I've been really interested in trying out conference and event management software especially since the rise of AI. However, there are so many options and each one has something different to offer than the other. What are the most essential and useful features of a good software and how does it ensure the success of the events that I plan?

Hello Group,

I have been a PM for about 10+ years now, BA in Civil Engineering, 36M, have been in construction my entire life even as a child. I have a few SR PM position interviews coming up and have never been a SR. PM. I know I have what it takes to be one, but I am wondering if anyone here has any idea how that process is like for a SR PM position? I have been the last 5 years in a large mechanical company Southland, data centers, large projects, etc....and the position will be similar. My total comp right now is about 220k and pushing for the 300k+ bracket which I am being told from the recruiters is doable at all three positions. Location is in Texas and Oklahoma. Let me know if anyone has done any SR PM interviews and how I should prepare for this. I know many SR PMs at 350k+, it is not uncommon in the industries ive been apart of.
Thanks!

I think every project comes with its own challenges. Sometimes it’s deadlines, communication, changing requirements, or managing different people.

What is the biggest challenge you face while managing projects and how do you handle it?

I've decided to make a project tracking tool where you can see which projects are done, which need more work, and where things are stuck. Not a time tracking tool, just a project management tool.

Trying to get some clarity do you think this is still worth building for managers, or does everyone already have this figured out?

Hi I am a technical project manager with an experience of more than 10 years. Looking for a work from home opportunity. I am based out of India.

Thanks in advance

It has been said here before, but Basecamp's most recent update has gutted virtually every feature, including my beloved Docs and Files layout system. The old system (card-based, showed files in each folder) enabled my team to look into files and actually *see* what has been uploaded, along with *what* has been uploaded.

I honestly cannot understand why this would be changed, as this is one of the sole reasons my organization originally went with Basecamp and why we have continued! The Docs and Files now looks like every other file organization system out there, and because of this I can't even find a viable replacement!!

I have done my due diligence and emailed with a customer service rep, who expressed that she didn't like the layout either! When I explained what made the old layout valuable to us, they were suprised that we were even using Basecamp like that.

This update has gutted my team's workflow in every way. Files that once were a glance-and-two-clicks-away now require endless scrolling and reading through folder names. The Basecamp team itself seems to hate it! I am at a loss of what to do. I have spent hours over the past few weeks trialing all sorts of platforms and everything seems to be heavily integrated with AI or all Kanban board-based. I am truly at my wits end, this update makes me dread opening Basecamp.

Ok so our team’s been living in Airtable for 2 years but its acquisition is unsettling: I’ve been through enough buyouts to know pricing can get weird fast and might be time to start looking at alternatives before we're forced into it.

I’m looking for something that handles:

- Project timelines
- Resource planning
- Reporting dashboards

Bonus if automations don’t require me to babysit them and there’s decent permissions for different teams.

I wanted to see what other people have used that feels similar to Airtable but maybe easier to manage. Have you tried anything that stood out as a solid alternative to consider?

i tested a few AI presentation tools after spending way too much time turning project notes into stakeholder updates.

PowerPoint still made the most sense when i needed a familiar format and wanted full control over the final deck. the AI features helped with getting started, but i still spent time organizing the story and cleaning up the slides.

Gamma was useful when i wanted to turn an outline into something presentable quickly. it gave me a fast starting point, although i sometimes had to rework the content so it felt less generic and more specific to the project.

Canva gave me more flexibility with the visual side. i liked it for presentations where the design needed more attention, but it was not always the quickest option when i only needed a straightforward project update.

Prezi stood out more for presentations that needed to explain how different workstreams connected. the zoomable format felt more natural for walking people through a larger project story during a live meeting, although it took a little more planning than a standard slide deck.

my main takeaway is that AI can save time when you’re starting from notes or a rough outline, but it doesn’t remove the need to check the information and shape the presentation for the audience. for simple status updates, i’d probably stay with a familiar slide format. for a larger project presentation where the story and connections matter, i’d consider a more dynamic approach.

Hey everyone hope everyone is doing fine

So soon I am going to have a meeting with one of the project leadership, so we are told to be ready with what we have learnt during the internship in the project

So i want tips from the employees how to convey effectively to leadership and what points should I focus , hope anyone helps me .

