{"id":6595,"date":"2009-06-02T12:46:19","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T16:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=6595"},"modified":"2009-06-02T12:46:51","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T16:46:51","slug":"2009-jetaa-canada-national-conference-keynote-speech","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/about\/bios\/2009-jetaa-canada-national-conference-keynote-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"2009 JETAA Canada National Conference Keynote Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>JETAA Canada National Conference<br \/>\nKeynote Speech &#8211; May 30, 2009 &#8211; Toronto<br \/>\nBy Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, Kariya-shi, 1992-94)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Minasan, Ohayo gozaimasu.<\/p>\n<p>1.\u00a0 First, I&#8217;d like to thank JETAA Canada and Gloria Ma and everyone else involved with this conference for inviting me here to speak today.\u00a0 As an American, I have to say being invited to be the keynote speaker for the JETAA Canada National Conference is a tremendous honour (and I mean that spelled with a &#8220;u&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>2.\u00a0 Also, I&#8217;ve known Gloria for a little while now through the Newsletter connection, and since she recently became the JETAA Canada Country Rep, I wanted to bring her a little something.\u00a0 But it didn&#8217;t arrive in time, so I&#8217;ll have to send it up after I get back to New York.\u00a0 [T-SHIRT]<\/p>\n<p>3.\u00a0 Now interestingly, when I started on JET in 1992, my town of Kariya City, Aichi-ken, exactly 17 minutes by express train outside Nagoya, it turned out that I was in the Japanese sister city of Missassauga. So in a certain way, being here today has a wonderful sense of things coming full circle and feeling connected.<\/p>\n<p>4.\u00a0 On the theme of connectedness, I think one of the great things about helping our alumni feel connected to JETAA is, we don&#8217;t really have to force it.\u00a0 Because most people on JET had a good experience overall, an experience that becomes part of who we are.<\/p>\n<p>5.\u00a0 Focusing in on this idea a little more, I realized that people in my non-JET world (e.g., my office, my family, my friends) like to refer to me as a &#8220;Japan Guy,&#8221; or &#8220;that guy who&#8217;s into Japan.&#8221; However, I actually don&#8217;t see myself that way.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m not fluent in Japanese.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m not a literature or culture or food expert.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m not into manga or anime.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve never worked for a Japanese company.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>6.\u00a0 And I finally realized, it&#8217;s not that I&#8217;m into Japan.\u00a0 It&#8217;s that Japan is part of me.\u00a0 I lived there for 3.5 very formative years.\u00a0 It&#8217;s part of who I am.\u00a0 And what I really like, is being able to connect with other people who shared a similar experience.<\/p>\n<p>7.\u00a0 I focus on this because I think that feeling might be JETAA&#8217;s greatest asset.\u00a0 The shared experience is the glue that holds all of this together.\u00a0 And the idea of the shared experience is something to keep coming back to.\u00a0 Especially when we come up with ideas and organize events and publish newsletters and think about what&#8217;s going to draw people into the JET alumni community.<\/p>\n<p>Lesson Plan<\/p>\n<p>8.\u00a0 Bearing that in mind, my &#8220;lesson plan&#8221; for today is to talk about my path to this point in connection with the JETAA NY Newsletter, the Writers Interpreters Translators (WIT) Group and the JetWit website.\u00a0 In talking about these topics, I&#8217;ll try to share some of the approaches to communications and getting people to feel connected that I&#8217;ve used.\u00a0 And hopefully I&#8217;ll do it in a way that stimulates and provokes some new ideas and gets you even more excited about helping the JET alumni community to continue to grow, both at the local level and also in terms of cross-chapter collaboration.<\/p>\n<p>9.\u00a0 JETAA is now about 22 years old.\u00a0 We&#8217;re just hitting our stride as an alumni organization.\u00a0 And that means, in my view, that we&#8217;re on the cusp of some very significant growth.<\/p>\n<p>10.\u00a0 To get the ball rolling, here are a few numbers to give a sense of what we&#8217;re dealing with, with special thanks to Taichi Hanzawa of CLAIR NY for providing the official data:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>50,000+ JET alums worldwide, 51 chapters worldwide<\/li>\n<li>Over 3,000 JET alums in Canada, 7 chapters<\/li>\n<li>About 25,000 JET alums in the US, 19 chapters<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>11.\u00a0 That&#8217;s a lot of people.\u00a0 And with 5K JETs in Japan every year and some portion leaving each year, the JET alum ranks continue to grow.<\/p>\n<p>12.\u00a0 Where are most JET alums now?\u00a0 What are they doing?