President's Message & Press release

Well….I hope you heard the great news about our chapter’s big win at last month’s PMI North America Leadership Institute Meeting (LIM)! Yes… that’s right… the PMI Buffalo, NY chapter won 2016 Chapter of the Year in Category 2  (medium sized chapters of 300 to 1500 members). We felt very honored to have been nominated along with Mumbai, India, Southern Germany and Minas Gerais, Brazil for this prestigious award, but to actually win was icing on the cake!

Several members of the Board and our team of Directors attended this leadership meeting along with me in San Diego. We spent 3 full days attending sessions in which we could learn from association management experts and fellow chapter leaders on best practices for running chapters, marketing the value proposition of membership, recruiting and engaging volunteers, outreach programs to local communities and educational institutions, etc. Over 1100 chapter leaders from across the globe and PMI staff members attended this LIM, so you can imagine the networking opportunities we were fortunate enough to experience!

Meanwhile, back to the reality of what’s going on in our chapter! Your Board and Directors (~30 of us) will be meeting this week to review the functional plans they are developing for 2017, to support our key strategies:

• Attract and Engage Members & Volunteers
• Deliver and Promote Stakeholder Value
• Ensure the Sustainability of our Chapter

As I mentioned in my September message, our plan for 2017 is to put more focus on local employers to ensure they understand the value we bring today and can bring in the future – i.e. put focus on the employer stakeholder in our 2nd strategy above. We would love to hear from you if you have any ideas you would like to share on how we can best achieve this goal, so feel free to email me at president@pmibuffalo.org with your thoughts.

I hope that those of you who enjoyed our Fall Professional Day on September 20th enjoyed the keynote and various topics presented. We have a couple of events lined up for this week and next – the 20th and 27th - that may interest you. Please see our website for our October – December events at www.pmibuffalo.org.

As always, if you should have any questions, concerns or issues related to your PMI membership or the PMI Buffalo Chapter, please see our “Contact Us” page on our website, or feel free to reach out directly to me at president@pmibuffalo.org.

I hope to see you at our Fall events,

JoAnn

PMI Buffalo – We bring Project Management to life!