In retrospective, the Dornbirn PM Camp was rather a success. Most (well, basically all) of the participants felt great and drove home with a feeling of satisfaction. In my opinion, this is great.
Also, many participants filled in our feedback forms. This is how we (the organizational team) received many constructive comments. I am currently working my way through those, along with the twitter “timeline” of our anti-conference. You can read the timeline under the hashtag #PMCampDOR. Incidentally, it is a lot of fun: a retrospective view with many useful links.
Statistically spoken, the feedback was just as positive as the individual comments. This gave the organizational team a boost. Barcamps are something special. They are based on freedom, eyelevel, participation, equal rights. You can also see those factors as “weaknesses”. But then, they are weaknesses I personally find rather attractive. A barcamp lives from the moment. You cannot control them, the sessions rise from the context of what you have just experienced. And that is a good thing!
In other words:
Freedom and diversity can also polarize. You might get focal points and conclusions that not everybody will always like. Well, you have to cope with this, just like freedom is not always something you can easily cope with. It takes tolerance.
Democracy, too, has its problematic side. Even the question how to best organize democracy can be a problem. Just remember the passionate discussion about “direct versus parliamentary democracy” – one of which is considered the solution (for instance in Switzerland) while being considered extremely dangerous (for instance here in Germany, because we believe the people are stupid). On the other hand, many are no longer at all happy with our “parliamentary democracy”.
Anti-conferences are democratic. Their dynamics depend very much on the persons attending. As opposed to conferences, you meet in a rather free room with only little formatting. This might trigger group dynamics that not everybody will welcome. But then, every participant can feel free to counteract.
PM Camps are very pluralistic meetings. Males and females meet, old and young persons, starters and almost-pensioners, successful and not-so-successful persons, persons who studied at university and persons who learned their trade in apprenticeships, no-nonsense types and laughing types, “not so wealthy ones” and “rich ones”, etc. Maybe these barcamps can manage to bridge the gap between ME and WE and thus reduce the tension between “individual” and “collective” needs.
And what is true for projects is also true here: technology and tools are no longer the problem. The existing methods, too, are mostly more or less suitable. Yet most of the projects fail because of the “human factor”. This is also a danger with barcamps. You can never please everybody. Consequently, both the tweets and the feedback forms showed us that some details were highly praised by some, yet criticized by others.
Besides the positive feedback, there was criticism and recommendations for improvement. Wherever the recommendations for improvements do not counteract the barcamp principles, we will take them very seriously. Just as we will take the criticism to heart. But then, you could also say:
If someone criticizes something about a barcamp, he is also criticizing his own behaviour.
Here is a list of feedback with my comment:
Positive Feedback:
The positive feedback is by far the majority. Even though I would enjoy citing all of them, I will restrict myself to a few:
If the PM Camp would not exist, one would have to invent it!!
I will be back!
I was able to learn a lot, make experiences and meet very interesting persons!
Continue in this way, no regulations!
There was a very homely and cosy atmosphere, the discussions were all at eye-level!
I could continue I this way – and very often, there was a
Huge Thanks!
and 100 % of the participants replied to the question:
“Would you recommend the PM Camp to a colleague?“
With a Yes .
Of course, reading this made us truly happy. We in the organizational team will process all the positive feedback with care and diligence. After all, what is true for persons when it comes to “personality development” (often also called management or leadership training) is also true for communities: first and foremost, you should promote your strengths, instead of always trying to work on the weaknesses. Because the latter will never be a success anyway and the former is so much more promising. Consequently, we want to make those things better that are already quite positive.
But I also have examples for
Negative Feedback:
The WLAN on the Camp was a catastrophe …
Yes, that is true. But I know how Stefan, in particular, took pains, both before and during the event, to improve the situation at the university. On the evening before, I also had a dialogue with one of the experts who had explained the problem to me. The specialists at the university, too, tried their best, but again, they did not manage it. Due to highly complicated security aspects, the systems are programmed in such a way that the technicians cannot do it. Naturally, we will try to do better in this respect next year. Yet we should also appreciate how much the Dornbirn Fachhochschule as a sponsor of the event is doing for us. Maybe we can be a little lenient in return.
There was no information about parking!
Yes – we forgot our dear car drivers.
More precise information on the event (start, end) on the website, please.
Yes, that is certainly something we can improve.
Pictures of those who organize a session would help with the orientation.
Unfortunately, “Aebby“ (Eberhard Huber) had to cancel on short notice – consequently, his polaroid camera, too remained in Stuttgart.
Criticism and recommendations on
Ice-Breaking, Moderation and an introduction round,
very diverse. Some wanted a round of introductions, others not. Some wanted more moderation and/or ice-breaking, others less. I would say it was about equally distributed.
Many ideas and recommendations for improvements in the feedback forms were about
“Newbies“ and “class meetings of old PM Camp attendants and how one could, maybe, improve the quality of sessions, for instance by coaching, mentoring or moderation.
