PRMM Interview #22 with Meredith Moore on Creative Project Management

On this episode, I interviewed Meredith Moore, a creative professional, on creative project management and how she gets the word out for her charity, Simple Plenty.

Here is an excerpt of the conversation:

Introduction:
Interview with Meredith Moore on a hot and humid day in Dallas. Meredith has been creative project manager for five years and a creative professional for about 15.

00:00:37: QUESTION – What is creative project management?

Creative project manager is a little different than a project manager but you have to have the same kind of mindset very organized a very linear but at the same time. So it’s it’s a lot of structure and flexibility all-in-one to be a creative project manager.

00:01:35: QUESTION – When should organizations do when seeking to hire a creative project manager?

Look for somebody who’s actually been in the trenches. This is not true for regular project managers when you’re dealing with in other industries, but with creative project management there is a huge understanding that you have to have in order to manage creatives there needs to be a respect their and when you’re coming up with timelines and budgets. The person needs to understand what it takes to make a logo or brand identity book.

00:03:56: QUESTION: What’s a consideration that you should have before you determine if this is the right of choice for you?
It takes an interesting kind of person. Most creatives are not analytical and most analytical people don’t have to create. If you feel like you’re not going to go into creative direction role or an art director, but you still want to be involved in creativity, start looking at management.
If you are on the analytical side in your project manager a traditional project manager even PMP and you want to get into creative project management, spend a lot of time with creative go take some classes.  Take a peek a web design class or a graphic design class. Start doing these things so you can really see what it takes to make something and not just the skill needed but the emotion that’s needed and also it helps you understand a really good creative.

00:05:39: QUESTION: Let me ask you one last question, you have a charity. Can you share a little bit about how you get the word out about it?
My creative project management people skills have come in handy with my non-profit, Simple Plenty, and I listened to my board and they’re very helpful and very instructional. And I have a lot of volunteers that help with this every day. We make sure that charities and individuals have ways of sharing what we call in-kind donations or just good in general. No money but sometimes a charity will get items that they don’t need but another charity may need those items and that other charity may have items that the first charity needed so we make sure that we come together and get these charities what they need from each other. We make sure that we have events where people can do things like trade clothes, trade food. We’ve done the clothing exchange for 10 years which was very successful. Everything that’s left over from these exchange events, they all go to different charities for the for those specific items, so once again everybody gets what they need and we’re super happy.