Bay Area Deming Users Group - January Notes

[DanRobrtsn@aol.com]

All interested parties are welcomed to attend our meetings.  
Please pass this on to those who may have an interest. 

BAY AREA DEMING USERS GROUP MEETING

Our next meeting is on Monday, 5 February 2001 from 6:00-8:30pm,
at Acuson in Mountain View on the corner of Shorebird Way and 
Shoreline Boulevard.  Detailed directions available below.

PLANNED PROGRAMS: 

Please note that BADUG meetings are always open to all 
interested parties.  Dr. Deming's teaching extended far 
beyond the traditional confines of quality.  Consider inviting
a friend or work associate who might share your interest in 
learning about, and discussing, innovative and effective 
theories on organizations, systems and management.

5 Feb:  DeAnna DeRosa will present the topic of "Diffusion Theory".
DeAnna's background and graduate education is in Market Research,
and she is presently an instructor at Menlo College.  Diffusion
is the process by which an innovation is communicated through 
various channels over time among the members of a social system.
Understanding diffusion means having an appreciation for a 
system and a theory of psychology.  For diffusion to take place,
barriers have to fall.  This promises to be an interesting 
dialogue!

5 Mar:  For this session we will attempt to wrap up our 
discussion about what we want BADUG to be.  Participation 
is an important component of our sessions, and this is 
especially one where every voice makes a difference.  Make a 
special point to come and identify in what ways you want to 
be involved with the future of BADUG.

25 Apr: April's session will be on a special date so that 
Tom Coens can be with us.  Tom, as a labor and employment law 
attorney and organizational trainer, has thirty years of 
experience in human resources, quality management, and labor 
law issues. He has done training with hundreds of organizations,
including Chem-Trend International, Detroit Edison, and Mead.
Along with Mary Jenkins, Tom has recently authored a book 
entitled "Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire 
and What to Do Instead".  Tom has been active in a variety of 
community and business improvement initiatives that are guided 
by his appreciation for Dr. Deming's work.  This will be a 
good opportunity to learn some of the insights from Tom's book 
and talk with him about his broad set of experiences.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

* The BADUG Systems Thinking Study Group meets monthly, prior
to -- and in the same building as -- the main BADUG session.
Please call Karen Takle Quinn at 650-964-5195 or email 
ktq@svpal.org if you are planning to attend.

* KMCI Workshop #2, in Mountain View, CA - February 9th and 10th
The Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI) is 
offering its first intensive courses in the San Francisco Bay 
Area.  For more details and registration information visit 
their website at: 
www.kmci.org/Institute/institutecourseschedule2001.htm.  The 
first workshop was entitled Managing Best KM Practices.  It 
will be offered as a full one-day session in January.  The 
second will be KM Concepts, Tools & Methods; offered as a full
one-day session on Friday, 9 February and repeated on 
Saturday, 10 February.  These courses are based on the 
management philosophies and strategies of continuous quality
improvement.  They are theory-practice-based workshops which 
examine and explore various ways of improving processes used 
to produce, manage, and utilize knowledge within different 
organizations.  The January Managing Best KM Practices 
workshop employed the Knowledge Management Assessment Tool 
(KMAT)" jointly developed by the American Productivity & 
Quality Center and Arthur Andersen.  The workshop leaders will
encourage participants to use this tool and other techniques 
to self-assess where the strengths and opportunities lie in 
managing knowledge within their individual organizations.  
Knowledge sharing will be encouraged as an organizational behavior. 

* Tom Coens, presenter at the April BADUG meeting, will be 
offering a one-day workshop on April 27th to go into greater 
detail on the topics raised in his book, "Abolishing Performance
Appraisals".  The workshop will be held at Acuson in Mountain 
View -- Call Marcia Daszko for more information and to register.

* The Metropolitan Section of ASQ in conjunction with the 
American Statistical Association's Bio-Pharmaceutical Division
and the Statistics Division of ASQ sponsors the 56th Deming
Conference.  The Millennium Deming conference will be held 
from April 23rd to 27th, 2001 at the Holiday Inn North Hotel 
at Newark (New York) Airport.  Click 
http://www.demingconference.org for details,

* The First International Conference on the Bat'a System of 
Management is to be held 16-18 May, 2001 in the city of Zlin,
Czech Republic, at the Academic Centre of the Tomas Bat'a 
University.  Speakers already expected to address the 
conference include: Yoshio Kondo, to discuss the influence 
of Bat'a in Japan prior to 1932; Homer Sarasohn to relate 
the influence of the Bat'a system on Dr. Sarasohn's post-war 
efforts in Japan; Myron Tribus to compare and contrast the 
Bat'a System of Management with the teachings of Dr. Deming.
Quality practitioners from the world over are invited to 
attend.  New ideas, views and outlooks on Bat'a are also 
encouraged for presentation -- Presenters' expenses (except 
travel) will be paid by the conference hosts. Interested 
parties should click to www.spoluprace.cz/2-08.htm or 
www.bata-konference.utb.cz/pages_en/00_about.php.

