Recap: The 2009 Nashville Blended Learning Mini-Conference

On May 6, 2009, Bridgestone Americas and MoreSteam.com co-presented a Nashville Blended Learning Mini-Conference for the Lean Six Sigma community. The free event, held at the Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville, TN, featured a morning program of Blended Learning experts and panelists followed by an afternoon demo of MoreSteam's SigmaBrew DMAIC Lean Six Sigma simulation.

The Morning Program

This one-day event was conceived as a way to provide Lean Six Sigma (LSS) practitioners with an opportunity to learn more about the Blended Learning training model and to network with peers in the local area. The morning began with introductions and a report of the results from a pre-event Voice of Customer (VOC) survey. Nick Turk, Director of IQS & Six Sigma at Bridgestone Americas, then discussed "Blended Learning at Bridgestone Americas," an account of the Blended Learning challenges and successes at Bridgestone.

After a short break, Bill Hathaway, Founder and CEO of MoreSteam.com, presented "Building Your Blended Learning Training Model," a wide-ranging overview that covered the definition and history of LSS Blended Learning, the components of Blended Learning models, simulations and practice-based materials, and best practices of LSS deployments. This talk was immediately followed by an hour-long open Q&A session featuring a panel of Blended Learning experts: Nick Turk, Bill Hathaway, David Graham (Manager, Business Process and CMBB at Schneider Electric), and B.K. Johnson, MBB and Vice President, Plan Services, Fidelity Investments.

As the morning ended, attendees received a draft copy of MoreSteam's Lean Six Sigma Blended Learning Playbook, a compendium of best practices, details and resources for companies who are interested or involved in Blended Learning.

The Afternoon Simulation Demo

Following lunch, MoreSteam.com ran a three-hour demo of the SigmaBrew DMAIC simulation to demonstrate how deployments use practice-based classroom simulations in their Blended Learning programs. Eight teams of 2-4 players competed to win the Define phase of SigmaBrew DMAIC. After several hours of work, the participants gathered for an open discussion of lessons learned. MoreSteam then announced the final team scores, which were based on multiple criteria, including the amount of resources spent on each phase option and the quality of answers to the phase tollgate questions.

While the competition was close, the first-place award went to Nick Turk of Bridgestone, Nathan Freeman of Peterbilt Motors Co. and Nancy Hyer of Vanderbilt University (pictured on above). After a modest acceptance speech, the winners received their choice of amazingly cool SigmaBrew merchandise.

The Nashville Lean Six Sigma Community

Bridgestone Americas is keen to build a local community to regularly meet and discuss Lean Six Sigma topics. The 46 attendees, who represented a cross section of practitioners from manufacturing to insurance to finance to academia, included deployment leaders, Master Black Belts, Black Belts and even Green Belts. Participants came from Bridgestone, CAT Financial, Asurion, BASF, Nissan North America, CVS Caremark, Dell, LP Building Products, Healthways, Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority, Perot Systems, Peterbilt, Schneider Electric and Vanderbilt University.

At the mini-conference, the group has decided to continue on with a second meeting in Nashville in the near future. If you're interested in learning more, contact MoreSteam.com, and we will be glad to get you in touch with the Nashville community organizers.

Would you like to host or organize a similar event?

MoreSteam.com is planning several similar educational events in other locations in 2009. If your company would be interested in co-sponsoring a mini-conference, and developing a local community of LSS practitioners, we would be glad to discuss such an opportunity with you. Contact MoreSteam.com today!