NCRA Convention 2013 in Nashville. Day 3. August 9, 2013.

Taking pictures with the past president Doug Friend and current secretary Stephen Zinone at the NCRA Installation of Officers and Directors 2013

Today’s events were all about steno seminars and really getting into the nitty-gritty of what the NCRA Convention and Expo is all about.

We woke up really early at 6 a.m. and grabbed breakfast. The roster for steno workshops had started early and I went to “The Internet is a Captioner’s Best Friend” seminar at 7:15 a.m. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it very useful because the majority of the room was filled with a lot of stenographers who didn’t know what an app or Dropbox was. -_____- And the tech guy couldn’t figure out how to connect to the Internet in order to run the powerpoint presentation… o_0 I did pick up a few new things though like MiFi and Google search tips though. The things that I did learn that were new to me were useful though.

From 9 to 11 a.m., we attended the Installation of Officers and Directors, including the new NCRA president. It just so happened that Stan Sakai was sitting right in front of me! I chatted him and took pictures. The keynote speaker was funny, but he was very long-winded and the room was freezing! As usual, it was interesting to hear all the speeches and see the new president being installed. This year, Nancy Varallo was the new president and her husband, Ed, installed her into the role.

Ed and Nancy Varallo. What a steno power couple!

Stan and I:

Cynthia and I ate lunch at Paisano’s Pizzaria & Vino that overlooked the river boat cruise in the resort. It was really nice to sit in some sunlight and chat about court reporting over pizza and soup.

After lunch, we attended a seminar called “A Futurist Looks at the Freelancer”. We were both really looking forward to this seminar because it seemed the most promising and useful to our careers. To our big disappointment, the actual content at the seminar didn’t fit its description at all! It was rubbish. Only the last 5 minutes of the presentation were actually interesting and what the entire seminar should have been about — he talked about how in the future, instead of lugging actual steno machines to work, we will be just using our fingers to steno in the air and it will all be recorded electronically. That idea would actually be SO amazing. It is so cool. Plover is cool too.

I really hope this invention comes true so that I can just steno wherever I go. The speaker did a brief demonstration of how the technology works. I’m sure everyone in the room was awestruck with how incredible this technology would be and how it would revolutionize the steno world:

Then we attended Ed Varallo’s seminar called “Creating the Demand for Draft Transcripts”. This seminar was soo good! There were lots of good briefs and ideas that Ed shared with us that made sense and would be very applicable in my own stenoing. I also met Melody at the seminar! Cynthia and I chatted and took pics with Ed and Melody.

Next up, we headed to “The Ins and Outs of Stadium Captioning” together. I have always been so interested in captioning and so when I saw this on the agenda for the day, I just had to be there. Cynthia also wanted to take a look and see what it would be about. It turned out to be so-so in terms of the information that I got. However, I did really enjoy listening to Karyn Menck speak. I think she’s sort of like my idol because she does stadium captioning and was talking about how she takes her daughter to work sometimes because her daughter can immediately tell her what popular hit song is playing so that Karyn can right away find the lyrics and steno them. She’s won speed contests. Also, we share the share name, well, kind of. :3 After this seminar, we took more pictures with Ksenija, Stan, and Marc Greenberg.

By evening, we went back to our hotel room to freshen up. It was Cynthia’s birthday and we met her friend Sally in the Magnolia Lobby. Sally was kind enough to take us out for Cynthia’s birthday. We ate at a nice restaurant called Midtown Cafe. We ate so much! I had a Chocolate Martini, a bit of the Mixed Organic Greens salad, crab cakes with cheese grits :D, and an apple dessert of Julia Child’s. So full! We finally returned to the hotel at 10 p.m. and spent the rest of the night chatting a little bit before falling asleep.