PMI Trivandrum-Kerala Chapter conducted a two-hour session on "Leadership traits for Project Managers," which was led by Santhosh Kurup. With over 17 years of industry experience, Mr. Kurup heads the newly formed social enterprise, ICT Academy of Kerala.

The session on 9 July at Hotel SP Grand Days, Trivandrum, focused on the importance of leadership skills for project success. This professional development event was well attended by over 30 participants from various industries. As one participant said about the event, "As they say, there is no substitute for face-to-face events which enable participants to develop lasting professional associations. What Mr. Kurup exchanged with the audience led to many thoughts and ideas in our minds."

The chapter conducted its general body meeting later in the day.

On 3 September, the chapter organized a workshop on digital marketing for volunteers of the digital marketing team. The session was conducted by Syed Nazir Razik, who is PMI India's digital marketing custodian and vice president, Marketing and Branding, PMI Chennai Chapter. The goal of the session was to help build social media capability for PMI Trivandrum-Kerala Chapter from scratch.

This session was streamed live on the Facebook pages of PMI India and PMI Trivandrum-Kerala Chapter. Mr. Razik covered the major applications, platforms, and channels that can be used effectively to brand PMI Trivandrum-Kerala Chapter. He also suggested ways to enhance the chapter's reach using the digital media.

The next session the same day was a two-hour professional development session on "Social Media: A growing factor in project success" by Mr. Razik.

This session focussed on using social media as a collaborative tool for knowledge sharing, social hiring, task management, time management, stakeholder management, and more. He spoke about using social media to bridge globally distributed teams seamlessly and easing people management issues.

(Chapter news contributors are Ashutosh Nadkarni, PMP; Rekha Unni, PMP; Sivakumar Nair; and Akhila Gowri Shankar, PMP.)