At the end of the 5th Congress on Project Management 1976 at Birmingham, UK, Roland Gutsch, one of the founders of INTERNET (now IPMA) promised to his board members that the 6th congress would be in 1979 in Germany. It was proposed that the conference should take place at Munich, Germany, during the time of the famous Oktoberfest. The executive committee with Roland Gutsch as president and Prof. Dr. Heinz Schelle, University of the German Armed Forces as chairman for the program committee and Prof. Dr. Hasso Reschke, Munich University of Applied Sciences as chairman of the organizing committee was immediately established. The executive committee had to deal with three challenges: Date and venue, program structure, shortage of money and resources for the preparation. It turned out that Munich was of course a world famous and attractive city but it was impossible to host some 600 delegates during the time of the Oktoberfest and it was then decided to move to the beautiful Bavarian city of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on the edge of the Bavarian Alps. At the end the delegates loved this venue because of the fantastic mountain views and the traditional Bavarian atmosphere. Logistics there was not a major problem. The idea for the program was to widen the view on project management, away from scheduling techniques as in former conferences and towards an overall consideration of project management. Four streams for the presentations were developed:

1) General concepts of project management, project selection,

2) Implementation of project management techniques (Scheduling, resource allocation, cost control,

3) Project performance measurement techniques. Project information Systems,

4) Organizational concepts of project management, analysis of completed projects, special problems of project management.

This structure allowed the organizers to attract many new contributions and many new experts who were not so much interested in basic project management techniques but wanted to discuss project management as a new management concept and approach. Roland Gutsch cared for the third problem, the shortage of funds and he managed to get a substantial loan from DORNIER, a famous aerospace company (now part of AIRBUS), for which he subscribed personally. At that time there was still not a national project management Association in Germany so no supporting organization was available. The DGOR German Society for Operations Research, which had cared for project management scheduling techniques was not prepared to bear the risk of this new congress. The GPM, German Project Management Association, was only founded a few weeks in advance of the congress. The members of the various committees (international program committee, national program committee, national organizing committee) and many experts from industry who were personally engaged in project management enthusiastically co-operated in the preparation and execution of the conference. In addition to the conference a three weeks seminar program for a limited number of delegates from developing countries was organized, supported by Carl-Duisberg-Gesellschaft (a German Government organization for developing countries) and World Bank. On 24th September, 1979 the conference organizers could welcome more than 600 delegates from more than 50 countries around the world who followed the program with some 150 presentations, the wonderful venue and the social program with many highlights like an excursion to the Oktoberfest and the Bavarian Evening at Garmisch-Partenkirchen with Bavarian beer, Bavarian food, Bavarian dancers and Bavarian brass music. The moderator of this evening, a young pretty American lady, was dressed in a traditional Bavarian dirndl and thus demonstrated the world-wide relevance of project management. Those who attended the congress (and there are still many) may remember the contributions but they certainly remember the wonderful atmosphere of this 6th INTERNET congress. Many of them still think of the congress as the important turning point in our discipline with many impulses and new aspects which were taken and further developed during the following conferences. The 7th INTERNET World congress then took place at Copenhagen, Denmark in 1982.

By Prof. Dr. Hasso Reschke/Prof. Dr. Heinz Schelle