KOOKY: Professional Development

For the past three days, I've been at the UBC downtown campus taking a Project Management course. The reasons why I decided to take this course were:

• I do a lot of small/medium/large-ish projects at work and I thought this would be a great way to learn how to do things properly
• Management expects that I take PD courses, after all, they put aside money for me to use, so I'd better use it!
• My boss strongly hinted that I should be taking PM courses

Needless to say, I really liked the course. My instructor, from my calculations, is in his early 70s. He's not retired by choice. He still teaches these courses several times a year, and he still does consulting work.

What really impressed me about him was that he's a very smart guy, his mind was still sharp, his memory is excellent, and most importantly, he's very tech savvy. He mentioned that he goes through a new laptop every couple of years, and during the course, he had a nice shiny black Mac Book that he used with no problems. He puts together his own power point slides, video and email are not stranger to him, and he Googles with practiced ease. He's more tech savvy than a lot of our users!

What I really liked about our instructor was that he's been in the PM field for close to 50 years, so he had a lot of experience to draw upon. When he taught the theory, he always had at least one or two stories from his past experience that he told to illustrate his point. I particularly like this as it showed me how the theory can be applied in real life practice and made the subject must less boring. I particularly liked his stories about the Sky Train project back in the 80s. He was the main PM for that project. That really blew me away!

Another nice thing about the course was that they fed us breakfast, lunch and lots of snack foods. At my last training course, I didn't get much of that. Granted, eating a lot of sugary and high-fat foods isn't always good for you, but it saved me from hunting down and paying for food, and that in itself is a bonus.

All in all, it was Faculty of Medicine's money well spent! =D Two thumbs up for my course!

(For those of you who know me in real life or through Internet-land, this guy also teaches this course at McGill and U of Toronto, so I can pass along his information if you're interested in taking the course.)