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NAD Conference 2004 Report by TAD
Eye for the Future - 47th Biennial NAD Conference
July 6-11, 2004
Report by TAD Delegates Byron Bridges, Grant Laird, Jr. and Henry Whalen
We went to the NAD Conference in Kansas City, MO. We had the wonderful opportunity to share new ideas with people from other state associations, participate in the discussion forums, and much more!
Highlights from the NAD Conference 2004:
State Associations (SAs): Many SAs have similar issues with recruiting new members, lack of communication from the prior administration, and officers having no formal training regarding leadership and accountability.
We had the opportunity to listen to testimonies from several other SAs on their successes over the past two years. The SA Caucus (SAC) committees plan on having a retreat in Florida next year. After the retreat, advocacy, parliamentary procedures, accountability and other pertinent information will be disseminated to the Board members of SAs which will benefit the SAs in the long run.
Forums: We had the opportunity to participate in all six forums (membership, structure, advocacy, revenue, outreach, and leadership). We think the advocacy and revenue forums had the most heated debates. Then we selected the top five issues from each forum and carried them to the Council of Representatives. NAD will announce the final top 20 issues on their website or magazine in a few weeks. Among the top 20 prioritized issues, we found one in particular very interesting. NAD will work on pushing the U.S. President to officially sign a proclamation for a Deaf History month (March 15th to April 15th).
Fulton III (F3): The F3 committee is working on issues regarding our future with the National Association of the Deaf. Many issues did not carry to the Council of Representatives during the conference. The issues were referred to the F3 committee to review for possible consideration in the long term plan. The F3 committee has been collecting the issues for some time, and they will continue working on this project for a couple of years. In case you were wondering why NAD called it "F3" - NAD had their first "Fulton" meeting in Fulton, Missouri in the 1950s. Then NAD revisited "F1" in Phoenix during the 1990s and they called it Fulton II (F2).
Miss Deaf America: We had 26 women who participated in the Miss Deaf America Pageant 2004, including our Miss Deaf Texas, Kaylie McCallister. She did not make the top 6, but she definitely learned so much during the two-week long event from peers, members and officers. Miss Deaf South Dakota, Erin Casler, won the Miss Deaf America crown.
Region III (Southeast Region) - During the election for the NAD Region III Board Representative, Lynn Null from Oklahoma sought a second term and Byron Bridges and Charles Estes from Texas also were nominated for Region III Board Representative. Lynn Null won the race. Congratulations to her! We will have our NAD Region III Conference in October 2005 in Oklahoma.
Election: Andy Lange was nominated for NAD President and won. Same thing goes for Vice President Mark Apodaca and Treasurer Tom Dillion. We had two secretary nominations and Nancy Rarus won. Congratulations to them all!
Contributions: During the closing banquet, NAD took in over $20,000 in just a couple of hours as part of their capital campaign. We were as excited about it as everyone else.
Exhibitions: NAD had many awesome exhibits during the week such as Sprint, CSD, HOVRS, Sorenson, Harris Communication, MCI, Boundless Communications and more! What's more, they had this cool idea of a silent auction in which many State Associations donated state-theme baskets and all the proceeds went to the Kansas Association of the Deaf (KAD). Lucky for us, Miss Deaf Texas 2001-2003 won our Texas theme bucket. Congratulations to Jeannie Brown- she's currently living in Seattle and works for the ADWAS organization.
We are very proud to say that we saw many Deaf Texans visiting the NAD Conference. There were approximately 1,500 people in attendance during the week. The next NAD Conference will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2006. To learn more about NAD, please go to http://www.nad.org.
We hope to see you at the TAD Conference on June 23rd-26th, 2005 at Intercontinental Hotel, 7th Street, Austin, Texas - don't forget to mark your calendar!
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