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From:
Valerie Sutton Date: Mon Jan 21, 2002 4:10 pm Subject: Report: Annual Membership Meeting Jan. 2002 | |
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SignWriting List January 21, 2002 Dear SignWriting List Members: Yesterday we held our Annual Membership Meeting in my home in La Jolla, California. I wish all of you could have been here! The SignWriting List was mentioned continually throughout the afternoon, since it is playing an important role in the history of SignWriting ;-) We had a pleasant crowd of people who sat around eating snacks and sharing stories. It was so much fun...everyone was laughing and having a great time. It seemed a shame to have to bring out the boring paperwork....But we did, since that was the point of the meeting! ;-) We reviewed the financial "Treasurer's Report 2001" which summarizes the state of our finances. We voted for officers (smile...I have been voted in again, as Executive Director ;-). Then I passed out a new "Year-End-Report 2001", which I wrote last week, which is a summary of all that happened in 2001. I explained each accomplishment, and people asked questions. Everyone enjoyed looking at the Brazilian Encyclopedic Dictionary. I also showed them a wonderful new book on the Brain, that shows SignWriting behind a photo of a Nicaraguan student. We discussed the fact that literacy is being achieved in Nicaragua, Germany and Albuquerque, and most likely, in Brazil too. I discussed the accomplishments in German-Switzerland, the Arabic Nations, Colombia, and Canada. I passed around the booklet "Deaf Children Around the World Express Grief Over the Terrorist Attack". Everyone loved the booklet and expressed how much the world has changed because of September 11. I also told them about Bill Reese capturing our web sites on a CD, and how I feel that has potential. I then brought up the SignBank project, including events that happened just two weeks ago, in 2002. Everyone was fascinated by the fact that FileMaker Corporation has donated software to us, and is interested in working with us on Public Relations (PR). I explained that SignBank will be tested in linguistic research in Switzerland, in Deaf Education with young deaf children in Albuquerque and Germany, with the Deaf Community in Iowa, with a dictionary maker in Washington DC, with a software developer in Brazil, and with a Unicode developer in Ireland. The fact that FileMaker will someday work with Unicode was discussed at length. Everyone started to get excited when I told them that FileMaker Corporation wants us to develop SignBank for Palm Top computers - the handheld computers that are really small...the size of the palm of your hand. There is a computer program called "FileMaker Mobile", that will make it possible to put SignBank at your fingertips - So when I start working with our FileMaker programmer, Todd Duell, in February, I will ask him about that. There will be some work on his part, to make that possible, but it apparently is not that hard to implement, since any program that works in FileMaker on a desktop computer, can also be put into the Palm Top format by a skilled programmer. All of a sudden, everyone started throwing new ideas around. Why don't we do this?....Why don't we do that?....and this and this?.....I stood back and realized how wonderful it all is. I feel so fortunate to witness that SignWriting has a life of its own! I want to thank everyone who uses SignWriting, for your input, your ideas, and your accomplishments ;-) I will post the Year-End-Report-2001 on the web for everyone to read. And I hope to get back to answering all of your email - Thanks for all the great messages! -- Val ;-) Valerie Sutton SignWritingSite: https://www.SignWriting.org SignWriting List Archives: https://groups.yahoo.com/group/sw-l/ To post a message to the SW List: |
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