Quality at center stage: ASQ and STC produce a play!
The July 2006 IDeaL newsletter of the Instructional Design and Learning SIG was published yesterday, and IDL SIG membership manager Sylvia Miller recounts a story from Dot Champlin, in Dot’s own words, about a play produced this spring in Rochester, New York by the Rochester Section of the American Society for Quality, with a lot of help from STC members!
“Some of our (Rochester Chapter) STC members are also members of the American Society for Quality (ASQ). Last year, the ASQ members had expressed an interest in changing the pace of their yearly conference from the usual Keynote/Sessions format. So this year, the conference chair (Amy Friend), a dual STC/ASQ member, asked an STC member (Lori Marra), who has a serious interest in play writing, to write a little play that would illustrate the basic principles of quality for the enjoyment of the attendees. She agreed, and we presented the play at the local ASQ conference in April.
“Our playwright began with the basic premise of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and devised A Quality Carol, a play in three acts about a character named ‘Droodge’ whose ice cream business is doomed if he doesn’t change his ways and adopt some quality principles really soon! We then recruited other STC friends to be the cast. I played ‘Myrna - the Ghost of Quality Past.’
“Act 1 set the scene during the spot normally allotted to the morning keynote speaker; Act II followed the luncheon; and Act III closed the program in the afternoon, after which everyone enjoyed ‘high quality’ ice cream sundaes and received souvenir ice cream scoops!
“According to the evaluations, the audience really enjoyed this new approach, and their familiarity with the basic premise allowed them to focus on waiting for the introduction of each quality principle during the performance. All in all, it was a fun way to reinforce awareness of a serious issue without having to be too serious.”
Dot Champlin is a Localization Project Manager with Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York. She is a past president of the Rochester Chapter STC, as are Amy Friend and Lori Marra.
August 9th, 2006 at 4:19 am
Hearing Droodge (Bob Stock of Kodak’s Technical Knowledge Management group) thunder “Bah humbug, EVERYBODY loves ice cream” is a lot more fun than hearing a lecture about the struggle to change and adopt quality principles! Lori’s play was a great learning experience, and great entertainment too. Several of us in STC also belong to ASQ, and this work together is a great start on what we hope will be more collaboration in the future.
August 9th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
I just want to thank the entire cast and production crew of A Quality Carol. They all devoted long hours in scores of readings and rehearsals. I also want to thank the Rochester Section of ASQ for taking such an innovative approach for a conference keynote.
One additional note–Ron Blicq, an STC Fellow and also a playwright, arranged to have another of my plays performed at the INTECOM (International Technical Communication society) meeting in Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands). It was great fun, and the again, the audienced loved this new alternative to a keynote speaker. Thank you Ron!