Getting Started....

April 4, 2007

Dear Colleagues,

Greetings from the RID conference in San Francisco! The conference has been amazing so far, and it’s only the second day. Last night’s opening ceremony was everything one might expect, and then some…there were dancing girls and go-go boots, musical numbers, the Village People made an appearance (naturally) – did you know they could sign? Norma Lewis won the Distinguished Service Award.

Tina Buchanan, Susie Friberg (your new Member at Large), and I will be sharing bits of our experience with those of you who are interested. Our webmistress, Dot Hearn, has set up a blog, and we will be contributing to it for the rest of the conference.

This morning I went to a workshop on interpreting for various religions (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism). The presenter was the well-respected David Bar-Tzur. Some of you may know him from his encyclopedic website, www.theinterpretersfriend.com. It is a compendium of an amazing variety of information useful to interpreters. I learned a great deal from the workshop, and the nice thing is that the content from his Power Point has been uploaded to his website, so everyone can look up information and vocabulary. I also went to a “graphic language” workshop given by a fabulous Deaf presenter, Franky Ramont. Can I just say that Steve Marceno was hysterically fun to sit next to?

Then it was on to learn how to be a better president for all of you at an invitational workshop for presidents and vice-presidents. Angela Jones and Jimmy Beldon had lots of good advice I will share with the rest of the Board when we have our “retreat” at the end of this month.

Oregon is well-represented at this conference. Many interpreters are here, Jena Paslay from Western Oregon University is one of the student representatives (Ruann Wood, former ORID board member, is one of the coordinators for support staff), Julie Simon and Catherine Thomas will each be presenting a workshop tomorrow, Jaci Dion will be involved with the Video Interpreting Committee’s forum. But we are a drop in the bucket of this huge gathering of more than 2,000 attendees. Awe-inspiring!

Having a great time, wish you were here! (If you are here, don’t miss our group photo Sunday night at 7:30 p.m., meet at the door to the Region V Caucus!)

Vicki Darden
President

Here are some thoughts from Tina Buchanan:

I LOVE the opening ceremonies at the RID National Conference. Many of us spend our days going from job to job not seeing another interpreter. OR we get a chance to team with someone and as soon as the job is finished, we are both speeding off our seperate ways to another appointment.
At the opening ceremonies we have a chance to see the biggest gathering of people in our profession! There were well over 1,000 interpreters in that room tonight and it felt GREAT! Interpreting students, new interpreters, seasoned interpreters, k-12, freelance, and CDI's all sharing the same space and all gathered for the same reason - to learn together. If that doesn't get you inspired, than nothing will.


I'm a big people watcher. It's why I like the airport and walking downtown. The National Conference is a people watchers mecca! One of my favorite things to see are all of the friends and collegues greeting each other the first day or two. Sit in the lobby for awhile and you will see hugs, smiles, laughter and how are you's galore. People are greeting friends the see everyday, some they haven't seen for awhile - people they went to school with, previous co-workers, - and people they only see when you both show up at the national conference. Hands are moving, faces are smiling and it feels like one big happy interpreting family.