\u00a0 How many have you met?\u00a0 Where do you and I fit in compared to them?<\/p>\n<p>13.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t necessarily know.\u00a0 Most JET alums are not on our radar screen.\u00a0 I remember hearing in 2005 that about half of US JET alums are affiliated with a chapter.\u00a0 And of those, most of them are not\u00a0 attending events or necessarily even reading the emails.\u00a0 Though clearly some percentage is.<\/p>\n<p>14.\u00a0 As far as I&#8217;m aware, there&#8217;s no ongoing, aggregate list of JETs that&#8217;s publicly accessible.\u00a0 And even the records kept by the Japanese government, which is protected by privacy laws, likely has little information about what people have done after leaving JET.<\/p>\n<p>15.\u00a0 This idea, this lack of an aggregate list showing where people are and what they&#8217;ve been doing, is part of what&#8217;s been driving me to get so involved.<\/p>\n<p>16.\u00a0 B\/c the fact that we don&#8217;t know, from my perspective, is a good thing.\u00a0 It means there&#8217;s a huge opportunity, and a huge amount of untapped potential.<\/p>\n<p>17.\u00a0 For example, there are now plenty of established and even famous JET alums out there.\u00a0 And I keep learning of more every day.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Bruce Feiler, author of Learning to Bow the original JET book, along with a number of other best sellers.<\/li>\n<li>Will Ferguson&#8211;A Canadian and author of Hokkaido Highway Blues (Hitching Rides with the Buddha), How to Be a Canadian, Canadian History for Dummies (which I should perhaps purchase), The Girlfriend&#8217;s Guide to Hockey (which I should also perhaps purchase) and many other humorous books and novels.\u00a0 And just to give you a sense of where he is in his career, I discovered that the only way to get in touch with him is through his agent.<\/li>\n<li>Suzanne Kamata &#8211; still living in Japan, she is the author of the novel Losing Kei, the editor of an essay collection on multi-cultural mothering called &#8220;Call Me Okaasan&#8221; and is the editor of the website Literary Mama as well as the publicity person for the Tokyo Chapter of the Society of Children&#8217;s Books.<\/li>\n<li>Rob Weston &#8211; Toronto resident and author of Zorgamazoo, a wonderful rhyming novel&#8211;yes, a rhyming novel&#8211;for young adults and children.\u00a0 And I had the chance to meet him when he came to the JET Alumni Author Showcase on March 22 (More on Rob later).<\/li>\n<li>Roland Kelts &#8211; Perhaps the preminent authority on Japanese pop culture today, and the author of Japanamerica and now a professor at Tokyo University.\u00a0 Roland is a media regular and frequently called on to host talks with people like Haruki Murakami and Hayao Miyazaki.\u00a0 In fact, at the end of July he&#8217;s hosting a talk with Miyazaki when Miyazaki comes to the US to receive a lifetime achievement award at UC Berkeley.<\/li>\n<li>Anthony Bianchi &#8211; City Council Member in Inuyama City, Aichi-ken.\u00a0 Anthony is originally from Brooklyn and is the first ever North American to hold an elected office in Japan.<\/li>\n<li>John Gauntner &#8211; Leading non-Japanese sake expert in the world, known as &#8220;The Sake Guy&#8221;, and has several books published on the topic.<\/li>\n<li>***************************************************************************<\/li>\n<li>**************************************************************<\/li>\n<li>**************************************************************<\/li>\n<li>[NOT MENTIONED]<\/li>\n<li>George Rose &#8211; former JETAA NY President, interpreter for Hideki Irabu and also a bit for Hideki Matsui, and now Director of Tokyo Operations for the NY Yankees<\/li>\n<li>Michael Auslin &#8211; Director of Japan Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, former Professor of Japanese History at Yale, and was a guest judge for one episode of Iron Chef America that I happened to catch b\/c my wife is a big fan.\u00a0 Morimoto was the Iron Chef for that episode, for the record.<\/li>\n<li>James Kennedy, author of The Order of Odd-Fish, a fantasy adventure book for young adults that&#8217;s doing well.\u00a0 If you only read one book this year, young adult or otherwise, read this one.\u00a0 All I can say is that you&#8217;ll be glad you did.<\/li>\n<li>Karl Taro Greenfeld &#8211; famed journalist and author of Speed Tribes:\u00a0 Days and Nights with Japan&#8217;s Next Generation.<\/li>\n<li>Maynard Plant &#8211; One of founding members of the Japanese band Monkey Majik, and a Canadian who was in Aomori on JET.<\/li>\n<li>Even someone like Bruce Rutledge &#8211; Monbusho Fellow pre-JET &#8211; founder of the publishing company of Chin Music Press in Seattle, known for its Japan-oriented books such as &#8220;Tokyo Art Space&#8221; and focus on unique cover art.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>18.\u00a0 And these are just a few of the celebrity-type alums I know about since I&#8217;ve focused more on writing, interpreting and translating.<\/p>\n<p>[VISUAL &#8211; show Authors page on JetWit]<\/p>\n<p>19.