Project management!

I have attended a super workshop tonite. It was on The Business of Science for Scientists by Randall Ribaudo and Larry Petocovic from SciPhD. Super helpful, nice and helpful workshop. I am excited to do their online classes and read more about what they do. Basically, the workshop was about how scientist lack their business side, how we lower our potential, how we can improve and be better to see the big picture and move based on our objective rather than doing research without any business perspective. The point was mostly how much we focus on technical/scientific skills, but little on social intelligence and emotional intelligence. It is totally true. I personally do not or can not use my other skills as much as I would like to. It was a great workshop in the sense of reminding us how well educated we are and we are ready to take any type of challenge, we do not give ourselves enough credit. Another importance was project management, it reminded me to determine a objective and work on to get to that goal.

Why project management is important? Well because it is not all about hard-working, its about efficiency, achieving the goal we determine and etc. Another nice website about project management. I think we are very passionate, hardworking people but we definitely are weak at seeing the big picture, efficiency of the projects, and not well prepared to sell ourselves.




Brainstorming was another discussed topic I loved. You pick a topic, in 45 seconds you write whatever comes to your mind. Then, you plot a graph impact versus effort. Of course the low effort, high impact has the best shot. They were giving those examples as how companies are run.

First time I have heard about SWOT analysis (alternatively SWOT Matrix) is a structured planing method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. A SWOT analysis can be carried out for a product, place, industry or person.

• Strengths: characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others
• Weaknesses: are characteristics that place the team at a disadvantage relative to others
• Opportunities: elements that the project could exploit to its advantage
• Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project

So the main point was, how we can improve in the business side as scientist and how we can differ from our competitors. They definitely recommend some project management knowledge, to be able to put in practice and to show that during the interviews. They  had great support and opinions about scientist taking any jobs they possibly want. It was an amazing workshop!