6 – 9 pm.  Don’t miss out; sign up right away!

I would love to see our membership numbers grow this year!  If you have friends or business associates who could benefit from being a part of our organization, please encourage them to join.  We have 1471 members in the South Florida Chapter; there is no reason why we can’t have as many as Montreal (2500 members) or Atlanta (2300 members); our population is higher than theirs! The more members we get, the more services we can provide to you our members! If you’re a member, you get reduced prices on seminars, dinner meetings, courses (we have some hot new courses this year); you also get access to our member-only web site area, inclusion in our newsletter distribution, etc.  Be sure to sign up/renew your membership with our Chapter when you sign up/renew your PMI membership.
 
I’m finding this year as President to be very rewarding! I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events and hearing your feedback on how the Chapter is providing service to our members.

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