It is 2010! I'm Kathy Ridley, the new President of PMI Houston Chapter.  I have been anticipating this day with excitement.  You see, I have known this day would occur for 2 years as we elect the President from a selection of board members who have served at least 2 years as Vice President.  Once elected as Senior VP, you oversee the internal operations of the organization for 1 year and then oversee the external operations before assuming the role of President.  This is my second career opportunity to serve as President of a members based group.  Back in 1990, I was President of a Relational Database Users group in Houston and I served 10 years on the International Board of Directors.  My involvement with PMI began in 2005 where I helped start up the north venue.  To explore my passion for education and mentoring, I became the VP of Professional Development in 2006.  Along the way, I have made so many great friends.  I look forward to meeting you at one of our meetings. 

Our theme this year is Innovate with PMI.  This means our board will be cultivating new ideas, working hard to be creative in implementing our strategic plans and initiatives.  We will be striving for operational excellence, expanding our sponsors, improving on everything we can and having fun. 

Even though the past year was riddled with the affects of economic downturn we saw a 7% increase in membership.  We celebrated 35 years of Project Management Excellence.  We networked at Saint Arnolds Brewery in February.  We hosted in April our largest educational conference in history.  We held a golf tournament in May.  We celebrated our 3000th member in June.   We honored the Past Presidents of the organization in November.  We sang together in December meeting.  We provided low cost PMP certification training to those between jobs.  We hosted a job fair and job postings on our site.  We transitioned our administration services to a new organization.  We awarded two scholarships, we supported other chapters in our region and Agile Project Leadership Network APLN.  We arranged for two new venues downtown and University of Houston.  We released the Career Development Framework to support those just starting a career in project management to seasoned professionals.  We offered hundreds of PDU opportunities.  We published a monthly newsletter.  We released many new features on our website.  Last year’s theme was Recognition thru action and we nailed it!  We are certainly poised for another great year. 

Our year end survey indicates an overall 98% member satisfaction rate.  We know however, we can improve and we will!   What is Innovation?  Innovation is the introduction of something new to make changes.  My goal next year is to make positive change for our members.

Our conference Maximizing Business Results through Innovative Project Management is June 14-16 at the George R Brown.  We sure hope you join us. 

Thank you for being a chapter member and supporting us over the years.   I want to especially thank our 2010 Gold Sponsor: Keller Graduate School of Management and 2009 Gold Sponsors: Computer Associates and Integrated Consulting.    If you are interested in sponsoring please contact vpmarketing@pmihosuton.org.

We are a volunteer organization that cares and loves all our members.  We invite you to Innovate with PMI by contacting vpmembership@pmihouston.org and you can reach me at President2010@pmihouston.org.