Friday Division and Section Meetings
Division and Section Meetings
Friday afternoon
by Dennis Arter
Division and Section leaders received some good information this afternoon.
1. Economic Case for Quality
This initiative focuses on, "How do we convince execs that quality programs and people have value and they are worthy of support?" We have lots of information about this on the ASQ main web site. The Quality Management Division has also developed information in this area. Four small books and pamphlets are coming out.
2. Business Planning
We really want Divisions, Sections, and Headquarters moving in the same direction. This year, we had significant Division and Section participation in the earlier strategic discussions and the resulting specific business plans. As a result, we had significantly better understanding of how we are achieving our collective goals together.
We now have a good chart, showing various groups within ASQ, including HQ staff, member units, and committees. This led into a discussion of how Divisions and Sections can support ASQ goals.
3. Member Benefits
There is some confusion about the many different member categories we have developed recently. A single-page cheat sheet was given to all participants for publication and use.
4. World Conference Speakers
Our 2008 WorldCon will be in Houston next May. The 2009 WorldCon will be in Minneapolis. Our Technical Program Committee folks developed a wonderful process map on activities leading to speaker presentations. We have a Call for Papers for the Houston event. We had considerable discussion on how papers are selected and how the Divisions can support those selected. We also talked about non-traditional topics. Finally, the new qualification criteria for speakers was presented.
5. International Expansion
Our current and incoming President shared their thoughts on some steps the Board approved to further explore ways we can become an international organization (if we want to) and various challenges we might need to overcome to get there.