\u00a0 For example, for a more complete list of authors, you can go to the Authors Section in the JetWit Library.<\/p>\n<p>20.\u00a0 This is a tremendous asset for JETAA.\u00a0 Something for us, and for CLAIR and MOFA, to point to and show off the fruits of the JET Program and raise the profile of the JET alumni community.\u00a0 Something that makes JETAA a more attractive organization to be connected to.<\/p>\n<p>21.\u00a0 But it&#8217;s also important to remember that there&#8217;s a whole new crop of people that will be emerging from the JETAA-sphere.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t know who they are yet, but there will be more famous writers, entertainers, academics, translators, and, who knows, someday perhaps the first ever JET alum Prime Minister or President?\u00a0 Can we really do this?\u00a0 &#8220;Yessu u-ii kannu.&#8221; :-)<\/p>\n<p>22.\u00a0 As a result, one of our goals as JETAA members and representatives should be to get people to self-identify, to encourage them to view themselves as JET alums and to give them various ways to connect and to feel connected.<\/p>\n<p>23.\u00a0 So that&#8217;s the RAH-RAH part of my speech.<\/p>\n<p>Background<\/p>\n<p>24.\u00a0 Now I&#8217;ll go over my background as a way to get into some examples of approaches I&#8217;ve used to communicate with the JET alum community, help people feel connected and get people to self-identify.<\/p>\n<p>25.\u00a0 What I&#8217;m going to hopefully demonstrate is a bottom-up approach for making some things happen.\u00a0 Also, that, while it requires a certain amount of working together and coordination, my approach (which is far from the only approach) has also been to come up with activities for which I didn&#8217;t need to rely on other people to provide approvals or to help me move it forward.\u00a0 This doesn&#8217;t work for every situation, but it does work in a lot of situations.<\/p>\n<p>26.\u00a0 A good example is the recent Learning to Blog Workshop series that I started in NY. I thought it would be helpful and a good career skill for JET alums to learn how to set up and use a blog since it&#8217;s a very powerful communication tool and it&#8217;s been a really useful skill that I learned from JETAA NY webmaster, Lee-Sean Huang.<\/p>\n<p>27.\u00a0 Rather than wait for one of our monthly meetings and say I have this idea and what does everyone think about it and how should we get it done, I just mentioned it to our President in an email so she was aware of it, and then put a short announcement together where I asked people to contact me if they&#8217;re interested in learning the basics of blogging.\u00a0 I asked our Secretary to include it in the weekly email announcement.\u00a0 And after I got responses, I set up a date and a location at a cafe for whoever can make it.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve done 3 sessions so far, each time with 5 or 6 people, and I have another one coming up next week.\u00a0 Our officers and the Consulate are really happy with it, and I&#8217;m not taking up anyone&#8217;s time worrying about logistics and organizing.<\/p>\n<p>28.\u00a0 It&#8217;s just one more entry point for alums to get connected to JETAA and one more way to help out alumni.\u00a0 As well as a way to increase the number of JET alums who can contribute to the JETAA NY and JetWit websites.<\/p>\n<p>Motivation &amp; Structure<\/p>\n<p>29.\u00a0 Stepping back from this example, two of the themes that come up in this and in other efforts and activities that I&#8217;ve tried to implement have been &#8220;motivation&#8221; and &#8220;structure&#8221;:\u00a0 as in,<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>what&#8217;s going to motivate someone to get involved?<\/li>\n<li>And what structure will facilitate their getting involved and contributing?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>30.\u00a0 Because the bottom line is that you get a lot more involvement and contribution if you provide motivation and structure.\u00a0 I learned early on that if I send out a request and don&#8217;t get a good response, the responsibility is on me to either re-think the idea, i.e., does substantive motivation for the idea actually exist, or modify the way I&#8217;m communicating, i.e., is there a better way to structure it or phrase the request?<\/p>\n<p>31.\u00a0 In the back of their minds, people are always thinking:\u00a0 How will this benefit me?\u00a0 And, what&#8217;s required of me to contribute?\u00a0 But people are also busy and focused on a million other things, so if you can provide motivation and structure for them, you remove barriers that enable more to happen.\u00a0 Those are two things of value that each of us can always provide for our members and that will inure to the benefit of JETAA.<\/p>\n<p>32.\u00a0 As the Newsletter editor, the main way I was able to provide structure was by coming up with themes for each issue and ideas for articles.<\/p>\n<p>33.\u00a0 For example:\u00a0 One idea I came up with was the &#8220;Issues&#8221; Issue, featuring a large front page article on &#8220;The Asian Fetish:\u00a0 The Unspoken Subtext of the JET Program.&#8221;\u00a0 The article itself was so-so.