Four’s Not a Crowd with Vicky
You’ll rarely catch me without my sweet Vicky AKA my Victor Reader Stream. I changed the otherwise masculine named device to a more feminine based on my strong feelings for her.
Last week, Vicky and I expanded our relationship a bit. We tried a little experimentation, you know, just to keep things interesting.
I brought Vicky into what I will call a group experiment. . It was quite a big step for not only her, but frankly, me too. I wasn’t sure if either of us would be able to handle the pressures and the awkwardness that came with the date. Neither of us wanting to disappoint the other, and yet excited and intrigued by the unknown.
Last week, Vicky joined my two chapter mates and I in a presentation about the media.
What did you think I was talking about?
Anyway…
As I mentioned in a prior post, my MCCB colleagues and I were presenting a workshop during the Pennsylvania Council of the Blind state convention. The exact topic was “Building Relationships with the Media.” As part of our presentation, we decided to interview several members of the local media that we met with to improve the coverage of our stories. More than often, the media tended to focus only on what they considered was “the story.” From their words, they are often looking for “drama.” The problem for us as an advocacy organization is that the drama often over took the story and the issues weren’t properly represented.
During our presentation we used various clips from those interviewed along with actual audio from news segments featuring our council as well as other edited audio to stress many of the various lessons learned during our meeting. We concluded with news clips and articles appearing after our various meetings with the media to illustrate the extent of what we believe was a success.
I edited all of the audio files in Gold wave and played directly from Vicky. In my mind this process is comparable to using a Power Point slide show. The audience consisting mainly of people who are visually impaired and blind, made this the ideal place to experiment.
It went over very well despite the initial volume issue which I later found out was due to the hotel sound guy plugging Vicky’s output into the wrong mixer input.
Vicky was even ready to act as DJ during the after banquet dance party, but I ended up running that from the laptop based on the less than perfect output during the presentation.
I just love showing off my sweet Vicky, she’s so hot!
