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Stakeholder Input Session was a huge success!

(Originally published on the MTBOK Project Managers blog at: http://mtbok.blogspot.com/)

You may know that on Thursday, September 24th we held an MTBOK Stakeholder Input Session open to the public in Orlando, FL. We filled a double room, and representatives from all of the MTBOK Steward organizations (AMTA, ABMP, AMTA COS, FSMTB, MTF, and NCBTMB) were present including ABMP's own Les Sweeney.

The idea of holding ad open to the public meeting at the AMTA convention site gave a lot of massage therapists the opportunity to participate just as we had hoped. I did see a number of name tags with the "Public" identifier on them and I talked to one attendee who had come a long way to attend - so I'm happy that we got outside attendance.. We also were told that more than 40 attendees had returned their registrations for CE classes to attend, so we know we had interest!

I wish I had exact attendance, but I don't. ... I do know we had more than 100 since all the chairs were occupied, and we had some standing, but I don't have an exact count. Its not bad that we could get a number nearly 10% of the total convention attendees! I think the work is very important, and I'm glad that we have so many people willing to tell us what they think.

All of our Task Force members (see "Who we are" at www.mtbok.org) were present, and after a brief introduction, we broke into 4 large groups with 2 Task Force members recording and facilitating the stakeholder input at each group.

We came away from the session enthused and energized, and from my perspective moving around the room, I suspect that a lot of the attendees felt the same. The positive energy and interest was palpable, and the interaction was great.

What we got out of the session far exceeded our expectations, and we couldn't be more delighted. We spent the next morning (and some of that night) organizing and going over the notes from the sessions. The Task Force facilitators presented each of the notes they took, we discussed each, and talked about how of the comments would impact the MTBOK itself.

In the end, we have a list of updates we are making, and several items that need to be further researched and/or discussed before we take final action.

We also shared a number of less specific thoughts from the meeting - how the participants seemed to feel about the job thus far, and what "themes" we saw as a result of the discussion.

If any of you reading this were in attendance, Id love to hear what you thought. Everybody keep in mind that although this was our only scheduled in-person input session, we have a simple and easy way to comment on the MTBOK itself via an online form. Both the MTBOK itself, and access to the comment form are available at our website: http://www.mtbok.org.

Im working now on organizing and tracking the comments and changes we receive. Over the next week or so Im hoping to catch up on responding to comments we have already received. Our intention is to respond to all comments... at least as long as the volume of input can be managed. So if you have provided input and haven't heard back in the next couple of weeks - let me know.

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Comment by Chip Hines on September 28, 2009 at 8:46am: Mike - I agree, and as Project Manager, there are a couple of things I would do differently - if the situation permitted. Because we had an aggressive schedule and because of the schedules of the task force, we didnt have a face to face kickoff meeting at the start of the project - something I always do. Our schedule firmed up in mid summer, but task force commitments prevented a meeting then. The AMTA convention timing offered us both a public stakeholder input venue and a place to meet face to face. The Task Force scheduled their times, and so we met face to face for the first time at the convention.

My original plan was to do 8 tables with one Task Force member at each, but the day before, the task force came up with a better idea. Since we had done the work mostly in two sub-teams, they felt putting 2 TF members, one from each team at 4 tables we would ensure full coverage. I think it worked great.

Re the high noise, er, energy levels, and the single room, we were late enough in the schedule to not have as much flexibility in the availability of convention time slots and room resources.

In the area of lessons learned, I think breakout rooms would have been a better approach. I also think we should have allowed a little more time in the schedule partly for a quick overview of the document and partly for more input time. Finally, I wish I had checked to see if we could have provided CE hours, particularly since our time made it necessary for attendees to forgo other CE opportunities.

Thanks for your comments - I hope we hear more! Most importantly, I hope those reading about this event will understand that we really mean it when we say we want your comments on the MTBOK, and we are working to get them. The best, and easiest way to get your specific MTBOK comments to us are by going to the mtbok.org site and clicking on the link to our comment form. I did a quick viewing of the form and I hope you will agree it is quick and easy, although you do need to be able to reference the part of the MTBOK you are commenting on. Thanks again.

Comment by Mike Hinkle on September 28, 2009 at 12:03am: Hi Chip,
It was very well attended and everyone seemed to participate. I wish there had been break out rooms (like at CVOP) for each set of 2 tables and task force members, as one hundred plus voices made the room very "lively".
Otherwise, it was a great start!

Comment by Darcy Neibaur on September 27, 2009 at 9:40pm: Thank you so much Chip for this update. I was not in attendance at the meeting. I was very much curious as to what happened. Hopefully others who did attend the meeting will comment. I do hope so as I want to know.