Class Attendance Lists

We send an attendance list to every Value-Train class that contains the first and last name and email address of each student in that class.  Students can opt-out of this if they tell us prior to the end of class.

Value-Train Alumni Yahoo Group

We share relevant job leads (only those that specify process improvement training or skills) on the ValueTrainAlumni Yahoo Groups site.  All alumni are invited to post relevant job leads to this group.  Recruiters and employers also increasingly sending job descriptions to us as word of our program spreads.  This is a free service to our job seeking clients.  All graduates will be automatically invited but if you lost your invitation, just email us to be re-invited or click this button.  If you are not a graduate of one of our courses, please do not ask to be admitted.  Those requests are automatically denied.  If you apply using an email address that we don't have we may deny you admittance because we can't identify you but will always ask you who you are.  Simply reply with your name, contact and course information and all will be well.

Click to join valuetrainalumni

All we ask in return is that if you contact anyone about a job as a result of this service, please tell them where you found it and if you find this service useful, to tell us.  If we don't get enough feedback that it is useful we might shut it down.

The Yahoo Groups service also enables us to share ideas and associated files with others interested in these topics.  Emails sent to this group will be sent to every member who wants it.  You can elect to get them as they occur, in a daily digest, or never.  If you join and choose 'never', you can go to the web site and see them at your leisure.

Value-Train Alumni LinkedIn Group

Are you a member of LinkedIn?  I am and think that web networking services like theirs represent a new paradigm in how to stay connected.  I've read that this, and other similar groups have the potential to completely change how recruiting is done.  It will either replace many recruiters or become their primary tool to source candidates.  The jury is still out on that.  

LinkedIn is a web-enabled referral network.  LinkedIn has a 'Groups' feature for people with a common interest. Value-Train Alumni is one such affiliation group.  All Value-Train alumni have been or will be invited to join.  There is no cost from us.  LinkedIn is currently a free service but may charge for some features in the future.  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  

The value of this kind of networking connection is that you can see profiles of who you are connected with and you can request an audience.  Sure you heard everyone's introductions remember that there was a person in your class who you wanted to connect with for some reason but you didn't.  A few days and a few hundred of life's new stimuli later, you can't remember who it was.  Or am I the only person that this happens to??  If they are a member of our LinkedIn group, you can search it by keyword.  Each member's privacy is controlled because you decide what to share about yourself.  You can also contact people you are connected to via others you are connected to.  This system completely eliminates spam.   

My personal linking policy is that I have to have worked with a person to establish a personal link.  Many of our students belong to LinkedIn and invite me to link with them after class.  I have routinely turned these requests down unless we have gone beyond the classroom experience and did some kind of work together on a project.  However, this makes me feel guilty!  This group allows us all to stay connected, as people with a common interest - namely, in quantitative process improvement and graduates of Value-Train.  It also gives me a good way to honor our students connection requests.  If you are a Value-Train graduate and have been rebuffed by me for a LinkedIn connection in the past and have gotten over it, or are just hearing about this click here to join the group. 

LinkedIn is not very sophisticated in their group management features so if you go there and apply for membership, we'll never know it until the next time we happen to go there and look, which could be a month or two, so if you send us a quick email and tell us that you did it, we can let you in quickly.  Even if you are my best friend I won't let you in if you are not a Value-Train alumnus, so please don't apply unless you are. 

https://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/672/722AD81DE8E7/

Process Improvement Special Interest Group

This is for Atlanta area residents only.  Isn't it funny how one thing leads to another?  We get a growing number of requests to join our Alumni Yahoo Group from people who have not been Value-Train students.  Some want access to the job leads, others to the technical interchanges (The cat has our collective tongues on that for now although topics do occasionally erupt). We routinely turn them down since we want that to be an alumni only group.  It appears that there is no existing professional society or organization in Georgia that is devoted to quantitative process improvement.  You can go to monthly meetings on just about everything else.  Occasionally another group will do a talk about it.  Sometimes that's us doing an overview of Lean or Six Sigma.  But these groups don't ever go beyond that.  

In late 2005 I attempted to start a Process Improvement Special Interest Group (PI-SIG).  The idea was to be focused in Atlanta and have periodic meetings with speakers on advanced topics in quantitative process improvement.  No generic overviews here.  This is a group for those who already know the basics and want to know more about Six Sigma, Lean, Theory of Constraints and any other similar subjects. 

We had a lot of initial interest but we got busy and could not follow through.  When nobody volunteered to take the lead, the effort stopped.  The purpose of this article is to encourage anyone with a similar interest and a desire to lead it to contact me at billb@value-train.com.  This is still a good idea and I get asked about the existence of groups like this all the time.  While I can't be the lead right now, I'll support it any way I can.