PMI-4C History

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This chapter received its charter from the Project Management Institute in July, 2000 and was included under the PMI Group Exemption Letter #2419 issued by the Internal Revenue Service on June 18th, 2001. The charter was presented to us in person by Mr. Bill Duncan, a member of the PMI Global Board of Directors at the time. On August 3rd, 2000 Bill was a presenter at a project management conference that was held in Santa Barbara at the Fess Parker Red Lion Inn.  Bill spoke at the first official chapter meeting on his favorite subject, "Ten Things You Need to Know about The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge".

We began as a core group who met in the summer of 1999 to explore the idea of creating a chapter that would serve Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. The culmination of meetings and time lasted a year.  Early members of the core group were:

 

  • Abel Mosqueda and Don White from San Luis Obispo;
  • Barbara Guarnieri, Wynette Winkler, Annie Meyers and Kathleen Roxby from Santa Barbara, and
  • Doug McAvoy, Bill Wilund, Jim Peters and Scott Freauf from Ventura County.

Jim Peters and Scott Freauf were active members of the Los Angeles Chapter at the time and brought much needed experience to our fledgling group. Most of the core group meetings were held in various locations in Santa Barbara because it was centrally located between San Luis Obispo and Thousand Oaks.

However, our activities quickly began to have a more local focus as we contacted other PMI members in the tri-counties to assess interest, and find topics and activities that would attract members. PMI-Global Operations Center required that at least 25 Project Management Institute (PMI) members within our geographic area must sign a petition in order for the chapter to be supported. As a result, in the fall of 1999 we began our petition drive and collaborated to identify a chapter name. We quickly found more than 25 PMI members that were willing to support a chapter, and chose the name Los Padres Chapter from the Los Padres National Forest.  We felt it was a fitting name because the Los Padres National Forest takes up much of the back country of all three counties.  Those of us who grew up here thought that would work just fine.

However, over the years we were continually surprised by the number of people who had no awareness of the existence of Los Padres National Forest. Thus the name changed.  During the first few years the chapter rotated the monthly meeting venue between the three major cities of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. Places we met included:

  • The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant Public Information Center,
  • CALTRANS Engineering Facility,
  • The Proud Bird at Santa Barbara Airport,
  • The Big Yellow House in Summerland,
  • Chinese Restaurant in Ventura
  • The Gold Coast Innovation Center on the campus of California State University Channel Islands, and
  • many others.

If you wonder why we are meeting where we are meeting or how we are meeting, ask the chapter officers. The locations, times, and days we meet are what we think our members want. You should always feel free to question these things in the spirit of improving the chapter’s performance in meeting the members' needs.

The chapter began with 34 founding members and has grown steadily.  California Central Coast Chapter covers more than 16,000 square miles.  The California Central Coast Chapter of the Project Management Institute serves San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura and the 913xx zip code areas of the Western San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles County.