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Friday progress...
Sep. 10th, 2010 12:57 pmI almost wrote "Saturday progress..." as the subject of this post, because today feels like a Saturday. (Obviously, I am in the wrong time zone.)
I had been getting nervous about the intersection of the ATA conference in Denver at the end of October and the start of the next launch campaign, but that issue seems to have been resolved, according to the latest email from my client.
ATA conferences have a funny effect on the market, which is to say one often gets unexpected calls from new (and old) clients who need some work done in the conference time frame. Perhaps 8-10 years ago, I recall receiving a call literally while I was on the way out the door asking if I would undertake a weekend translation with a pretty nice payday. I politely declined, with no hard feelings.
Established clients call, too, but I usually let them know far in advance that I'll be unavailable during the conference, so there's no anxiety there.
Things get weird once you start being one of those people who do presentations at conferences, because presentations involve a commitment months in advance of the event. A couple-three years ago, I was scheduled to do a presentation at an ATA conference (continuing a streak of having done so for the previous 3-4 years) when a sudden opportunity arose to do a launch campaign in Kazakhstan.
Attending the conference would mean kissing off 5+ weeks of steady work, and although I take my commitments seriously, in my grand scheme of things, conferences are "extracurricular," which is to say: serious enough to spend a couple of thousand dollars for attendance and travel, to spend time designing, preparing, and rehearsing a presentation, and to forego assignments over the 3-4 days I'll be gone. In other words, pretty important. But important enough to forego a launch campaign? I apologized to the organizers and canceled my participation. No hard feelings (at least, that I was made aware of).
By some miracle, a presentation proposal I submitted earlier this year was accepted by the ATA. I had made the proposal in the calm knowledge that no trilingual interpreter would be required for any campaigns for the rest of this year.
My bad.
Shortly after being notified of the acceptance of my proposal, I was offered a campaign, scheduled for October or November. "Which is it?" I asked, with some trembling in my voice. "It's still up in the air," came the answer.
I really didn't want to blow off the ATA again, because that would really be poor form. Canceling once is happenstance; but doing so twice probably wouldn't be considered mere coincidence.
Anyway, I found out today the start of the campaign has slipped past the end of the conference time frame, and it may well be that I'll spend both Thanksgiving and my birthday twelve time zones from here.
Cheers...
I had been getting nervous about the intersection of the ATA conference in Denver at the end of October and the start of the next launch campaign, but that issue seems to have been resolved, according to the latest email from my client.
ATA conferences have a funny effect on the market, which is to say one often gets unexpected calls from new (and old) clients who need some work done in the conference time frame. Perhaps 8-10 years ago, I recall receiving a call literally while I was on the way out the door asking if I would undertake a weekend translation with a pretty nice payday. I politely declined, with no hard feelings.
Established clients call, too, but I usually let them know far in advance that I'll be unavailable during the conference, so there's no anxiety there.
Things get weird once you start being one of those people who do presentations at conferences, because presentations involve a commitment months in advance of the event. A couple-three years ago, I was scheduled to do a presentation at an ATA conference (continuing a streak of having done so for the previous 3-4 years) when a sudden opportunity arose to do a launch campaign in Kazakhstan.
Attending the conference would mean kissing off 5+ weeks of steady work, and although I take my commitments seriously, in my grand scheme of things, conferences are "extracurricular," which is to say: serious enough to spend a couple of thousand dollars for attendance and travel, to spend time designing, preparing, and rehearsing a presentation, and to forego assignments over the 3-4 days I'll be gone. In other words, pretty important. But important enough to forego a launch campaign? I apologized to the organizers and canceled my participation. No hard feelings (at least, that I was made aware of).
By some miracle, a presentation proposal I submitted earlier this year was accepted by the ATA. I had made the proposal in the calm knowledge that no trilingual interpreter would be required for any campaigns for the rest of this year.
My bad.
Shortly after being notified of the acceptance of my proposal, I was offered a campaign, scheduled for October or November. "Which is it?" I asked, with some trembling in my voice. "It's still up in the air," came the answer.
I really didn't want to blow off the ATA again, because that would really be poor form. Canceling once is happenstance; but doing so twice probably wouldn't be considered mere coincidence.
Anyway, I found out today the start of the campaign has slipped past the end of the conference time frame, and it may well be that I'll spend both Thanksgiving and my birthday twelve time zones from here.
Cheers...