A narrow majority wanted an explicit support for Newbies. The others thought it worked quite well automatically. To me, it also seems that this is easier with small PM Camps – such as Barcelona – than with big ones such as Dornbirn. So this was almost indirectly a criticism that Dornbirn is getting too big.
There was also some criticism on individual sessions and how they were offered.
Too much IT in the sessions.
I missed the games.
It would be better if the sessions of the second day were better based on those of the first day.
The principle and variants of sessions should be better explained beforehand, especially for the newbies.
I support whatever improves the session concept. Yet I believe that the organizational team should not meddle with the content of the sessions. They belong to the “part-takers”. The organizational team has the chance to motivate those who are interested in the messages or want a controversial discussion about them by formulating the mottoes and selecting the impulse given before the event. That should be enough.
But there are some challenges for the future. I particularly liked one of them:
It will be THE ONE challenge of the future to maintain the high standards.
That is exactly how I feel!
Incidentally, there is a lot of praise and some criticism of the Dornbirn PM Camp on the official GPM Blog. Reinhard Wagner reported on the Dornbirn PM Camp in a post, actually writing a few rather negative things in his last paragraph (…PM Camp only partially managed to deliver what it had promised. …).
Since I see a number of misunderstandings in this article and also because my name appears in it, I will now discuss Reinhard’s theses “dialectically” and also try to explain a few things.
This is where I start with the text of the last paragraph written by Reinhard in the GPM blog. The sum of all the cursive text elements is the complete last paragraph, copied from his post 1 one 1 (RW). Whenever I use “normal” font directly afterwards, then those are my comments (RMD).
(RW) … The motto of this year’s Dornbirn PM Camp was “breaking with patterns” (What patterns should we break and how can we do it?). This is something the PM Camp managed to deliver only to some extent. As I see it, that is also the dilemma of the entire “PM Camp” movement.
(RMD) Not only PM Camp, but the entire human society has the dilemma that it cannot manage change to a reasonable or at least desired extent. Current history alone is a good proof of this (wars, terrorism, the destruction of the planet…) .
The problem I have with what Reinhard writes is that, for me, the only thing a PM Camp is supposed to deliver is a) to be a good host and b) to find the right participants. That is also what the organization team for “our” Dornbirn PM Camp aimed at. And as I see it, the same is true for the entire “PM Camp Movement”.
Each year, we meet at the PM Forum (our strategic organ for all PM Camps) amd discuss how to best do this. Here, the representatives of the regional organizational teams (the operative event managers who organize the Camps) and the core teams (the normative founders) meet. During this meeting, we exchange ideas on what could be improved in order to make it even easier for you – our guests and visitors – to exchange knowledge, find consensus and gain insights.
The basic role of an organizational team for a PM Camp is that of host. It looks for sponsors and, finances the event where it costs more than the participants’ fees have brought. In addition, we, as a group, try to come up with mental concepts (for instance a motto like the metaphor of “breaking with patterns” before the event) and to promote the success of the entire affair through impulse presentations during the Camp (what?) and ideas about the methods of presentation (how?), without ever jeopardizing the core ideas of a barcamp.
We are very careful about not clandestinely turning our “anti-conference” into a conference or congress.
Please remember:
A PM Camp is nothing other than a barcamp directed towards project managers, entrepreneurs, leaders – basically all those persons who are prepared to take responsibility for our future. It provides them with a platform for the exchange of opinions and ideas and thus supports their networks.
(RW) The “young wild ones” (sorry Roland Dürre) try with all their might to distance themselves from the established big ones in the field, primarily from the GPM, the PMI and the PRINCE2-Community.
(RMD) As to the “young wild ones”: personally, I must say that I do not see myself qualifying for “young”. I meant quite a few young start-ups with this metaphor. They approach things totally differently from what I am used to with the “established enterprises”. And whenever a start-up is a success, then it is definitely not because it thinks in terms of projects.
But back to the text. The very phrase “established big ones in the field” shows how problematically Reinhard is positioned. Personally, I do not see the PM Camp movement as competition of any “established big ones”. Because we are not an association. If anything, we might be an alternative to it, meeting in a free area and exchanging knowledge and experience. During a PM Camp, what you do is motivate each other to start thinking. The “ME”s will meet as part of the “WE”s. That has nothing in common with an association or similar structures. This is also one of the reasons why the organizational team must not and will not give proactive recommendations.
Incidentally, the PM Camp Movement also always coordinates whatever they do with openPM, the open portal that provides a platform for the free exchange for all project managers. openPM is a non-profit-making club that, as I see it, is no competition for the “established big ones” either. Consequently, openPM has nothing to do with those clubs/associations.
My personal reason for shunning clubs and associations is that, to me, they all seem to think they alone possess the “truth”, then they mould their truth into rules and laws and earn their (horrendous sums of) money with it. That is something I do not want to be part of. But I am not trying it with all my might. I am just clearly stating the fact.
(RW) The pattern “agile” versus “traditional” is used far too often. In almost all the discussions, you get the comparison between “industrial age is old and evil” versus “information age is young and good”, the same is true for “waterfall” versus “Scrum”.
