I Love it When a Plan Comes Together

[Anthony D. Frisolone]

After weeks of planning, the second semiannual student seminar that I was in charge of organizing was held today. The event was held at the Federal Courthouse where I work and It was called the Basics of Writing Multivoice Dictation. I came up with the topic as a result of students writing to me saying that the schools weren't doing enough to give them multivoice dictation. Again, no fee was charged to any of the 63 students that attended. 93 students registered for the event in total.

So, I enlisted the help of fellow court reporters and instructors to help me with the dictation for the event. We also had representation from Stenograph, Eclipse, and Realtime Coach. Marybeth Everhart came up from Maryland to give her presentation. In addition to three hours of dictation, the students got free breakfast and we had a pizza lunch for five bucks apiece.

The biggest homerun came when one student's husband volunteered to video record the entire three hours of dictation for free which will then be edited down and sold at a reasonable cost to all students. He also took a ton of pictures.

First of all, I want to thank the Chief Clerk of my court, Bob Heinemann, for allowing this to happen. Second, I want to than Hon. Nicholas Garaufis for allowing us to use his courtroom for the presentations and the dictation practice. Third, and not last, I want to thank Chief of Security Joe Francis for making all the security arrangements so that everyone got in the building without a problem.

The following persons should also be recognized for their efforts and assistance, because without them, none of this would be possible.

Dictators:
Michelle Houston, instructor
Fran Magarelli, instructor
Karen Santucci, instructor
Audrey Summer, instructor
Eric Pollyea, Official Court Reporter, NYS Supreme Court

Software Vendors:
Geoff Sandvik, Stenograph
Mike Starkman, Eclipse
Marybeth Everhart, Realtime Coach

Student Volunteers:
Marci Glotzer
Kathleen Trinidad
Ida Rivera

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

Let's do this again soon!!!!

[Kathleen Trinidad]

Anthony,
I wanted to thank you so much for yesterday. I had a great time at the seminar and, as always, I learned a ton from everyone who came to speak.
I look forward to future seminars, and if I'm not a student by the next seminar (God help me if I am!), you can always call me to help out.

[Kyung]

That's awesome Anthonty. Glad things went so well.

[Judy]

Anthony,

FIrst off, trying to type with 1.5 hands, so excuse typos (phew, that took a while to type).

Not commenting on your blog at all, I'm glad to see you didn't get disgusted and forget about us. I'm glad to see you're still here!

Judy