I didn’t sleep well on Friday night, but I had to get up early for the PCRID conference in Annapolis. I ended up getting there at 8:00, about half an hour before the keynote was scheduled to begin, so I socialized with the co-workers who were manning my company’s booth - and I also chatted with people who used to work for my company but transferred to a rival company. It was good to see them again, at least.

The opening meeting was fun. Janet Bailey did a slide show about the history of RID - nobody has really recorded in pictures just how the profession of interpreting came to be, so she gathered some old photographs she managed to find and showed them off. She also asked those present to dig through their archives and contribute whatever they could find, as she’s hoping to create a book detailing the history of RID and the interpreting profession. She pointed out that even though RID was founded in 1964, nobody really put down “interpreter” on their tax forms until the late 1970’s - prior to that they would always have other duties that were their “real” jobs, and they’d interpret in addition to that. After Janet’s presentation, Lauren Potempa, the current PCRID president (who I co-interpreted with for a meeting some years back), gave a State of the Association speech which wasn’t really memorable enough for me to tell you about it. I earned 0.1 CEU’s each for the slideshow presentation and the speech - in RID, an hour is equal to 0.1 CEU’s, and we have to earn 8 CEU’s in a 4-year period.

The next item on the agenda was the business meeting, which I figured would be fabulously boring. So I went back out to my company’s booth, which had a pretty good location, and chatted with the people there. It turned out one of the people who was supposed to work the booth hadn’t turned up, so instead of milling about and relaxing I got behind the table and actually did work. I was there for a couple of hours at least, which I’m not sure I’ll be compensated for…I know the people who were scheduled to be there got paid for their time, but I think the compliments from the president and HR director (who were there) is all the appreciation I’m going to get. It was fun though, we had a bunch of prizes to raffle off so I had a lot of people coming by to sign up for things.

In the afternoon, I went to a workshop given by Betty Colonomos called “CDI and HI: Who Does What?” (That’s Certified Deaf Interpreter and Hearing Interpreter.) I’ve never worked with a deaf interpreter, so I was hoping to find out about the mechanics, protocol, etc. Instead the workshop seemed to be geared directly to CDI’s (there were several present), and I felt like the hearing attendees were only there so we could tell the CDI’s about our perspective - not to do any actual learning ourselves. Betty was great to watch though, I’d have thought she was Deaf if she hadn’t mentioned early on that she’s a CODA. Unfortunately somebody in the back of the room wasn’t fluent in sign and was using an FM system, and the voice interpreters were seated just a little bit in front of me so for part of the time I had my fingers in my ears so I wouldn’t be distracted by them whispering into the FM system’s microphone. It was an interesting workshop, and I earned 0.3 CEU’s for it, but I did note on the evaluation that I wished there could have been more information for the hearing interpreters who were there.

Afterward I went back to my company’s table to say goodbye, and since one of the people there was supposed to be at the DC Eagle that night I said I’d see him later. I was sleepy from not having slept well but I went straight to the bar, which was very easy - Route 50, where Annapolis is, turns into New York Ave, where the bar is, so I just had a straight shot all the way there.