* The Deming Forum 2001 will be held 9-10 May 2001 in 
Loughborough, UK.  Speakers to include:  Prof. H. Thomas 
Johnson, Portland State U -- new approaches to life-system;
Superintendent Mark Sheasby -- CI in West Midlands Police 
Force; Jane Seddon, CEO of PMI -- linking Business Goals and 
Process Improvement; Debbie Ray, Good Samaritan Hospital, 
Ohio -- Getting better with Dr D.; Alan Winlow -- Experiences
and Transition in the 3rd Age; plus many more.  Obtain details
about the conference at: http://freespace.virgin.net/demingforum.uk/

* An excellent opportunity for on-line learning exists at 
http://www.virtual-deming.com/ -- the site of the Deming 
Virtual College, directed by Jim Clauson.  The DVC offers a 
number of courses, guided by top-notch facilitators.  See 
the site for more details. 

* Another online opportunity for courses based on Dr. Deming
is available this Spring from American River College near 
Sacramento (course fees for California residents are a mere 
$11 per unit).  Del Nelson is facilitating 3 courses on 
various facets of Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge.
For more information, or to receive application paperwork, 
contact the ARC Business Area secretary at 
SnoddyM@exi.arc.losrios.cc.sa.us or Del Nelson at 
Nelsond@exi.arc.losrios.cc.sa.us.

* ASTD's Total Quality Management Special Interest Group holds
its meetings at National Semiconductor's "National 
Semiconductor University" site in Santa Clara, the 4th Monday
of each month, 6:30-8:30pm.  Ring Betsy Wolf-Graves at 
(408) 294-5779 for more information.

* WE ARE VERY INTERESTED IN GETTING YOUR INPUTS FOR UPCOMING
TOPICS and SPEAKERS. If you have inputs, please contact 
Marcia Daszko.  Also contact Marcia for details about 
upcoming programs.  Her number is 408-247-7757; e-mail 
address is MDaszko@aol.com. 

Surf the Worldwide Web to BADUG.  An overview of the group, 
past meeting minutes, and an index of Deming-associated 
sites can be accessed via your web browser.  Find the site at: 

http://www.cafm-services.com/badug/BADUG-TOC.htm

Other websites to note:
www.deming.org -- The W. E. Deming Institute website has 
been recently upgraded.  Go there for information on the 
Institute and links to various Deming resources.

www.spcpress.com/scrap.html -- The folks at SPC Press have 
put up a tribute to Dr. Deming on their scrapbook page.  
Point your browser to this URL and you will undoubtedly learn 
something new about WED.

http://deming.eng.clemson.edu/pub/den/ -- The Deming 
Electronic Network -- This moderated internet discussion 
group is the ultimate gathering place for those interested 
in ongoing dialogue about the implementation and analysis of 
Dr. Deming's teaching.  Go to the site listed for links to 
archives and to subscribe to the list.

January's Meeting Notes: 

"Where is BADUG today, and where would we like to see it go?"

This session was actually a continuance of the discussion 
started in November to find out how associates of the Bay 
Area Deming Users Group would like to see BADUG move forward.
Dropping attendance -- due to a variety of causes, only some 
of which we have control over -- has made it more difficult 
to obtain the interplay and exchange of ideas we have enjoyed 
at BADUG sessions over the years.  Lower attendance has also 
made it harder for presenters to plan for exercises during 
sessions that can involve participants and provide actual 
experience for attendees to reflect on and integrate into 
their personal set of tools.

Unfortunately, we only had 5 participants for this session.
Enough for some discussion, but too few to feel like we were 
obtaining any community consensus.  The rest of the notes 
capture what we talked about, but fall short of offering 
many conclusions.

Marketing, and other ideas:

>From our past session we came back to the topic of how to get 
more word out to the general community about BADUG meetings.
Ideas included putting notices up in local colleges, along 
with getting in touch with local chapters of groups like the 
ASQ (American Society for Quality) -- See actions planned for
those ideas in the final thoughts below.  

