For the second year in a row, I attended the Bureau of Digital’s Digital PM Summit.

Last year I was fairly new to the web and agency world having been with Plank for a mere 6 months before attending the summit in Philadelphia. That conference and especially the workshop felt like a boot camp for my new position. 

This year I came to San Antonio, Texas with a little more experience and a lot more empathy for my fellow DPMs. There is still a ton I can learn from my colleagues. Here are a few tidbits I picked up:

1. The community is growing and evolving. DPM is distinct from – but related to – the traditional PMI PM. – Brett Harned 
2. “Don’t expect credit for things people expect you to do anyway.” – Elizabeth Harrin
3. The perfect project plan doesn’t exist. No plan can account for the unknowns. – Betty Chan
4. “Every time you say yes to one more edit, you’re inviting the next one. You must get comfortable saying no, not always but often.” – Tera Simon
5. Curb scope creep from your own team. This is called gold-plating and it is a big reason projects go over budget. – both Betty Chan & Tera Simon touched on this
6. “The people who use the most jargon have the least confidence in their ideas. Words you should stop saying: Innovation, radical, paradigm-shift, transformative, revolutionary, breakthrough, disruptive, game-changing.” – Scott Berkun
7. Non-experts perform better at planning and estimating than experts do. They ask more questions. – Jack Skeels
8. There is too much information for our brains to handle and multitasking is a myth. – Carson Pierce 
9. Agency and in-house PMs are very different – Me
10. Pee-Wee’s bike isn’t in the basement of the Alamo.

See you next year in Vegas!