Happy Summer all,
An Updated Message as of August 21:
                        As I start my 3rd term as the Hartford Section Chair.  I would like to thank the Executive Committee for their support and look forward to working with this fantastic team this upcoming year.  We have already met once in July and again we’ll meet in August to setup this fiscal year.  The Audit team has just met and completed financial audit of our section.  The results will be sent it before the due date and we will be on track and task for completing our first level QMP award for the 2009-2010 year. More importantly we will not find our section in the same situation as 17 sections that still haven’t gotten their financial program together (fiscal year 2008-2009) and the Section Affairs Council and ASQ Headquarters are looking at closing those sections down who are not up to meeting the minimums as required. Times are tough and money is tight and HQ is very willing to withhold funds from sections that don’t comply. 
     Now for what we are planning on for this year as far as events go. September will be a very active month for us. Here is a listing of events that ASQ Hartford, NEQC and Headquarters have in store:
September 10th – A joint meeting event with ASQ Automotive division with a local speaker from the Shainin Company, John Abrahamian Vice President will be the speaker. This will be a joint event with the ASQ Automotive Division.   There were other pieces of this event that didn’t happen. So the event price will be $25.00.
September 11 through 13th - ASQ Headquarters will be holding a Gathering for Ideas in Milwaukee Wisconsin.  They would like to have our new Membership Chair – Tyler Brush - fly out for the weekend to add and bring back ideas on Membership retention.  The backup person will be the Section Chair. I will be attending this event as the representative for the new Regional Director Diane Dixon who isn’t able to attend the event.  I look forward to this my 5 trip to the Gathering for Ideas and my second in Milwaukee.
September 16th joint seminar has been cancelled by Jay Patel and NEQC due to the economy.  We are actively working on another partner to work with on the subject of Seminars
October 9th – NEQC will be holding a training event for any member interested in being a Volunteer Member Leader in ASQ. This is a fully accredited ASQ event.  This is also a no charge event as NEQC picks up the entire tab for training ASQ Member leaders in the areas covered by NEQC.  For those who might not be familiar with the area that is covered.  The area runs from Maine to Albany and into NY City and the Island as well. Sign up for this event will be done through the NEQC website www.neqc.org.
October will feature a member leader from our section who chairs the Human Development & Leadership Division of ASQ, Thomas Berstene of WorkForce Planning Associates of South Windsor CT.
For November we are now in contact with the Juran Institute and Joe DeFeo  President  for a speaker and subject.  January we will be bringing in Shim Taguchi who will be speaking on the subject of the Taguchi Robust Engineering.  He is the son of Dr. Genichi Taguchi.
That’s the message for the summer stay tuned for more updates as we go along this summer.  Enjoy the season and we all look forward to seeing our members starting in September.
Bob Dembkoski ASQ-CQA, CQIA
ASQ Hartford Section Chair 2008-2010
ASQ Deputy Regional Director (Region 1) 2009-2011