\u00a0 I was really more interested in just having a juicy headline to get people&#8217;s attention so that they&#8217;d get in the habit of reading the Newsletter where there was plenty of other good writing on the &#8220;Issues&#8221; topic.<\/p>\n<p>34. \u00a0Now while a theme and an article idea are one level of structure, what I quickly figured out&#8211;and I&#8217;m sure Gloria and other newsletter editors can relate to this&#8211;is that there&#8217;s another level of structure that&#8217;s often needed to get people to take time to actually contribute and write.<\/p>\n<p>35.\u00a0 Sure, there are some people who will always write a film or book review, and they just need to be encouraged and given a forum for doing their thing.<\/p>\n<p>36.\u00a0 But to really get more people involved and writing, I realized I had to create structures that made it even easier for people to contribute.<\/p>\n<p>37.\u00a0 A really successful idea in this regard was the BLURB or ANECDOTE article approach.\u00a0 It&#8217;s nothing new.\u00a0 I think it hit me after seeing an issue of Cosmo Magazine.\u00a0 And I sort of borrowed the idea in much the same way that the Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system. :-)<\/p>\n<p>38.\u00a0 For a BLURB article, I would just pick a theme, such as religion, and ask people to email me a short blurb about an experience they had on JET that related to religion.\u00a0 Did you go to a church?\u00a0 Get approached by a cult?\u00a0 Go through some ordeal to obtain a box of matzah?<\/p>\n<p>39.\u00a0 Blurb articles were great on so many levels.\u00a0 They really flushed out a lot of great stories that people had to tell and made for wonderful reading.\u00a0 They gave people who weren&#8217;t otherwise involved with JETAA an easy way to come out of the woodwork and contribute.\u00a0 They diversified my risk as editor, since I didn&#8217;t have to rely on one person to come through with an article (or not come through, as sometimes would be the case).\u00a0 They really make good use of the strength of the JET alumni community.<\/p>\n<p>40.\u00a0 And they provided a vehicle for increased cross-chapter collaboration.\u00a0 I could take the same request that I was sending out to JETAA NY and send it out to other chapters and ask them to forward it on to their members.\u00a0 As a result, I started getting more responses from alums in other places.\u00a0 Especially Seattle since Liz Sharpe, the newsletter editor out there, was very genki and into working together.\u00a0 And of course alumni in other chapters started reading the JETAA NY Newsletter.<\/p>\n<p>41.\u00a0 To aide my efforts, I set up a yahoogroup for newsletter editors.\u00a0 It&#8217;s dormant now and the role has been subsumed by the WIT Group in many ways.\u00a0 But for a while it was active and a nice way to gather some of the other active newsletter editors together to share info, let each other know when a new issue of our respective newsletters were published, and rely on each other to generate more contributions as well.<\/p>\n<p>42.\u00a0 By the way, in recent years I learned two terms&#8211; &#8220;crowd sourcing&#8221; and &#8220;community generated content&#8221;&#8211;that essentially describe what I was doing or trying to do.\u00a0 JETAA is set up very well for crowd sourcing and producing community generated content.\u00a0 Because it&#8217;s a large group of people who all share a very unique experience and like comparing and contrasting our experiences.<\/p>\n<p>43.\u00a0 It&#8217;s all just a matter of creating structures for people to plug into.\u00a0 The Newsletter.\u00a0 A yahoogroup.\u00a0 A theme for short anecdotes.<\/p>\n<p>Fostering Cross-chapter Collaboration<br \/>\n44.\u00a0 On the topic of cross-chapter collaboration, a really simple step I took and that you can do too, is to just sign up for the email group lists for other chapters.<\/p>\n<p>45.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t have to read the whole thing every time.\u00a0 Just in skimming the emails that come in, you&#8217;ll notice things, pick up on patterns and differences, and certain things will grab your attention and give you ideas.\u00a0 Even just noticing the varying frequency of emails by each chapter is revealing.<\/p>\n<p>[Show JETAA Chapter Beat]<\/p>\n<p>46.\u00a0 It was doing this that led me to the idea of having a &#8220;JETAA Chapter Beat&#8221; feature on JetWit.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve gotten a JET alum freelance writer named Jonathan Trace now looks at all the chapter emails and pulls a few interesting items together each week and posts it on JetWit.\u00a0 It gives a nice overview of what&#8217;s going on in the JET alumni community.<\/p>\n<p>47.\u00a0 I find that getting the emails is also nice b\/c it just gives you a periodic reminder that you&#8217;re part of a bigger community.<\/p>\n<p>MOTIVATION<\/p>\n<p>48.\u00a0 This idea of wanting to feel like part of a bigger community actually ties in with the topic of motivation.\u00a0 My thing is, I&#8217;m always trying to get people to contribute for free, without paying them.