My first job after college was as product assurance engineer but quality did not become my career until I began associating with ASQ six years after graduation. Though I was able to adequately fulfill my job responsibilities, I lacked the overarching understanding of the quality professionals’ importance within an organization. This realization came to me as I began utilizing the resources provided by ASQ. The single greatest resource for quality knowledge and career development has come from conferences.
As a young engineer, ASQ’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement served as my preferred source for quality knowledge, and now as a seasoned professional it still fulfills that same purpose. Having transitioned jobs several times in my career, I have learned that is takes up to a year or more to fully appreciate an organization’s culture and understand how it operates. Likewise, it took me numerous visits to the WCQI before I fully understood and appreciated all that it had to offer. To my delight—and in the spirit of continuous improvement—ASQ now provides a Welcome Session that allows those less experienced with this conference to shorten their learning curve.