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Standing from left to
right in the photo: Mark Edstrom, Margaret Lamb, Jessamy Town,
Abelardo Rodriguez, Angelina Snodgrass, Ingrid Perry-Houts,
Cari Bower, Todd Selby, Mary Ann Priester, Melinda Peraza, Nich
Thompson, Julie Rodriguez, Elizabeth Guzman, Isaac Mankita.
Kneeling from left to right: Hector Hernandez, Keely Wachs,
Joshua Bloom, Natali Clarke. |
Thank You to Conference
Staff
By Joshua Bloom, "Alternatives
for the Americas" Conference Coordinator
The stunning success of "Alternatives
for the Americas: A Dialogue" is due in no small measure to the deep
commitment of conference staff, most of whom were unpaid for their
efforts. The conference was organized in seven short weeks on the
tightest of budgets. Thus, an extra effort was required at every turn
to achieve the quality of event our participants deserved.
Central to this endeavor
were three graduate students, Shannon Nuttall in Education, Ingrid
Perry-Houts in Latin American Studies, and Angelina Snodgrass in
Sociology, who completed the thankless task of overseeing the arrangement
of countless logistical details, from translation and room set up
to meals and transportation. In an event such as this, the logistics
are as crucial as they are mundane and the conference would not
have been possible without this exceptional effort. Other graduate
students as well as recent graduates that contributed significantly
to the event were Autumn Alvarez on publicity and transportation;
Kirstie Dorr on ushering; Dwight Dyer, Flavio Feferman, Misha Klien,
and Adrienne Pine on translation; Sandy Nichols, Leah Rosenbloom,
and Chris Selig on transportation; Abelardo Rodriguez on the Mexican
press; and Tse Sung Wu on photography for the event.
A team of undergraduate interns
played instrumental roles in both organizing the event and implementing
it with finesse. They put up posters, prepared mailings, set up
rooms, put up signs, and ushered the public forum. Taken alone,
some of the details attended to by these interns might have been
overlooked. But together, they comprised the material context for
the dialogue. From the arrangement of cookies on trays to the keeping
of time, it was these interns' enthusiastic attention to detail
which gave the conference its shine. The core team of interns was
Cari Bower, Natali Clarke, Elizabeth Guzman, Michele Joyce, Benji
Paradewalai, Julie Rodriguez, Todd Selby, Nich Thompson, and Keely
Wachs. In addition, Neia Banks, John Gonsalves, Shoshona Mauro-Sachs,
Lakshmi Nair, Jennifer Shaw, Jennifer Torres and Ronit Treves were
instrumental in making the public event a success.
CLAS regular and consultant
staff also played a critical role in pulling the conference together.
Isaac Mankita, Acting Vice-Chair of the Center for Latin American
Studies oversaw all aspects of conference planning and management.
Jessamy Town led the charge on press and publicity for the event.
Yingzhao Liu's powerful poster design gave the conference its face.
Mark Edstrom crisply documented the conference on audio and video,
and along with Jessamy Town, designed a web site to disseminate
this information afterwards. Greig Guthey documented the event photographically
and in print. Other CLAS staff that contributed significantly to
the event were Hector Hernandez on ushering, Margaret Lamb on transportation
and logistics, Melinda Peraza on ushering, Mary Ann Priester on
transportation and logistics, and Dio Ramos on reception.
Finally, several vendors
went out of their way to provide key services for the event. These
are Lincoln Cushing at Inkworks, Jan Douglass and Mollie Drake at
the Claremont, Gary Gerard at Accent on Languages, Ana Herreira
at STA travel, and last but not least, Wendy and Warren at I-House.
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