Last week, I was scheduled to speak at SOBCon’09 with Glenda Watson Hyatt but I ended up working at Deaf Nation in Ponoma, California. I drove down to Chicago on Thursday to meet with some customers and then headed over to Hotel 71 to find Glenda. Glenda and I have been online buddies for about two years, but this was the first time we met in person. As soon as I walked in the hotel and spotted her smiling face, I ran over for a hug. Sitting right next to her was Amy Derby, another fellow blogger who happens to be hard of hearing. Amy and I met last year for lunch at Chili’s. We mistakenly walked into a Baker’s Square and have been craving pie ever since.
The three of us chatted with Lorelle VanFossen, Liz Strauss (who looked quite hot with her new haircut!) and Chris Brogan (who looked great, minus hair!), then paused for a picture with others from SOBCon:
Glenda and I managed to communicate in a variety of ways. I used my super lipreading powers, she pulled out her fingerspelling skills and we connected. Occasionally we had a third person, an interpreter or her trusty alphabet sheet to rely on.
I flew to Pomona, California the next day and Glenda went on to rock the audience at SOBCon’09. Take a look at some of the blog reactions:
You Can Be on Oprah and Larry King
While I was sad to miss this year’s SOBCon, I was thrilled to join the Z Team at Deaf Nation in Pomona, California. My team mate, Jack Busenbark, cracked me up as he brought some super-sized bottles of Hand Sanitizer and insisted that we all practice “safe sales” in light of the Swine Flu:
The next day, the news reported a shortage of Hand Sanitizer. Jack’s fault. But hey, the Z Team all went home healthy.
Comments
2 responses to “Deaf Nation and SOBCon’09”
Yeah, that Jack always cracks people up!
Really great message, always so interesting to read.