The TAPING RECORDER June 22, 2001 No. 06-01
News from and about Taping For The Blind Inc.

CONFERENCE REPORT…Jim Martinez, Manager of Radio, recently attended the
International Association of Audio Information Services (IAAIS) conference,
and here is his report:

IAAIS 2001: SOUND GLOBAL COMMUNICATION
by Jim Martinez

I attended the INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDIO INFORMATION SERVICES
(IAAIS) annual conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah, from June 7 -10.
This was the second conference that I attended (last year it was held in
Washington, D.C.). I had the opportunity to see friends from last year and
meet new ones. Reading services around the country have the same questions
that we do, such as: Why don't our listeners call in more often? Why do the
listeners rarely send in their radio when they move or when they no longer
have need for it? Or my favorite, Why do some volunteers act like they run
the place? I'm not going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole!

The topics of some of the workshops were Publicity and Promotion, Internet
Basics, Basics of Funding, Volunteer Basics and a workshop on Listener
Surveys. Some of the material covered in the workshop for surveys was
information I had sent in from what was gathered on our listener survey we
did last year and will do again very shortly.

Taping For The Blind also received an award for BEST SPECIAL PROGRAM. Some of
you may remember that I had selected Christmas stories and had some of you
(the volunteers) read, and I put them together to create a program for our
listeners at Christmas time. I had enough material for two one hour long
programs. The first program I put together was submitted to the IAAIS
awards committee for their consideration. Awards are presented at the
banquet that they hold on the last day of the conference. Our volunteers on
this particular program were Kelly Bennett, Ted Pfister, David Gillmore,
Kandace Shyer, Agnes Hortabagyi, and Elizabeth Cargill. This is the first
time Taping has won an award for a locally produced program. I was very
honored to accept this award on Taping's behalf. I mentioned during my
acceptance speech that next year Taping will be celebrating its 35th
anniversary. This brought a huge round of applause. I was able to get the
president of IAAIS, Ben Martin, to commit to coming to Houston next year
and speak, if we have a dinner or a special celebration (I understand this
is in the works). Just a few months ago the radio reading service in
Pittsburgh celebrated its 25th anniversary and he spoke and gave an award
for their 25 years of service. He said he would do the same for us next year.

There were at least four people I met in Salt Lake that had ties to Houston
in some way and at least two will pay us a visit in the coming months. They
want to see how we do things down here.

When I compare Taping with other reading services, I find us to be not only
top-notch but also very fortunate. Other services are trying their best
with very limited resources. Some reading services only have four recording
booths, some even have as few as two and one service only has one recording
booth. As you can imagine, scheduling can be a nightmare but some reading
services have a low number of volunteers so I guess it evens out. When I
mention to those other services that we have over 200 volunteers and 15
recording booths their eyes widen with envy (or they want to kill me for
having it so easy). No, it's not easy, but it does free up my time to do
creative things like all the holiday specials we have done the past six
months and will continue to do. It also frees up my time to help us convert
to a digital format. This will affect all the volunteers. Get ready, it's
coming! We will train and integrate everyone to record each program onto a
computer. In other words, no more tape of any kind. Also, it will be easier
to correct your mistakes (book readers will love this).

If you have any questions regarding our upcoming survey, the new digital
equipment, or just want to see the award we received, please let me or the
staff know. We are more than happy to talk about any and all of these things.

It was an honor to represent all of you at this year’s conference and I
cannot wait until next year’s conference. Thanks to our volunteers the
blind and visually impaired community in the greater Houston area are able
to have access to the printed word. Thank you for helping us Turn Sight
Into Sound!

EDITOR’S NOTE…Thanks for a great article, Jim! And remember, your comments
and questions about this newsletter are welcome and may be sent to Bob
Bartlett at rlb19@... or given to Cynthia Franzetti for forwarding
the old-fashioned way.

RLB