\u00a0 So they need to have an incentive, and I need to understand what motivates them.\u00a0 In some instances, people want to write, they just need a place to do it, a bit of structure, a deadline.<\/p>\n<p>49.\u00a0 Other people need something else, though, often in a form where you match up something that will motivate them, such a path to a job, with something you need, such as original writing.<\/p>\n<p>50.\u00a0 For example, with JetWit, I&#8217;ve focused a lot on helping people with their careers.\u00a0 One example is Julie Matysik.\u00a0 She had just moved to NY with her husband last year and was looking for a job in publishing.\u00a0 I thought it would be interesting to JET alums for her to write short posts about her job search experience.\u00a0 I\u00a0 suggested it would be a good way for her to get her name out.\u00a0 We called it &#8220;Editorial Pursuits,&#8221; she wrote 2 good posts about her job search experience, and within a week was contacted by another JET alum who worked in publishing.\u00a0 She ended up getting an unpaid internship out of it, and eventually it led to a job.\u00a0 Of course, then she didn&#8217;t have time to write posts anymore.\u00a0 But I was happy that it actually helped her move forward with her career.\u00a0 And readers really loved it.\u00a0 And it&#8217;s a great example of using the JET alumni network to help each other.<\/p>\n<p>51.\u00a0 So that&#8217;s an example of providing a motivation and structure for someone in a way that creates a mutually beneficial result.<\/p>\n<p>52.\u00a0 Of course, I should add that for every person who ends up writing, there might be 5 or 10 people with whom I discuss an idea and suggest a structure and options and nothing comes of it.\u00a0 That&#8217;s just part of the process and part of playing the percentages.<\/p>\n<p>Writers Interpreters Translators Group<\/p>\n<p>53.\u00a0 In the spring of 2008, I started something called the Writers Interpreters Translators (WIT) Group.\u00a0 It started with an email list of about 15 people, mostly in NY, and now it&#8217;s close to 200 people all over North America and the world.\u00a0 It was after the creation of the WIT Group, I think, that things really started to take off in terms of cross-chapter collaboration for me.<\/p>\n<p>54.\u00a0 The WIT Group was created based on several motivations.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li> -I wanted to gather more writers for Newsletter purposes<\/li>\n<li> -I wanted it to be a connection point for JET alums with a common interest, both established alums and those trying to get started<\/li>\n<li> -I wanted to create conditions for collaborations that I couldn&#8217;t yet envision (e.g., Author Showcase; an idea I came up with several months after creating the group)<\/li>\n<li> -I wanted to have an email list for distributing translation jobs and other work opportunities.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>This notion came in part a year prior, when George Rose, the fomer JETAA NY President and also former interpreter for Hideki Irabu, got a job as the NY Yankees&#8217; Director of Tokyo Operations.\u00a0 He emailed the JETAA NY officers explaining that the Yankees needed an interpeter for Kei Igawa, something had fallen through, and did we know any JET alums who might be good candidates?\u00a0 Because of all my interactions through the Newsletter, I had a mental rolodex of people and came up with a short list since he didn&#8217;t want a large-scale emailing.\u00a0 I realized afterwards it would make sense to create a group specifically for distributing these kinds of opportunities.\u00a0 Creation of the group would in turn also lead more people to sign on to it since it would come to be known as a good place to for finding work opportunities.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li> -The other part of the equation was that my JET alum friend Stacy Smith was, in fact, a freelance writer, interpreter and translator.\u00a0 I like to cite her as the original Writer, Interpreter and Translator in the context of the WIT Group.\u00a0 She mentioned she was looking for more freelance work, and I encouraged her to start the group.\u00a0 I explained that it would put her at the center of a lot of information and opportunities, she would become known as &#8220;the translator person&#8221; or however she wanted to be known.\u00a0 But she said that starting groups isn&#8217;t really her thing, so I ended up doing it, even though I have no experience with translating or interpreting.\u00a0 I couldn&#8217;t decide whether it should focus more on writing or translating, so I just wrapped it all up into one loosely defined package.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Distribution Channels<br \/>\n55.\u00a0 Now a word on distribution channels:\u00a0 If you think about it, one of the great assets JETAA possesses is a massive distribution channel.<\/p>\n<p>56.\u00a0 However, chapters are locally oriented, and, due to Japanese privacy laws, the JET alum distribution channel is very diffuse.