The Doctor is in, June 18 from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm.  Dr. W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician credited with helping to turn Japan into a modern manufacturing powerhouse, will be with us (in spirit) covering the following topics: The Red Bead Experiment, Lessons of the Red Bead Experiment, and the Funnel Experiment. Intrigued? Learn more and/or register here.  Pizza and videos provided free on Deming Night compliments of The Menlo Institute.

Project managers have been labeled as the bureaucrats, the paper-pushers, the boring people, the drones of the status reports. How do project managers change the perception and the reality of their contributions? Find out at the June 24 PMI meeting at the Holiday Inn-North Campus in Ann Arbor.  The meeting starts at 6:00pm.  The speaker will be Marianne Clauw.  To find out more and to register visit the Huron Valley Chapter PMI website.

Selling Usable Software - The Bottom Line.  We know it is important to make products that are easy to use and understand.  However, if you want to get top management to listen to you, you need to illustrate how incorporating usability concepts into your products and software will positively affect the bottom line. 

Classes, Classes, Classes.  The summer schedule is out and the following public classes are available: Software Project Management, Writing Story Cards, Secrets of Software Success, Capturing Requirements in Use Cases, Object Technology Overview, Introduction to XP and Six Sigma Software. 

And you thought speech recognition was a radical new concept.  As you know, at Menlo we are always on the lookout for disruptive technology.  How would you like to surf the net just by thinking about it?  Georgia State University researchers claim to have come up with just such a device.

Our continuing favorite free event is also on the schedule again, if you haven't seen it yet, now is the time.  The next 90-minute Taste of Success Seminar is scheduled for Wednesday, June 12 at Menlo in Ann Arbor. Learn the top six reasons why software projects fail and how to avoid them.  This event is free for those that pre-register.  

Michigan Extreme Programmers Enthusiasts (MXPE).  The June MXPE meeting will be held on Thursday, June 12^th from 5:30 - 7:30 pm. The topic of this meeting will be “Six Sigma XP.”  The presentation will be given by Tom Meloche at i33 Communications in downtown Detroit.  Additional information can be found here.

MacHack is Back; the annual conference for leading edge developers.  This year James Goebel, co-founder of Menlo, will be one of the speakers. His topic will be "Establishing a Culture of a High Performance Team using XP." For more details on this event click on the MacHack link.