Members’ Day– Embracing Change PMI Chennai Chapter hosted its first Members’ Day on 25 June for which over 160 enthusiastic members of the chapter showed up. The event was centered on the theme, PM 2.0 – Embracing Change.

Members’ Day commenced with the “Tamil Thai Vazhthu,” which is an invocation to ‘Mother Tamil.’ The traditional inauguration ceremony was attended by Aparna Chandrashekar, facilitator, HR consultant and coach; Biswajit Chakraborty, COO, accounting and settlement, Willis Towers Watson; Prasannaa S, president, PMI Chennai Chapter; Viju Varghese George, Member's Day project director; and Koushik Srinivasan, vice president – finance, PMI Chennai Chapter. Jawahar Venkatraman, vice president – governance, PMI Chennai Chapter, delivered the welcome speech in which he provided the rationale behind Members’ Day and its theme. Ms. Chandrashekar gave an inspiring speech on her journey to become a professor and how to embrace career change. She urged delegates to stay flexible and agile, find their mojo, and live in the present moment.

Umasanker Kandaswamy, chief recruiting officer and co-founder, AVTAR Career Creators, spoke on “Creating an intentional career,” in which he touched upon “intentionality” and powering change. He engaged participants by conducting a “speed networking” contest. Reminding chapter members of what Charles Darwin had said, he said, “It’s not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
 
Sivaram Athmakuri, vice president – advocacy & outreach, and Mr. Srinivasan opened the floor for an exciting “unconference” session. To set expectations from the session, they borrowed a quote from Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging Pvt. Ltd.: “The collective knowledge of the audience is always higher than that of any one speaker.” The delegates were then asked to provide their inputs on two themes: proactive things done to manage change effectively, and reactive things that can be done after facing change.

There were several enthusiastic responses from the participants for the first theme including having a to-do list, accepting/ reasoning change, performing SWOT analysis, and looking for role models and mentors who have managed change effectively. For reacting to change, some of the ideas were to understand the reality and prioritize, embrace change, assess change, innovate, and mitigate risk due to change.  In a post-lunch session, Mr. Chakraborty spoke on the topic “Live life king size,” or in other words knowing how to realize one’s potential and learning how to maximize it.

Ravikumar Ramachandran, account security officer, DXC Technology, followed up with an informative session on “The future project management professional,” in which he spoke about the need to assess oneself, the numerous career options, and the habits of great performers.  Members took part in a quiz on information security. Swetha Surendran, Ravi Shekhar, and Ilayaraja Balachandran won the first, second, and third prizes respectively.

Engineering and Construction Forum PMI Chennai Chapter organized the first Engineering and Construction Forum meeting of 2017 for project planning and control professionals on 15 July at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Rahul Shah, Head Building Information Modelling (BIM) Strategy, L&T Construction, spoke on “BIM – Join the revolution.”