\u00a0 If you want to get the word out, you have to communicate with each chapter and ask them to put the word out, or send something to&#8211;in the US&#8211;the uschapters yahoogroup and hope that other officers take your message and forward it on to their members.<\/p>\n<p>57.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve also realized that each chapter has its own mechanism for communicating with members&#8211;maybe email, maybe a website or facebook page, or twitter, maybe still paper newsletter.\u00a0 And if email, maybe once a week, once a month, it varies.\u00a0 So there&#8217;s no sure-fire, standardized way to reach everyone with one click of a button.\u00a0 Yet, there still is this big distribution channel that&#8217;s available to us.<\/p>\n<p>58.\u00a0 The idea of reaching people on a level beyond just the chapter is something I started to become aware of as I did the Newsletter.\u00a0 I was getting $100 to $350 for ads to run in the Newsletter, and the Newsletter was going mostly to the JETAA NY members (about 1,000 people on our email list).\u00a0 However, I knew that you can charge a heck of a lot more for advertising on a national level.<\/p>\n<p>59.\u00a0 I briefly considered trying to do a national newsletter, but it was pointed out to me that funding is all at the chapter level and there&#8217;s no mechanism in place for funding something like a national newsletter.\u00a0 So instead I just kept doing the JETAA NY Newsletter and trying to expand the range of writers and the distribution.<\/p>\n<p>60.\u00a0 Now that I&#8217;m running the JetWit site and not doing the Newsletter, I try to use JetWit and the WIT Group to facilitate the sharing and distribution of chapter newsletters and other info.\u00a0 So there&#8217;s not a national newsletter per se, but there&#8217;s a mechanism for sharing the information and writing on a national level.\u00a0 I think in a lot of ways, that&#8217;s just as good, and perhaps even better, since it allows for bottom-up innovation and experimentation with newsletters and communications at the local level.<\/p>\n<p>On to JetWit&#8230;<br \/>\n61.\u00a0 It was partially the idea of reaching JETs on a wider level that led to JetWit, which is for all intent and purposes, just a blog.\u00a0 (This is a good opportunity, by the way, to point out that a blog is simply a kind of user-friendly, pre-fab CMS.)<\/p>\n<p>62.\u00a0 The idea is that I could create a site that could reach all JET alums and do it in a way that is symbiotic with the activities of JET alumni chapters.\u00a0 Do some of the things that chapters weren&#8217;t doing&#8211;such as proactively gatheirng and aggregating job listings and keeping track of &#8220;celebrity&#8221; JET alums, and amplify some of the efforts and activities that chapters are doing.<\/p>\n<p>63.\u00a0 In addition to reaching a wider JET alum audience, there were other ideas I had that all fit in with the idea of creating a site like JetWit:<\/p>\n<p>64.\u00a0 -Newsletter Library:\u00a0 I always wanted to create a Newsletter archive or library or database, where all chapter newsletters would be aggregated and Newsletter editors could share content, sort of like a Reuters for JETAA Newsletters.<\/p>\n<p>64 a)\u00a0 And in that regard, I want to make clear that all the content on JetWit is intended to be a resource for JETAA chapters.\u00a0 If you see something on JetWit that you think would be good on your website or newsletter, go ahead and use it.\u00a0 No need for advance permission.\u00a0 It&#8217;s there to be an easy to access resource for chapters.<\/p>\n<p>65.\u00a0 -Career &amp; Jobs:\u00a0 I work in bankruptcy and I knew what was coming in terms of the problems wiht the economy.\u00a0 And I figured there would be a big need for job and career help in the JET alum community.\u00a0 So I wanted to start providing structures to help people in a more proactive way.\u00a0 In addition to job listings, one of the ideas behind JetWit is that it provides a lot of opportunities for half-steps towards jobs.\u00a0 Ways to get experience and do things to help yourself beyond the resume.\u00a0 A way around the catch-22 of needing experience to get a job and a job to get experience.<\/p>\n<p>66.\u00a0\u00a0 -Collaboration:\u00a0 I also had this idea of using the WIT Group to foster collaboration.\u00a0 Last year I read a book of essays called &#8220;Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant,&#8221; about various writers&#8217; experiences with cooking for themselves&#8212;themes of food and being alone.\u00a0 It occurred to me how applicable that was to the JET experience.\u00a0 And that the theme of being alone is rarely highlighted or discussed in JET writing, but is such a central part of the JET experience.<br \/>\n-I wanted to email the WIT Group and invite people to submit essays.\u00a0 But what to do with them?\u00a0 Getting something published is involved a lot of logistics, requires money, and can leave you in a situation where you put in a lot of effort and money and then it dies on the vine.<br \/>\n-With a blog, I realized, I could have an easy and free way to publish people&#8217;s writing.\u00a0 Then, if it proved popular and someone wanted to provide funding for publication, I could put it into other forms later.