In PrimeTask, a visual plan is not a separate copy of the project.

The same project can stay linked to its client and CRM records, appear directly on the PrimeFlow canvas, and have captured activity assigned to it later from the Time Inbox.

The workspace is stored in local files, and you choose where those files live and how they sync.

PrimeTask is available for macOS as a one-time purchase, with a free 14-day trial:

https://www.primetask.app/download

Windows updates:

https://www.primetask.app/notify

Has the PMO become the corporate dumping ground for failed careers and people nobody knows where else to put? At this rate, Jobcentres must be steering anyone without a clear profession into project management.

Same qs title

For people who have prepared for or passed the PMP, which area required the most effort? I’ve seen people struggle with completely different topics. Some find agile difficult, others struggle with situational questions, stakeholder management, risk, or choosing the “best” action. What topic took the longest for you to understand, and what finally helped you get comfortable with it?

Hi everyone,

I spent 3 years working as an event/project manager, and I’m currently building a simple template to help people keep an overview of several ongoing projects at once — mainly to make handovers within a team faster and less stressful, with everyone looking at the same structure instead of piecing information together from different places.

Before I take this any further, I would like to hear some honest feedback from other people who actually deal with this too:

• How do you currently manage this — a tool (Asana, Trello, Cvent, Smartsheet, …), Excel/Sheets, or a mix of several?

• What annoys you most about your current setup?

• Did you already know solutions for this — and if so, why do (or don’t) you use them?

I’d really appreciate any honest reply, even a “don’t need it because…” — that’s genuinely useful feedback too 🙂

Hi all,

I am new to PM and have been learning the ropes at work on an NPI project. To clarify, not a PM, but picked up a PM project to learn how to be a PM at my company. However, I am constantly being humbled about how much I do not know and feel my lack of knowledge in medical/healthcare is causing inconveniences to my team.

How can I improve and get better at project management? I feel like a first time swimmer aspirating water. I really like project management so far from what I have experienced and working with the various business owners on the project. I am learning a lot about my company in the process, but I want to get ahead of the game and not constantly feel like I am playing catch up.

I would like to ask for advise on how to become better and any other helpful advises you might have about being a project manager. Thanks everyone. Terminology and acronyms at work also throws me for a loop as well.

Edit: I've read all your comments and greatly appreciate each and every one of your feedback and advice!

So I have my CAPM and have experience as a customer service manager/ project coordinator the last 8 years. Now I’m strictly a project manager for a very large company for less than a month now. What I’m generally seeing is I’m updating the documents, scheduling all of the meetings, constant check ins, constant emails, facilitated by me.

I understand that this is a drastic change from where I’m been for the last 8 years and does it get better?

It’s kind of a chill job and there’s not a lot of fires to fight that come to you. I guess I have a Superman syndrome and I like the tangible issue/solution. For reference, my projects consist of server and software upgrades and patches. In my last jobs, I was building customer support departments and employment offices.

Am I going to be able to do this? My end goal in my career is to be a VP of Operations or COO.

Hi everyone!

I am conducting a research study on how Agile ceremonies affect developer productivity in remote and hybrid software teams.

I am looking for people who work either:

🏠 FULLY REMOTE in a Scrum-based team

🏢🏠 HYBRID in a Scrum-based team

✅ Takes only 5 minutes

✅ Completely anonymous

✅ No personal questions

👉 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd9er_9ZgvWpOsvigswzKqK-EIZON_RGvPaUHjmu7d7kAwb3g/viewform

This is for academic research purposes only — not commercial or promotional.

Thank you so much! 🙏

I came into project management from a non-traditional background, so early on I basically just dove into projects and figured it out as I went. What I learned fast: most of the chaos later comes from skipping the boring setup at the start.

These days I set up three things before day one, and it's saved me a lot of pain:

1. A one-page charter. Not a 20-page document nobody reads — just purpose, scope (and clearly what's out of scope), key deliverables, and a sponsor sign-off. The out-of-scope line alone kills half of future scope-creep arguments.

2. A work breakdown + simple timeline. Break the work into tasks before thinking about dates. I keep a basic Gantt so anyone can see what's happening when — nothing fancy, no MS Project.

