I have just returned from a great trip to Alaska. It was made possible by a request to speak at the PMI Alaska chapter and deliver two one-day training courses. Alaska is one of those places I have always wanted to visit and so I took the family and extended the trip to include a mini vacation.
 
The Work
For a city with a relatively small population (360,000) they have an active and well attended PMI Chapter. Over 70 people turned out for my dinner presentation on “Leading Agile Teams” and then we had 40 people each day for the one day classes.

Both were new classes, the first “Agile Project Mechanics” was a one day class focussed on agile processes, agile planning and estimating, etc. The second one day class, “Agile Project Dynamics” which was all about the people side of projects, building empowered teams and leadership rather than management. I was a bit hesitant about separating these topics since I think you need a combination of mechanics and dynamics; but as it turned out most people attended both days and so a balance was achieved.
 
Agile Beyond IT
The group was more diverse than I am used to. When I teach the SeminarsWorld course normally the attendees come from the IT industry. In Anchorage we had IT, construction and engineering managers, a fireman, and local authority project managers.