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This was my second visit to Iran. Having had the great pleasure of attending the 6th ICQM, I was delighted to be invited back this year. Of course a second visit would feel quite different with the trepidation and uncertainty of last year replaced to a large extent by anticipation of the opportunity to meet old friends and the expectation of making new ones.
A really nice feature of the conference is the warm spirit c The conference features a programme of largely parallel presentation sessions and te The conference faced its own special challenge this year with a last minute change being forced on the programme. A little more than a week before the conference began, the venue was required by the President’s Office on the scheduled opening day, and the conference had therefore to be delayed by one day. The task of contacting and rearranging the schedules for 5000 delegates, let alone those of the speakers is a massive undertaking, quite apart from the multitude of logistical and administrative tasks required to make the changes. All this on top of the last minute arrangements and details that inevitably have to be addressed created a potential nightmare for the organisers. It is to the immense credit of all involved that the conference ran so smoothly. Highlights for me were presentations that talked of the development of the 20 year plan for the country, and a presentation that looked at the development of different paradigms. I particularly enjoyed a presentation called ‘Tasting the Sweetness’ in which Marc Antoni van Roon drew parallels between music, quality and change. An image that stuck in my mind was that if we analyse the chemical structure of sugar we will find, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, but we won’t find the sweetness. The sweetness lies in the connections, the space between these chemical elements.
The Desert City of Yazd Last year I had the pleasure of visiting Isfahan and Shiraz, so I was delighted that this year I would be able to visit Yazd for two days. Though I travelled alone, on the second day I was joined by my fellow speakers, Pal Molnar from Hungary and Dzintars Putnis from Latvia.
Yazd is the home of the largest number of people of the Zoroastrian religion , and our guide who is a Zorastrian was able to give us insights into the religion during the tour. He first took us to the Silent Towers which until around 40 years ago were used in the burial of the religion’s followers. The We then visited the Fire Temple. As a child I’d found the idea of the Olympic Flame fascinating, a fire being kept alive between Olympic Games to perpetuate the spirit of the games. In the Fire Temple I found myself mesmerised by a fire which had been burning for 1,500 years. I couldn’t help thinking of all of the people who formed the chain that had kept this fire burning throughout this time. As I looked I wondered what it was that was actually continuous. What connected what I was looking at with the fire that had been created 1,500 years ago? The building, the urn within which the fire burned, and of course the burning wood had all been replaced many times, so what was it that was continuous? I concluded that it was none of these things, indeed nothing tangible, rather it was the connections between the things that are tangible. This was what was so mesmerising. I was looking at connections, the intangible and usually invisible conne Clearly for a city built in the heat of the desert, water is a crucial part of everyone’s life, and it is fitting that the city hosts a water museum. Here we learned of the amazing work carried out in the
As was the case last year I found the experience of the conference, of Iran and its people a joy. In the opening ceremony of the conference, Hesam Aref Kashfi spoke of the friendship and kinship between people involved in the conference, and that he Many thanks to all who made my visit such an enjoyable experience. I wish you well. Steve Unwin |
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7th International Conference of Quality Managers
This conference is a unique event in many ways, Foremost in setting it apart from other conferences is its size, It’s array of sponsoring and supporting organisations is on a scale which exceeds that of even the longest established of quality conferences elsewhere. However it is the size of the audience that has the greatest impact on both the delegates and the speakers. The conference hall, impressive though it is, can accommodate only half of the registered delegates and therefore requires that the entire conference be run twice in order that all five thousand can attend. This repeat running of the conference is its second very special feature and provides a unique opportunity for speakers to learn from and apply their experience of the first conference in their second presentation.
reated between the speakers. This is helped in no small part by a pre-conference dinner in which speakers are each invited to share a little of their background and their planned contribution to the conference. This is a great way of getting to know each other and prepare for the conference ahead.
chnical workshops, hosted in the large main hall and a number of smaller anterooms. These are sandwiched between plenary opening and closing ceremonies. This year the conference featured contributions from far and wide including the Ukraine, India, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Philippines, Canada, USA and the UK, with the keynotes delivered by James Harrington from the USA and Frank Steer from the UK.
This year I had been invited to speak for 90 minutes in the main hall and thus had the opportunity to explore ideas and travel a little further with the audience. The subject was The magic of Uncertainty and we spent the time together exploring the reality of an uncertain world and how our attitude to this uncertainty, for example our denial or acceptance, may impact our ability to create change. It was a delight to meet so many old friends from last year, and to have the opportunity to make so many new ones, and to receive such a warm response to my talk. Incidentally it was the first time I had been asked to sign my business cards!
A special feature of the conference is the session evaluation system. Delegates are encouraged to complete feedback on each of the sessions and this is analysed by a computer system within minutes of the sessions completion. Feedback is then provided at the conclusion of the conference. I was delighted to be the highest scoring invited speaker in the first conference. Unfortunately the changes to the conference schedule meant that having spoken on the first day of the second conference I was unable to attend the second day as I was booked to travel to Yazd.
Yazd is one of the oldest cities of Iran and is something of an oasis set in the desert. I was warned to expect it to be very hot and to take plenty of water. This was good advice, particularly as for me temperatures of 40+ are rather exceptional and for the two days I would be happy to take any opportunity to seek the shade, or better still the cool sanctuary of an underground room. The people of Yazd of course have had to deal with these temperatures for centuries and have developed a number of interesting ways of taming some of the ferocity of the heat and the sun. Many of the older houses are built around a central courtyard which provides the opportunity to use different rooms during the course of the day, or to change the use of rooms with the seasons to take advantage of available shade. 
Additionally many buildings take advantage of the fact that as you dig into the earth the temperature falls quickly, and our guide, Siamak Kolahdouz, was able to find a number of coffee houses that had been set up in these basements and which provided welcome relief from the sun. Other ways in which buildings have been adapted include the use of insulating layers of mud and straw, which depending on the weather may need to be reapplied each year. Perhaps the most famous adaptation to the buildings are the ‘wind catchers’. These are chimneys designed to catch the prevailing wind and direct it down into the buildings. These are a very simple idea, but are remarkably effective providing an early form of air conditioning. Perhaps in these times of global warming we have to question whether the arrays of electrical air-conditioning units which are festooned on the newer buildings of the city represent a real advance.
towers lay on the edge of the city and provide a panoramic view of the city.
ctions between things. I found this to be a powerful insight, as these connections are I believe a key to change, but so often their whisper is drowned out by the shouting of things that are tangible.
building of underground watercourses that transferred water from the mountains into the heart of the city. I was fascinated to see how the idea of the wind catchers on the buildings had also been applied to the design of water storage jugs, which featured the same design of cooling chimneys arranged around their top.
A visit to a Henna factory provided another insight into how an idea can be adopted and applied. In the factory the raw henna is crushed between a series of grinding wheels. One can imagine that in the past these would have been driven by a mule who would have hauled the moving wheel as they travelled their circular path thousands of times per day. It was interesting to see how an electric motor driving a single car wheel had replaced the mule, leaving the rest of the machine as it had been for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.
Fascinating though Yazd was, one of my abiding memories will be the heat. It seemed that no matter how much we drank, within minutes our mouths would be dry and we would be ready for more. Our favourite stopping place became the Silk Road Hotel, whose unassuming entrance sign, gave little to indicate the delightful environment and delicious fruit shakes that were on offer inside.
hoped that Iran would become a second home to us all. I am delighted to share this feeling and hope that I will be able to experience the hospitality of its people again as we share our search for new ways in which we can improve the quality of life for everyone.