<br \/>\n-The project is still in progress and is tentatively titled &#8220;The Rice Cooker Chronicles.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(NOTE:\u00a0 This is the model for what we did with the JETAA 20th Anniversary Kintetsu Essay Contest Publication.)<\/p>\n<p>67.\u00a0 Back to JetWit, again these are all bottom-up ideas.\u00a0 I start with something specific I want to do, such as get people to write essays, and it leads me to create a structure that can serve other purposes as well.\u00a0 That&#8217;s not to say that there&#8217;s no role for top-down ideas, since there&#8217;s a lot of need for that as well.\u00a0 It&#8217;s just a dynamic to be aware of, and bottom-up is the approach that I&#8217;ve had the most success with.\u00a0 (Maybe b\/c I&#8217;m not so good with top-down organization. :-)<\/p>\n<p>68.\u00a0 Actually, one top down idea I&#8217;ve had that might match up with what I&#8217;ve been doing would be to make JetWit into a hybrid private and non-profit entity.\u00a0 It would have a physical location, such as an office, and continue to do what it&#8217;s doing and generate original content.\u00a0 But it would also serve as a place for JET alums to get a start and get experience working and learning new skills and maybe even earning some income while producing an original online publication that promotes the goals of the JET Alumni Association and the JET Program.<\/p>\n<p>69.\u00a0 Given my tendency towards bottom-up ideas and my lack of comfort implementing top-down ideas, I just keep the idea in the back of my head as more of a goal or mission rather than a concrete plan.\u00a0 However, I&#8217;ve been working with a JET alum freelance translator named Laura Pollak who has started setting up a co-working group for other JET alum translators and freelancers.\u00a0 And maybe that co-working group, as it evolves, could eventually serve as the basis for this bigger idea.<\/p>\n<p>JET Alumni Author Showcase<\/p>\n<p>70.\u00a0 Now I&#8217;m going to talk about the JET alumni author showcase.<\/p>\n<p>[SHOW &#8220;More Photos by Vlad Barenenko&#8221; on JETWIT]\u00a0 https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/26\/jet-alumni-author-showcase-more-photos\/]<\/p>\n<p>71.\u00a0 The JET Alumni Author Showcase was held March 22 in NYC.\u00a0 In my mind, it represents the kinds of event and collaboration that can spring forth after you lay the groundwork and build community through a variety of structures.<\/p>\n<p>72.\u00a0 I had all these pieces in place&#8211;a collection of JET alum authors; a distribution list for communicating with them; a website for promoting and getting the word out; larger group of JET alumni connected to the writing world who were seeking role models and career advice; an extremely well-functioning JET alumni chapter that trusted me and was willing to support my efforts in a variety of ways; and a desire on my part to try to connect people in the JET alumni community.<\/p>\n<p>73.\u00a0 So it was just a matter of time at that point before I started thinking it would be a neat idea to get a few of the authors together in a room to do readings and talk about their books, the craft of writing and the business of publishing for the benefit of JET alumni.\u00a0 They get to promote their books.\u00a0 The JET alums get some good career and other perspectives.\u00a0 Everyone feels good about this wonderful JET alumni community.\u00a0 And I get to sit in a room and listen to all these people talk, reminisce and share stories, which I love.<\/p>\n<p>74.\u00a0 Of course, doing any sort of event in NY is a big deal, and I found myself in over my head with the event planning (kind of like with my wedding).\u00a0 But that actually turned out well b\/c it gave a few other JET alums who were only peripherally involved with JETAA NY at the time a chance to step up and shine.\u00a0 And now two of them&#8211;Chau Lam and Amber Liang&#8211;have taken on officer roles.<\/p>\n<p>75.\u00a0 The event was a big success.\u00a0 We held it in the conference room of a hotel in NYC (thanks to some funding from the Consulate).\u00a0 Over 60 people came.\u00a0 The readings and discussion were terrific.\u00a0 It brought people from out of town, JET alums we&#8217;d never seen before.\u00a0 The reception turned out to be a great networking event as well.<\/p>\n<p>76.\u00a0 As for the authors, we had Roland Kelts from Tokyo, Rob Weston from Toronto and James Kennedy from Chicago come to NY and be on a panel moderated by JET alum Randall David Cook, the playwright of &#8220;Sake With the Haiku Geisha,&#8221; a play based on his JET experience which ran off-broadway a couple years ago.\u00a0 (He&#8217;s now gearing up for a national run of his play, btw, so stay tuned.)<\/p>\n<p>77.\u00a0 We also got Kinokuniya to agree to come and sell books and to also create a small JET alumni author section in their store<\/p>\n<p>[SHOW &#8220;Mar 10 &#8211; More Photos&#8221;]\u00a0 https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/10\/jet-alumni-author-section-at-kinokuniya-more-photos\/<\/p>\n<p>78.