Posts from — February 2007

That’s the question I was asked after giving a talk last year to the Bristol branch of the British Computer Society (BCS) last year.

“You bet I would!” I said.

Several months later I got a call from Donald Southey from the BCS project management special interest group (SIG) inviting me to speak at the BCS Spring School in March 2007.

I’m so looking forward to giving this talk, especially as previous audiences have really liked it. It’s called “Four Simple Steps to Perfect Project Risk Management” and my goal is to get project managers to wake up to the dangers they face by not actively managing risks that threaten their project. With a bit of luck I’ll be able to persuade at least one person in the audience to take on board some of the lessons that I’ve learned. That way they won’t have to make the same mistakes that I have.

Why do these things happen to me?

Going through my e-mail, I noticed an item from Dr. David Hilson from  www.risk-doctor.com.  He’d received a recent flier from the BCS on my talk and he wondered what I was planning to speak on.

Just as I began to feel a warm glow from someone expressing an interest in the event I read on and my blood turned cold.   It seemed I’d been described as “a well-known consultant, expert and author in Risk Management”.

Here we go again!  I’m always being described as “An expert in . .” when I give talks.  I always prefer to stick to the truth – that I’m someone with lots of experience and a system for project risk management that works.  Anything else I leave to the audience to decide for themselves.

I sent David a brief note to confirm that this seemed to be a case of the organisers selling me enthusiastically.  After all, they are charging people to attend the evening, so they’ve got to do all they can to get people interested.

Hopefully we’ll have a great evening and get to swap ideas on the night.  In the meantime I’d better become better known and finish the book, otherwise I’ll run the risk of being oversold.