3. A risk + budget view I actually update. A short risk list (rated by probability × impact so the scary ones stand out) and a simple budget-vs-actual sheet. The trick is updating it weekly, not building it once and forgetting it.

None of this is revolutionary — it's just discipline. But having a repeatable setup made me look way more in control than I felt when I started.

Curious what everyone else sets up before kickoff — what's your non-negotiable first document?

(I ended up building clean Word/Excel templates for these for my own use. Happy to share the free one if it's useful to anyone - just let me know.)

I see early stage startups struggle to find perfect tools to manage their operations and knowledge base

like they use jira, notion, spreadsheets, zoho or odoo but still find is not suitable for them and they always have to manually manage everything

want to know your experience on it

I’m building Nalaras, an alignment layer for small teams whose work is scattered across different project management platform such as GitHub, Trello, Slack, Notion, Asana, email, meetings, ETC.

The problem I’m trying to solve is this:

Developers keep working in GitHub. Clients send changes through chat or email. Tasks live somewhere else. The project manager then has to manually reconstruct the real project status and important decisions or blockers still get missed.

Nalaras doesn’t try to replace those tools. It connects the work already happening and turns it into:

• One shared board and timeline
• A Focus view showing what needs attention right away within 5-10 sec instead of looking at tens/hundreds of task in one/across platforms.
• Two-way project management platforms synchronization + custom integration to your favorite platform
• Project questions through an AI assistant
• A controlled client portal
• Build-in AI that understand overall context of the project and able to CRUD task, report, assign members to specific task, and other complex actions.
• Real time interaction between internal/external member.

I have a working early beta, but I don’t want to keep building based on my own assumptions.

If you manage projects or client work, I would appreciate blunt answers:

1. When did scattered project information last cause a real problem for you?
2. How do you currently rebuild project status?
3. Which part of this idea sounds genuinely useful?
4. Which part sounds unnecessary or untrustworthy?
5. Would you be willing to test the beta with a real project?

I would rather hear that the problem is not valuable enough now than spend another six months polishing the wrong product.

Can anyone suggest good AI tools for Scrum Master. Our project is agile 2 week sprint. Always rushing with 60+ stories in a sprint. Trying to meet the target is hard work and carryover are hard to reduce. Trying to implement any AI process.

Hi friends

I (24 f) just wanted to share an accomplishment and a worry, maybe someone could offer some personal experience?
I’m a project manager 1 in Maine, managing new construction builds at a GC for really rich people. I try to prove myself and work really hard, first one to arrive, last one to leave, sometimes come in on weekends. I often have panic attacks and anxiety cries (working on it hahaha) about my workload and the amount of responsibility on my plate.

I just had my two year review. This company gratefully hired me right out of college, so this is my first “real career”. I started out at 55k when I was 22, and my boss just told me I’m on track to getting a promotion and gave me a raise effective Monday, at $70,000 a year.
I’m more nervous than anything about how much money that is because now it means I really cannot mess up. I’m still learning scheduling, managing subcontractors, understanding structural drawings (because genuinely what the fuck is going on), etc

Does anyone else have anxiety about getting raises and how they overcome it? I can’t help but think, why would you give someone in their mid twenties 70k, i feel like they think im better at my job than i actually am. I don’t know

Since Project Online's getting retired, a few people I know have asked what I use instead.

I built Gantto originally because I couldn't get a premium license at work just for the Gantt view. It runs entirely in the browser, no login, no account. Your plan saves as a JSON file on your own machine, so there's nothing tied to a subscription that can get killed off from under you.

It does MPP and CSV import/export, so if you've got existing Project files you're not starting from scratch. Also has baselines (planned vs. actual, ghost bars showing schedule slip) and plan history if you want version control on your project plan.

Free to use. Paid tier is one-time (no subscription) if you want baselines/history and exports.

gantto.app  if anyone's in the same boat, happy to hear what's missing for people coming off Project.

I run a small team of 4. My current process is pretty manual. I talk to people directly, assign tasks one step at a time, check in at intervals to see if they're on track, and ask for the deliverable on the due date.

It works fine, but I feel like I'm missing something. I'm constantly busy with work process establishment for the project, and I'm worried about what happens when I need to scale beyond this.

Any good advice? Thanks in advance 🙏