Each local PMI Chapter is chartered to advance the Project Management profession and Body of Knowledge and to provide value to its members. Learn how you can provide both through sponsoring quality education programs. One of these programs is the PMP Examination Preparation Course. See how Chapters can help candidates focus their learning in a concise way, and provide an enjoyable ex-perience while doing it.

Are you looking for ways to engage your volunteers in a meaningful way? Grow your member-ship? Provide professional development opportunities? Grow interest in the Project Management profession? Give back to your local community? The Project Management Day of Service gives you all of this with one event! The Project Management Day of Service was the first of its kind to bring together 400 project managers with 100 nonprofits in the region to do an all-day Scope-A-Thon.

The core offering by any PMI chapter is PDU generating speaking events. This session is a presentation AND a conversation around the best practices of the event life cycle including speaker identification, selection, screening, tracking, presentation review, risk management, surveys, and closeout. There will also be a brief walk-through of the PMIWDC Speaker Database.

When we volunteer our time with a chapter or are elected to a leadership role, many of us are stepping into a great big "unknown" for the first time. Sometimes things can go south on you in a hurry. And then they can snowball into a serious situation even faster. This session is a case study (all names and roles will be changed to protect identities) and discussion about how this can happen, how you can recover, and how to better prepare for the possibilities.

In FY 2014, the Silver Spring Chapter instituted Quarterly Scorecards that provide chapter members a transparent view into the operations of the chapter. We feel that Quarterly Scorecards are a PMISSC strength because there is a concerted effort at consistent, frequent, user-friendly transparency with the chapter membership. Chapter members regularly express their appreciation for this transparent communication. This type of transparency has increased the chapter's credibility with its membership and its leadership.

Great organizational culture accounts for a 20 to 30% performance improve according to Harvard Professor Emeritus James L. Heskett. Leaders must implement the principles of great culture development to create a truly high performing organization. These are the same principles required to implement a world-class portfolio management capability for your chapters. This presentation reveals the 7 principles that organizations must implement to develop a culture that works.

Too often we hear this excuse when it comes to missed deadlines and unrealized performance expectations. Project managers have a fantastic opportunity to apply their hard-earned people skills and eliminate this language from their team of volunteers! Motivation and performance management are as critical to leading a team of volunteers as in any leadership scenario. We need to engage our volunteers so that they treat the position as if it were a real job. In this presentation we will discuss the importance of performance management and solid leadership in volunteer organizations.

The essential first step to effective project management and leadership is being able to understand yourself, your communication style, and the vision of the project’s sponsor to be able to work effectively with a team and continuously grow your own skills and abilities. This talk will give a framework to help you learn more about you and charter a course for developing your own professional development plan to seek, land, and thrive on projects. You’re able to best serve others when you’re at your best, so its time to know what that truly means.