REPORT SignWriting Annual Meeting, January 7, 2006

Mon Jan 9 17:49:47 UTC 2006

SignWriting List
January 9, 2006

REPORT: SIGNWRITING ANNUAL MEETING, January 7, 2006

We had a great Board Meeting! I really enjoyed it. Nine board members  
discussed SignWriting in 2005, for three hours, at a beautiful  
restaurant in La Jolla, California. It was wonderful seeing everyone  
again. Our Board Members include myself, my father, my mother, and 6  
family friends. Six of us have been on the Board for over 30 years.  
Our organization began in 1974.

In the meeting, we talked about the Treasurer's Report, and how much  
money we took in and out in 2005. We discussed the meeting we had in  
2005, which included a special guest, Dr. Ingvild Roald, from Norway,  
who presented her work to our Board members last year....We discussed  
Ingvild's work in Norway in 2005, which was quite extensive.

SignWriting in Norway
http://signwriting.org/norway/norway.html

We voted in the same officers (grin). Val will still be at her  
computer in 2006 - ha!

Everyone shared their year with us, as we ate lunch.... The food was  
very good. It is a shame all the List members could not have joined  
us for lunch...grin....;-)

During desert and coffee (smile ;-),  I started my presentation about  
what we accomplished in 2005. I gave everyone a copy of our Year-End  
Report:

Year-End Reports
http://signwriting.org/forums/sponsors/year/

I explained that SignWriting spread very fast in 2005 to new  
countries in Europe, such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and new  
languages within countries, such as Switzerland, that is now using  
SignWriting for both German-Swiss and French-Swiss Sign Languages,  
and Belgium, for both French-Belgian Sign Language and Flemish Sign  
Language. I explained that there were so many new events all over the  
world, that our Year-End Report could only focus on a few projects in  
Europe, but that I hoped to write other Year-End Reports later, for  
our records, that will list other projects around the world,  
including projects in Brazil, Nicaragua, the United States, Canada,  
Ireland, England, France and more.

We discussed the First European SignWriting Symposium, held in  
Brussels, Belgium on July 21-22, 2005. Everyone was amazed at the  
whole event, which was a great deal of work to put together for the  
Organizing Committee. We all send our thanks for the Committee's  
contribution of time and effort...It was a successful event and I  
felt proud to be able to tell our Board Members about it...smile...

We also discussed the presentations at the ICED 2005 conference in  
Maastricht, Netherlands, in July 2005. Congratulations to all of you  
for your presentations!

SignWriting in Europe
http://signwriting.org/europe/

SignWriting Symposium
http://signwriting.org/europe/esws2005/

SignWriting Presentations at ICED 2005
http://signwriting.org/europe/iced2005/

We discussed Stefan's new book, which is quite beautiful. I passed  
the book around, and each Board Member looked at the book carefully,  
page by page...Everyone is so impressed with the beautiful  
illustrations that Stefan did!! And one Board Member told me that for  
the first time, he really understands SignWriting (grin), because of  
Stefan's excellent diagrams!

SignWriting in Germany
http://signwriting.org/germany/germany.html

Everyone was also amazed at the expensive hard-backed publishing of  
Stefan's book, and so we send a special thank you to the publisher,  
Birgit Jacobsen in Hamburg, Germany, for the impressive and  
attractive book, which is helping SignWriting so much...I am sure  
that the use of the book will spread in 2006. Thank you, Birgit, for  
the lovely publication!

Publisher Birgit Jacobsen
http://www.gebaerden.de/produkte/gebaerdenschrift.html

We discussed the work in Flemish Sign Language, at the Kasterlinden  
Bilingual School in Brussels, and I explained that we posted a  
beautiful PowerPoint presentation, by Kathleen Heylen and Sara  
Geudens, about the Deaf children learning SignWriting in Flanders on  
the web, free for anyone to download:

Download PowerPoint Presentation
http://signwriting.org/belgium/kasterlinden12.html

And then SignPuddle was discussed at length with great admiration and  
everyone was really excited about it. We all are happy to see how it  
is helping SignWriting spread around the world...Steve Slevinski has  
changed our lives for the better, by his inspired design of  
SignPuddle, bringing SignWriting quickly to people without requiring  
downloading and installing software...More people are using broadband  
(a very fast internet connection, such as DSL or cable) and this  
gives people immediate access to creating signs, without having to  
learn how to download and install...SignPuddle became a popular  
SignWriting-watering-hole in 2005 where people can come together to  
share:

SignPuddle Online
http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle

And I explained that Steve is now inspired, creating a new version of  
SignPuddle, version 2.0, which is something for us to look forward to  
in 2006!

James Short, one of our Board Members, told us about Harkle.com too,  
which is a new web site that searches for captioned video on the web:

Harkle
Find Captioned Media
http://www.Harkle.com

James Short developed Harkle because he works with captions...James  
creates video with captions in multiple languages, and is interested  
in captioning video with SignWriting in 2006. Harkle is the name of  
his special web site for searching for other captioned videos on the  
web. If anyone has some captioned videos, and would like others to  
know about it, then go to Harkle.com to tell James about it, and he  
will list it on Harkle.com.

Submit Your Media to Harkle
http://www.harkle.com/submit.php

Steve Slevinski, developer of SignPuddle, did the programming for the  
search engine that is used on Harkle.com, so James, Steve and I are  
working together...I am hoping that in 2006 video captioned with  
SignWriting will be on Harkle, bringing a new era of videos captioned  
in SignWriting...

So thank you, Steve, for your wonderful programming on Harkle, and of  
course, on SignPuddle. It is amazing working with you!!

It was really gratifying for me, to hear the positive comments from  
our Board Members.

I felt like our List members were there too, with us, in spirit ;-)

2006 is starting out well...smile...

Thank you for reading my report!

Val ;-)

Valerie Sutton
Sutton at SignWriting.org

1. SignWriting
http://www.SignWriting.org
Read & Write Sign Languages

2. SignBank
http://www.SignBank.org
Sign Language Database Software

3. SignPuddle
http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle
Sign Language Dictionaries on the Web

4. MovementWriting
http://www.MovementWriting.org
Read & Write Movement & Gesture

SignWriting Literacy Project
Deaf Action Committee for SignWriting
Center For Sutton Movement Writing
Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA
tel: 858-456-0098....fax: 858-456-0020

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