(RMD) Here, Reinhard probably misunderstood something. It is quite possible that, years ago, there were such frontiers. In order to stop this nonsense, however, we started a PM Camp in Dornbirn in 2011. Its motto was “building bridges“.
Consequently, I hardly noticed any conflicts between “agile” and “traditional” during the Dornbirn PM Camp. On the contrary: all the persons I heard – including the impulse presenters – made it quite clear that anything can be justified. All you have to do is consider what you want to use when for which purpose.
Incidentally, I believe that all you need to know about “agile” has been written down in the “agile manifesto“. What you find there is a recommendation to use “common sense” in an “honest” way. And I cannot see where this is supposed to be a method. Basically, it should be something that goes without saying. Just like it goes without saying that you can make many mistakes in projects.
(RW) One presenter spoke against all rules and “patterns”, before, a few pages into the presentation slides, saying that you should actually not do any projects (#noprojects).
(RMD) If this is referring to the impulse by Robert Weisgräber, then I have to say that his was one of the best presentations I have watched in a long time. This can also be seen from the feedback statistics. But perhaps the metaphor #noprojects is not all that easily understandable. Yet I did not really hear that you should not do any projects. What I heard is that you should think twice before deciding what to do.
(RW) In a workshop on “organizations as living organisms”, they tried to show how such an organization works. When I asked if we could perhaps exemplify this with the – unfortunately very successful – organization “Islamic State”, my request was rudely denied with the (killer) argument that this is not really the time to discuss that general topic.
(RMD) Naturally, what someone says in a session cannot meet the total approval of all participants. It has something to do with democracy. On the other hand, I would also not think it goal-oriented to discuss the IS as an example. Not just because, to me, the IS looks like a criminal, fascist organization (The Third Reich, too, was fascist. And still the “GröFaZ“ generated fear for all the established generals with agile warfare).
To be sure, Reinhard Wagner could have organized a separate session on the IS, or perhaps, more precisely, a session about “modern guerrilla war of fascist organizations as a successful method for fighting against technologically superior armies”. But I would not have attended such a session (or if, then just to tell everybody that I find it absurd).
(RW) Then, one participant tried to discuss the Cynefin framework. This discussion ended with the categorization of engineers and business economists on the right side (simple or complicated systems) and software developers, those creative wild ones, on the left side of the framework. Well, this does not really help anybody, does it?
(RMD) Again, this is about the content of a session. It has nothing to do with the Dornbirn PM Camp. Personally, however, I see it like Reinhard Wagner, considering the entire discussion about complicated/complex, left/right, blue/red more or less esoteric nonsense. However, I am sure that you can actually conclude right things from wrong assumptions …
(RW) Instead of breaking patterns, they dress old clichés in new clothes.
(RMD) I do not really understand this sentence. But I find it rather over the top to say something like this about the entire Dornbirn PM Camp. To me, this sounds a little like culture pessimism. But I admit that our entire society suffers from us constantly, again and again, using the same patterns. And that fantasy and creativity are things we tend to push away. Perhaps Reinhard and I actually lament the same state of affairs.
(RW) Finally, I have to ask the question what, in practice, the PM Camps actually want to achieve.
(RMD) Once again: PM Camps offer the general framework for meeting, communicating in an atmosphere of trust, sharing knowledge, gaining insights through honest discourse. There is no promise from the side of the Camp. If there is any goal, then it is that the persons who attend make each other look bigger – instead of smaller, as we have known it from many teaching systems. However, I believe it is amore valuable or practical application to “share knowledge” and to learn from the “other party” than to earn certificates or, what is worse, from the “certification of the world”.
(RW) To be sure, my own workshop impulse for “project management for social purposes” instigated a lot of discussion and enthusiastic comments,…
(RMD) Question: “What is an enthusiastic comment?“! 🙂
(RW) … but then my question what we could actually do was rather quickly cut short because everybody disappeared (wanting to have lunch).
(RMD) Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? This is something the second day – with its actual sessions – could have been used for.
(RW) To be sure, it was also rather hard to make the participants actually put into practice what we had been talking about at the GPM.
(RMD) I cannot imagine why it would be easier at the GPM than in real life.
(RW) Yet this is where they could have been proved that they can do more than “give nice Sunday speeches” , letting “beautiful words” be followed by “actual behaviour”.
(RMD) Even Seneca said: “philosophy is not about talking, it is about acting”. And we can all see that we all talk a lot yet do nothing from the climate change caused by the burning of fossil raw materials. But again, I discovered that I have something in common with Reinhard.
(RW) That is what I would wish for, but perhaps it will just remain wishful thinking at Christmas Time.
(RMD) My hope (I do not know if it is wishful thinking), not only at Christmas Time, is that humans become a little wiser.
Even though there were many objections to what I had done in his article, I would like to explicitly thank Reinhard for writing it. And perhaps this is the beginning of an enthusiastic and wonderful discussion about:
How badly do we really need all those associations and clubs?
Because to me, it seems that many of them are totally unnecessary and I would certainly expect more from grass root movements.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
The heading of this post is not my wording. It was directly taken from Reinhard.
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