Kent has started the day off in New Mexico to a group of over 50 attendees and counting. This morning's theme is "Surviving the Great Recession". One of his favorite quotes in reference to the decline of allocated budget to maintenance and operations is from the great philosopher, Billy Joel, who said "The good ol' days weren't always good and tomorrow isn't as bad as it seems.". Re-shifting work approaches, addressing critical needs, properly marketing your department and working smarter are key elements along with data, trends and reports in gaining the wisdom to extend the capabilities of the support departments. What the attendees are looking for today? Networking is the common thread along with learning success stories from other attendees today and from previous city tours. Other comments from registrants say they wish to learn to do more with less resources and budget along with "surviving the endless requests with limited personnel to get them done." Another common theme is streamlining assignments, responses and reporting on what work is, or requested to be, occurring in conjunction with better tracking and classifying needs and accomplishments.
We've got an incredible group and we're looking forward to driving the discussions about how to save time, bridge perception gaps, enhancing the department's image and establishing respected methodologies.

DK
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Lee Prevost, President and co-founder of SchoolDude, is kicking off this morning's session with over 40 attendees. Carl Larson of Snoqualmie has broken in the travelling soapbox and talked about WAMOA. The group is already showing to be impressive and diverse with many wanting to show reports about what they are doing and needs to be done, especially with budget reductions and personnel cuts or re-allocation of resources. This should be a lively and interactive group and we're looking forward to getting into the specific agenda topics to get the ideas flying!

DK
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Kent Hudson, SchoolDude CEO and co-founder, has started out the day with great stories and insight that can only be gathered in directly working with well over 4500 school districts, private schools, colleges and universities. Nods, smiles and laughs have been a great way to start the day...along with coffee and chicken biscuits!

Today's theme is focused on "no naïve whining" and the need for maintenance and operations, physical plants and the business office to avoid simply asking for funds and to put the cart back behind the horse to:

1. Improve your image
2. Establish a respected methodology
3. Educate the decision makers and decision influencers
4. Then ask for money

A perfect lead-in for what today's conversations will focus upon with ideas to save money, proven methods of presentation and best practices!

DK

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Roundtables, Roundtables, and more Roundtables. VSPMA is leading today's discussions regarding Improving Accountability, In House vs Outsourcing, Alternative Scheduling for staff, as well as one invlolving Facility Scheduling. Fran Foster, Wayne Kitchen, Jim Eyerly, and Melody Temple are moderating these helpful and healthy discussions. Forty attendees came back for more today and haven't been able to get enough. That may just be a new record!

After yesterday, it can be said that there are a lot of challenges to overcome here in the state of Virginia just like everywhere else. However, after listening to the stories, experiences, and solutions yesterday and today, many challenges have been met and blasted away. There are still many more to tackle and the road is long and tough. Schools in the state of VA are definitely in good hands and equipped with the right people to lead them through these difficult times.

The moral of the story is if you need something, ask for it and don't back down. If you have the data to back up your needs by tracking what are doing, it can help justify your needs. The worst that can happen is that the board will say, "no." Everyone has needs and if you don't try, you could be passing up an opportunity. The network of schools here in Virginia is quite strong, and VSPMA is a big part of that. The discussions have been very thought provoking and energizing. Everyone has to do more with less, but we have seen and heard so many positive things. Time will tell as the attendees of the events from today and yesterday go back and implement these ideas and best practices that have been exchanged. The sky is the limit and the future is "Rich" with possibilities.

DUDESTRONG,
Paul

We are rockin' and rollin' in Richmond, VA. With one of our largest turnouts this year during the Survivor tour, SchoolDude invades Richmond. Over 60 concerned school professionals attended today's Survivor Tour here in Virginia. Scott Carpenter (pictured) did his level best to get everyone pumped up about finding solutions for the budget crisis everyone is facing these days. He opened the door to the key areas that need to be focused on to turn things around and asked some pretty intriguing questions. The audience is peppered with people who have had success in stemming the tide and we have heard some of their solutions. Justin Turner made a huge impression by following up Scott with his presentation on Capital Planning.

The need for renewing building components is a large chunk of what M&O is concerned with these days and schools need all the help they can get. Justin took them through how TARA modeling can help justify those needs and back it up with proven methodology. Steven Abee drilled into everyone the importance of conducting Preventive Maintenance and having an efficiently run Maintenance Department. These are both important in winning the fight and doing more with what you got. Brad Hunter is wrapping up his Cost Recovery presentation and driving home the point not to give the facilities away for free. Well, I am up next to moderate the discussion on Energy Conservation and tracking the data. It starts with the bills and ends with the bills.

Paul

On the way from Houston to San Antonio, we thought it would be appropriate to stop off at the Space Center to see how the Dudes would react to being in space in case the International Space Station needed easier applications for preventive maintenance and integration with critical alarms to automatically create work orders. We also discovered that we may need to add rockets and capsules to TripDirect and rocket fuel as another utility to be able to track in UtilityDirect. We're always trying to be one step ahead...

We're starting out Day 2 in Houston with Rick Imig of Benchmark4Excellence giving a great breakdown of what to look for when developing statistics for comparing yourself both internally and against your neighbors. What do you include? What about per square foot vs. per student? Does age and size of the organzation really make a difference?

Now it's roundtable time and we're looking at some great subtopics on event management, data and graphing and benchmarks.

DK
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Some of the boys decided to get together to get discussion generation topics, stories and examples together for our upcoming trips around Houston and San Antonio. We told Matt Burris he has to bring fries for everyone since he was making the meeting room smell of McDonald’s.

We’re looking forward to flying out on Monday for the Lone Star State and enjoying a re-visit for some of us to League City.

After that? Oklahoma City and Colorado Springs!

David Kornegay
Senior Applications Engineer, Operations Specialist and
Editor-in-Chief (a.k.a., the "Mayor") - MySchoolDude.com and SchoolDude Resource Sites

We've changed the date of the Seattle Survivor tour stop from May 11-12 to May 18-19.