About Us

Solutions Network was founded in 1996 by David Barrett dedicated to the business of project management.  It was created as a 'brokerage service' to supplier of project management people, services, processes and technologies. 

Over the subsequest years, David leveraged the company's position in this space to create a series of programs and companies dedicated to providing access to project management solutions througout Canada and eventually, the USA.

David created a training program for project managers called The Masters Certificate in Project Management in 1998. This is an 18 day – 9 module program designed to train professional project managers currently employed by corporations.  This program eventually expanded across Cnada through partnerships with 11 other Canadian universities.

Around the same time, David was approached by one Canadian company to source out project managers for a very large project. Over the next few years David – through a newly created company called Project Management Recruiting Inc. – David supplied hundreds of project managers both full time and on contract to numerous companies. In 2003 the business began slowing down due to the increased popularity of online recruiting boards and in-house PM recruiting staff. David's key employee in that business became ill that year and eventually died of cancer. The business was closed in 2004.

During this period David realized that a key to marketing any product is your network of contacts. To help make this happen David created a newsletter called ProjectTimes that eventually became a monthly magazine with over 20,000 subscribers. ProjectTimes.com still exists today as an online portal for project managers along with a new initiative called BATimes.com

Along the same time David saw an opportunity to run a conference in Canada for project managers. His first event was held in 1997 – called 'Project Management '97' – at the Marriott Hotel near the Toronto airport. This first event drew 400 delegates. He grew that event over the years – to over 1000 delegates by 2000. He also added similar events in Vancouver, Ottawa and Halifax.

In 2003 David was approached to sell the business. This was never the goal of the conference business but when approached the deal was hard to turn down. David sold the conference part of his business on the agreement that he continue to run it.

The business was rebranded ProjectWorld and expanded to 5 cities in the United States. In 2006 he added the new initiative called BusinessAnalystWorld and co-located the two conferences. Today, David and his team at Diversified Business Communications runs project management and BA conferences in: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, Las Vegas, Dallas, Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton.

In the beginning, David was out to help connect the project management community of Canada to promote the business of project management and to help all participants be better at what they do.

Today, Solutions Network counts over 30,000 people from across Canada and the US who are somehow connected to its training programs, conferences, magazines or the recruiting company.