You Can Find Me at Geno's!

I'm leaving tomorrow for the Society for the Technological Advancement of Reporting's Fall Conference in Philadelphia. It's been three years or so since I had a "Cheese Whiz With" at Geno's, so that'll likely be my first stop on the way from the airport.

There's two conferences a year I will never miss, the spring and fall STAR conventions. Immediately precedent to my first meeting, I was working myself harder than Rick Perry's hairsylist, trying to collect all the ducats I could before my chosen profession went the way of piano neckties and Vanilla Ice. After my return from the STAR spring symposium in Vancouver, having spent the week swapping stories and scotches with titans of the industry, I garnered a completely new outlook on my profession that I maintain to this day, court reporting as a business rather than a hobby.

At most state functions, everyone is petrified to speak about specifics and practices, lest your next door neighbor move in on your turf; that, and in Texas we spend most of our convention time in mind-numbing continuing education learning how to interpret our damn format manual. Thanks to STAR, I now have the opportunity to candidly bounce ideas off the sharpest sticks in the court reporting drawer with none of the backbiting so prevalent with local associations. Oh, and did I mention I also got to hike a glacier in New Zealand and snorkel the Great Barrier Reef?

If you're a CaseCATalyst user, I highly recommend you join. It may be too late for Philly, but we'll be in Vegas next April! Visit www.staronline.org for more info.

"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." -- Groucho Marx