If you have been following my posts recently (Part 1 and Part 2 of the Social Media for Project Management Series), you can see that working in the marketing department at a project management company has made me a bit fixated on social media and its impact on project management.

In my nearly three years at Clarizen I’ve been in a few different positions, some of which included sales and my current position as a product specialist in the marketing department. Moving from sales to marketing is what has allowed me to be the Clarizen tutorial master that I am today. It was during my time in the sales team that I learned all the ins and outs of our Work Management Solution and discovered that my real strength is providing product training.

I am a huge fan of Elizabeth Harrin from PM4Girls – and I want to plug her new book ”Social Media for Project Managers” coming out in October . She was kind enough to share some of her insight on the topic at a live APM podcast on June 10, 2010. As Clarizen’s Director of Marketing, both social media and project management are topics that are near and dear to my heart so I was thrilled that Harrin was speaking on the topic. And she didn’t disappoint. In my last post I discuss the evolution of the Internet and Online tools that are now becoming critical mainstays in all business activities, including project management.

Exciting times at Clarizen! We just moved into our new and expanded offices last week and are now 100% devoted to working towards V4.8 release closure while also preparing for our second local user conference coming up next week. Whew!!

In Elizabeth Harrin’s (PM4Girls) latest Podcast about Social Media in Project Management (download the full podcast here), she describes Social Media in the work environment as “Collaboration and Communication with Purpose”. While the term “Social Media” is the generic name for web based tools created in the belief that the internet will help people with interaction and conversation, “Social Media for Project Management” becomes a functional tool that allows project members to better communicate and collaborate in a functional and meaningful way.

A while back, on a business trip to California I had an intriguing conversation with some friends and colleagues that, as it turns out, was way ahead of its time. We were discussing whether people not directly involved with the project should have complete access to a company’s infrastructure code, and possibly even be able to change it themselves. It was kind of an early open source discussion and it got into a heated debate about the pros and cons of allowing this sort of development or limiting it to viewing the infrastructure as APIs only.

Clarizen Version 4.8, being released early next month, takes a very significant step outside the confines of an enclosed website application, quite literally in fact. In this version we have taken one of our most powerful features – the roadmap view – enhanced it further by making it fully interactive and granting access to it as a widget from any other location. This means that an up-to-date roadmap view is can be added and accessed by your company’s intranet or portal without requiring login to Clarizen.

Winning the CODiE award last month for Best Project Management solution was a significant milestone for Clarizen. Less than three years since coming out with our first commercial solution, we have won the gold over incumbent vendors who have been in this space for over 10 years! A company’s age isn’t an indication of their success. Au contraire!

Usually when I run, equipped me with my 16GB iPod, I have my playlist all sorted and ready for the long endurance task ahead: hours of energy boosting music to keep my legs moving and moving. Every so often I try something different to keep the mind fresh. This past weekend I had a day like that – I put the iPod on "songs" and just randomly played everything I had there, around 1000 tracks, to see what lady luck brings.

Two weeks ago I had a call with one of our prospects where he discussed the challenge he faces when scheduling his project plan according to the tight availability of his resources. I took the opportunity to demonstrate the way work planning work policy can be approached and how it can be done in Clarizen.