Mosaic’s Dr Lynda Bourne is currently in Rome, Italy for the 22nd IPMA World Congress to present her paper ‘Developing Stakeholder Management Maturity in a Traditional Business – An International Case Study’. The paper focuses on the ‘project within a project’ to develop and deliver a new stakeholder management mindset based on our Stakeholder Circle® methodology and the challenges of instilling a culture change in a global transport business.
Her paper was well received but for a congress themed ‘projects to run’ the organisation of the event is woeful. The congress is a relatively small and expensive event with only around 400 delegates and even with this small number, the organisation is severely lacking.
The ‘insiders’ on the various IPMA committees and their VIP friends are insulated from the general confusion and whisked from one VIP enclave to the next never stopping to mix with the rest of the speakers and delegates (so much for democracy). And whilst there are a number of very interesting papers in the program, the allocation of ‘easy to find’ main rooms -v- well hidden side room seems to be based on who you are in the ‘old boys club’ rather then the merits of the paper. Added to this 9 parallel presentations and only 400 people means there are many presenters speaking to ‘audiences’ of around 10 people.
For the rest, everything runs late, catering is inadequate (if you are more than a few minutes late for lunch don’t bother, the food is gone), transport is not properly organised, and the cooled wine is warm and the ‘hot’ food cold by the time people get to taste it. It reminds one of the old saying about ‘couldn’t organize a booze up in a brewery’.
The only highlight of the organisation so far has been the wonderful music provided at the first two gala events. The Italian traditions of Grand Opera and wonderful music are alive and well. For more on the IPMA Congress see http://www.ipmaroma2008.it/
Day 3
No great improvement – communications are another failing of the organisers, you only find out about the shuttle busses between some of the hotels and the quite hard to get to convention centre by accident (and when its too late to be useful). Helpfully the busses stop before the final evening event leaving the option of a walk in the dark or not going.
Overall this has been a very disappointing event – very expensive, poorly organised and highly segregated. We are not likely to bother attending another IPMA event for many years to come.
Pat Weaver
Lynda Bourne
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