The 4th IPMA Research Conference:
Project management and sustainability
September 15th – 16th 2016 in Reykjavik, Iceland
The venue for the 4th IPMA Research conference is Nautholl café, conference facilities and restaurant in the heart of Reykjavik. The address is Nautholsvegur 106, 101 Reykjavik. The location can be seen on this map:
Nautholl Café is next to Reykjavik University, one of the organizing partners. A third organizing parter is the Project Management Association of Iceland.
The goal of IPMA is to move project management knowledge forward. We do this by different means and one of them is to bring researchers, experts, scholars and practitioners together to discuss and develop ideas that are of value in this mission. Our most interesting venue for this is our annual research conference. We started in Berlin in 2013 where our subject was Theory meets practice in projects. The second one was held in Tianjing in China in 2014 where we focused on How to make research meet the needs of practice. The third one, in Stellenbosch in South Africa in 2015, focused on PM in emerging economies. The 4th one will be held in Reykjavik Iceland in 2016 and the theme will be Project Management and Sustainability. Please visit the web page of IPMA to learn more about the history of the IPMA research conferences.
Our research conferences are not like typical conferences where most of the research happens beforehand and the participants are primarily listeners. In the IPMA research conferences we prepare the structure and work methods thoroughly and then invite selected presenters to come and inspire the participants with their lectures on chosen topics. The value lies primarily in what happens during the conference, during the fruitful discussions, work shops, world café sessions and networking that results when people with different backgrounds and perspectives meet to discuss important subjects.
We are all very excited about the subject for this years conference. The world is faced with huge problems that cannot be solved without a joint effort, consensus, mutual understanding and the shared will to change things for the better – even though this leads to sacrifices in the short run. We who practice project management know that our discipline can really help in this voyage, because these challenges are typical for complex undertakings. In addition we can assume that sustainability needs to be a part of our basic philosophy as professional project managers and taking sustainability seriously into account needs to be an integral part of any professional body of knowledge in project, program and portfolio management. We hope that the conference will shed light on the obstacles ahead and how we need to move forward as a discipline to help dealing with these crucial challenges for all mankind.
The number of participants in the Research Conference will be limited to 60 participants. The early bird registration closes on June 30th and we encourage those interested in the conference to register as soon as possible to secure seats in time.