A notion shared in the last session was "Bring A Friend!" -- 
If everyone actually attending would merely make it a point 
to bring someone with them, our attendance would double!  Those
of you coming to (or thinking of coming to) the meetings, keep
this in mind...  Remember that carpooling may help get past 
the barrier of commute traffic so many of us have to deal with,
too.  ;-)

Another idea proposed was to reduce the number of sessions 
from monthly to quarterly or twice a year, with those sessions
being longer and covering multiple topics (half to full-day, 
with the possibility of being on a Saturday).  It was pointed
out that with less frequent gatherings, the momentum that 
comes from more frequent gatherings might diminish.

Before we fixate too much on "how", let's consider the "what":

While it hasn't been that hard to brainstorm ideas of how we 
could encourage more people to attend, we came to realize that
the tougher task is in determining what it is we are providing
for them.  What is the pain (or choose your favorite metaphor)
that people have a need to reduce; and/or where is the 
opportunity for gain, be it knowledge, tools, techniques, 
etc.?  We know that today everyone faces more stress, pressures
on time, dealing with higher levels of complexity -- In what 
way(s) can BADUG help people create new knowledge to help them
deal with today's challenges?  Are there specific populations
we should target? -- Dot.com's, students, the "6 sigma" crowd?
The opportunity may lie in providing a forum to come to for 
those "with need" -- Getting those with need defined is yet to
be done...  Though our small group didn't make much headway on
these concepts, therein lie the ultimate answers to our going
forward.  The more clearly we can define the value that we 
offer, the better we can attract those who want to enjoy (and
eventually even contribute to) that value.

Suggestions for future topics:

While discussing the potential audience and various possible 
needs, I noted a couple of suggestions that were made for 
future meetings.  1/ Have a format where a specific business 
or organizational scenario is discussed and analyzed, with 
the second phase of the session focused on developing a 
recommendation of what can be done; 2/ Have a session/series
that focuses on comparing and contrasting Deming theory and 
"6 Sigma"; 3/ Executive forum -- A panel of local executives
share and discuss relevant quality and management topics: 
"Is quality improving?", "What is quality?", "How do you fix
bad quality?"...  Each of these combines a lot of opportunity
for interaction, and can address topics that are in the 
everyday world.

Final comments:

There is one area where action can be taken immediately -- 
"marketing" of BADUG meetings.  Claudia Lee volunteered to 
speak with some of her connections at local colleges to see 
how notice of upcoming BADUG meetings might be posted for 
students to read.  That may help bring some fresh faces and 
new interest into our forum.  DanR has also initiated 
communication with the Santa Clara Valley chapter of ASQ to 
see about the possibility of sharing meeting date/topic 
notices with that group to get broader notice of meetings 
distributed.  Another marketing idea has been to place 
announcements of meetings in local weekly newspapers -- Can 
anyone offer to help research doing that and sign up to make 
it happen on a monthly basis?

To reiterate something I shared in the December notes, BADUG 
will only be carried forward by what you as participants want
to personally put into it.  It's a totally volunteer-driven 
adventure.  Your inputs to this process are very important, 
and really do make a difference.  If you aren't attending 
meetings, but have particular and specific inputs you would
like to make to help shape the future BADUG, please send me
a note or call.  Thanks to all those who have sent their 
good wishes!

Scribe - Dan Robertson 

To receive the Bay Area Deming Users Group's newsletter, contact:

Dan Robertson          -or-     Marcia Daszko
1141 Bruckner Circle            2752 Glorietta Circle
Mountain View, CA   94040       Santa Clara, CA  95051
650-964-9186                    408-247-7757
DanRobrtsn@AOL.com              MDaszko@AOL.com
                                www.mdaszko.com
                                www.itslonelyatthetop.com

Please supply us with a US Mail address, a fax number or an
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fills your needs. US Mail distribution will be provided for
12 months from your communication with us.

** Directions to the February through April meetings **
Venue: The Acuson Corporation Education Center, Building I, 
at 1393 Shorebird Way in Mountain View.  Contact Dan Robertson
if you have questions.

1/ From freeway 101 take Shoreline Boulevard, "Amphitheatre"
   direction (toward the bay).
2/ Turn right, off Shoreline, onto Shorebird Way (Shorebird
   is the next street after Spacepark).
3/ Building I is the first building on the right. "BADUG"
   signs will direct you to the meeting room.



The next BADUG meeting is Monday, 5 February 2001.