\u00a0 By the way, Kinokuniya sold every single book they brought, and it was largely a result of the fantastic readings and discussion by each of the authors.<\/p>\n<p>79.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s a clip of Toronto&#8217;s own Rob Weston reading from his rhyming novel Zorgamazoo:<\/p>\n<p>(0:00 until 1:15) \u00a0https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/31\/jet-alumni-author-showcase-video-clips\/<\/p>\n<p>80.\u00a0 And here&#8217;s a clip of James Kennedy reading from The Order of Odd-Fish.\u00a0 The book is not about Japan, but you&#8217;ll hear something that still rings familiar to any JET:<\/p>\n<p>[Video clips &#8211; Go to 1:26 until 3:14 &#8211; the apology gun and The Very Polite War]<\/p>\n<p>Conclusion<br \/>\n81.\u00a0 I hope a lot of this information has been helpful.<\/p>\n<p>82.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve tried to share my decision-making process, some of the mistakes and things I learned along the way that led me down certain paths.\u00a0 I&#8217;m sure, though, that I glossed over many parts and made some things sound matter-of-fact when they were anything but.<\/p>\n<p>83.\u00a0 So please feel free to ask me questions about the how and why if you think it&#8217;ll be helpful.<\/p>\n<p>84.\u00a0 Hopefully I also helped you get excited about the possibilities and potential for really helping JETAA to continue to grow in a meaningful way.\u00a0 Like I said, I really believe JETAA is on the cusp of very significant growth, just on the basis of demographics and timing.\u00a0 If you think about it, JETAA is about 22 years old now, the same age many of us were when we first set foot in our new Japanese home towns.<\/p>\n<p>85.\u00a0 Someday everyone in Japan might be fluent and fully &#8220;internationalized&#8221; and there&#8217;ll be no more need for the JET Program.\u00a0 But we&#8217;ve all been in a classroom over there and we know that&#8230;well, it&#8217;s not a problem we need to lose sleep over right now.\u00a0 So I feel pretty confident in saying that JETAA is on the verge of a golden age as it matures into a fully grown alumni organization, and we, as JETAA leaders, just need to be there to provide structure and motivation and enthusiasm to funnel it all in a positive way.<\/p>\n<p>86.\u00a0 Thank you for sitting patiently and listening to my extended self-introduction.\u00a0 I realize it&#8217;s been a long one so hopefully this is not a one-shot deal where I&#8217;m expected to go around Ontario-ken and do this at over and over.<\/p>\n<p>87.\u00a0 Honto ni go-seichou arigatou gozaimashita. (Thank you for listening quietly.)\u00a0 I&#8217;m happy to do some Q&amp;A for the remaining 10 or 15 minutes.\u00a0 And as an added incentive, I&#8217;ll give away a free&#8211;and very chic&#8211;JetWit button to each person who asks a question.<\/p>\n<p>***************************************<br \/>\n***************************************<br \/>\n***************************************<br \/>\n***************************************<\/p>\n<p>VISUALS<\/p>\n<p>1.\u00a0 <a href=\"..\/..\/..\/..\/..\/..\/\" target=\"_blank\">JetWit.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>2.\u00a0 Authors\/Books<br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"..\/..\/..\/..\/..\/library\/authorsbooks\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/library\/authorsbooks\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>3.\u00a0 JETAA Chapter Beat<br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"..\/..\/..\/..\/..\/category\/jetaa-chapter-beat\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/category\/jetaa-chapter-beat\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>4.\u00a0 JET Alumni Author Showcase Photos<br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"..\/..\/..\/..\/..\/2009\/03\/26\/jet-alumni-author-showcase-more-photos\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/26\/jet-alumni-author-showcase-more-photos\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>5.\u00a0 JET Alumni  Author Showcase Video Clips<br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"..\/..\/..\/..\/..\/2009\/03\/31\/jet-alumni-author-showcase-video-clips\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/31\/jet-alumni-author-showcase-video-clips\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JETAA Canada National Conference Keynote Speech &#8211; May 30, 2009 &#8211; Toronto By Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, Kariya-shi, 1992-94) IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION Minasan, Ohayo gozaimasu. 1.\u00a0 First, I&#8217;d like to thank JETAA Canada and Gloria Ma and everyone else involved with this conference for inviting me here to speak today.\u00a0 As an American, I have to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":89,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6595","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PkZ7m-1In","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6595"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6597,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6595\/revisions\/6597"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}