Well, we've started.  This has been and continues to be a real learning experience for us.  On Saturday, September 9th and Sunday, September 10th, we held our first two culture change conferences.  The number of people signed up for these conferences changed daily, both up and down, during the last week.  We ended up with approximately 2/3 of the people signing up actually attending.  I'll post the actual statistics here when they are ready so that others attempting this will have some basis of comparison.

Joe was great and his participation really made these conferences an Event.  Carol Benner, consultant to our QIO was also terrific with an overview of the beginnigs of a few projects around Maryland.  Sandee, Family Council leader and our discussion facilitator gave each attendee an opportunity to discuss and process the information from the morning sessions.

With this regional setting, the conferences were both small enough to give all attendees a more intimate contact with presenters and concepts.  There was plenty of time for one-on-one questions, observations, and comments.  

From the feed-back both on the Reflections sheets and from emails I've received from attendees, I can say that while we did not have large numbers attending, we definitely planted some vibrant seeds in very fertile ground.  As a first step, this seems to be succeeding well.

We'll see what the next set of conferences brings.

by kate ricks on Mon Sep 11th, 2006 at 09:13:10 AM EST