General Conference

This week focused almost entirely on prepping for General Conference. I spent most of my time trying to on board our "missing" people from our Invoicing program. That involved putting out a lot of fires.  

We had our final General Conference pre-recordings. I found out there are two types of pre-recordings. One type is a General Authority needed to record his message ahead of conference because COVID made it impossible for them to travel to Salt Lake. Those are the ones we have been working on for the last week or so.

The second type is where the Interpreters will use the written talk and pre-record it to then be presented "live" when the General Authority actually gives his talk live.  We will usually do this with a particular language who can't come to the COB because of COVID or does not have access to the tieline equipment to do it live during conference.  I'm not exactly sure how they do that, but it aids some of our smaller teams that may only have two or three Interpreters so they can do more talks without having to do all of them during the actual conference. I hope that made sense. 

We also started the General Authority training. So far we have held 4 our of ten sessions of that training. It has been very interesting. They are focusing on important concerns that affect the members of the Church. This could be trends in activation, or social trends that are in conflict with Gospel teachings, or Temple attendance, or ministering, or any number of other topics. With us being more and more world wide we have a lot of different cultures that need to be looked at and understood. It has been fascinating to listen to.

We had a last minute GA Wives Luncheon that we had to pull together. I'm not sure if it just got lost in all the General Authority preparations or what, but Wednesday we got a panicked request from our supervisors to get the meal and job set up for the Luncheon. It was amazing to see how everyone worked together to help pull it off. The supervisors shared the responsibility because both supervisors we also attending the special GA recordings at different times. It was a little crazy for a couple of hours but we pulled it off perfectly.

On Thursday we had two of the General Authority training sessions back to back. We started early with breakfast and finished near 4 PM. Thankfully I could work while watching the event and helping those with questions and needs. We had a delightful lunch with the Portuguese team that day. Our Catering department has a "blackout" the week before General Conference as they have to get ready; however, they worked with us to find ways we could get our people fed and happy. Sometimes that meant we could just put their names on a list and send them to the cafeteria. Other times the cafeteria was closed; however, catering packed up some cafeteria food for us and brought it up to the 27th floor so we could still feed our people a hot meal. They are so awesome and we love them so much.  We managed to go home close to normal time on Thursday.

Friday started out as a repeat of Thursday with two more training meetings. Breakfast was a little later, so the catering staff brought us hot biscuits and gravy with hash browns, fresh fruit, and turnovers. Think there were other goodies with it. As usual, there is always more food than we need or eat and it oh so good! I was very busy Friday as it was the last chance to get people activated. I worked through lunch, although Steve brought me a yummy salad. Our event ended around 3:30 and the constant fires and emails slowed down to a trickle. I finally started on what I needed to do to finish preparing for Conference. We finished at about 11 that night and made it to bed at midnight. 

We were up by 5:30 to be at the COB by 6:30. We had a lot of setup that we couldn't do the night before because there was a special banquet going on until about 9 PM in the ballroom which was our "command post" for the weekend. So we came early to get set up. Thankfully the IT staff came early to setup the laptops and printers for the Interpreters.  Catering showed up early to setup a waffle station for our breakfast. Steve had to maintain and man the station throughout the morning. I thought I would be helping Steve with food and other aspects of supporting the Interpreters...particularly helping them on the laptops. Again, thankfully the IT support staff stayed to help with that and I was delegated to setup a check-in station.

We first setup it up on the 26th floor which is the ballroom/command post. I also had all the access badges and parking passes for those Interpreters that expired or were recently onboarded. Steve had all those created and in folders for each language so it was organized and easy to pass out. After the session started and things calmed down a bit, we found out that our smaller support staff had a big hole. Normally someone would be stationed down on Level 1 where all the Interpreters come into the COB. We didn't have anyone down there and our poor security staff were struggling to know what to do with a number of Interpreters that were new or had invalid or expired access badges. They let them up because of who they were and eventually sent word that they really wanted someone who knew something about the Interpreters to come down and help. Soooooooooo I packed up my Check In station and moved it down to Level 1. I was able to setup a table right across from the Security booth.  It has worked much better. I can check them in, check their access badge, give them instructions and make note of invalid badges or missing parking passes. It went much smoother for everyone. It is not perfect or fool proof because there is a back way that some of our more experienced Interpreters use to get to the 26th floor where they bypass me entirely so I was missing people I knew should be there. Next conference we will have a few more signs to say them must check in first.

Saturday went relatively smoothly. Much better than we expected based on all the stories we were told. They said it gets better with each conference as we figure out better ways to do things. We finished up by about 9:00 PM or so after cleaning all the booths. We had a few languages that had to do retakes. I questioned why we would do retakes because it was a live event. I was told the retakes are to make the recordings that are on the website and in the Gospel Library App "perfect". That makes so much sense. So we waited for three languages to finish so we could clean their booths before we left. Just about the time we decided to just clean them in the morning, they finished and we were able to get it done before we left.  We got home about 9:30 or so and made it to bed by 11.

Oh, here is the link to President Nelson's video about the renovations of the Salt Lake Temple.

https://www.ldsliving.com/watch-president-nelson-visits-the-salt-lake-temple-renovation-site/s/10075

Sunday we were up at 5:30 again. We didn't have as much setup to do as we did on Saturday; but, we started 1/2 hour early on Sunday because of Music and the Spoken Word. Both days I had Interpreters show up early and luckily I was barely set up and ready to check them in.  I tweaked my spreadsheet a bit on Saturday to identify the sessions the Interpreters were supposed to work so I could check them into 2 or 3 sessions if they were here for the whole day.  It also helped me to verify that even though they were early, they were only doing one session. There are lots of things to track.  I also had to track when Interpreters leave early because all their speakers are done. We pay a minimum of two hours but we have them come at least an hour early for "call time" so they normally get credit for 3 hours. If they leave after the first hour I have to adjust their time to just 2 hours.  I may have missed a few that sneaked out, but I believe we were able to track it better than in the past. 

So, even though it was a little lonely being on Level 1 all by myself it did have some advantages. Yesterday, shortly after the evening session started, Steve sent me a message to come upstairs and join everyone. I weighed my options. I still had some work I needed/wanted to finish so that perhaps I could actually take at least part of Monday off. Also, it is quiet on Level 1 once the session starts, meaning I can actually watch and/or listen to the session without much interruption.  Yes, upstairs would have been more fun; but I know how much talking goes on so I wouldn't have been able to hear as much of conference as I did. Plus I probably wouldn't have been able to complete my work. Oh, and there was one amazing side benefit that occurred that I would have missed had I gone upstairs. Susie, a fairly elderly little Navajo Sister finished early. Someone was coming to pick her up. She got lost trying to find her way out and luckily ended up back on Level 1. I started to tell her how to get out to the street and realized with all the construction going on in the underground parking where we have to go through to get to the street that she may get lost again. It is a maze down there. So I took the opportunity to walk her out so she could meet her ride. It was a very sweet experience visiting with her and I'm so glad I stayed down on Level 1 so I could help her.  Consequently, I decided to say to the end on Sunday as well.

I have also had the special treat of seeing multiple GAs and their families as they came to the cafeteria for lunch and dinner. Bishop Causse even stopped by my table to thank us for all we are doing. My table is right next to the cafeteria so I saw lots of GAs. The only problem is I don't know most of them by site. The First Presidency and the Twelve did not eat here so I didn't see any of them. Sigh. It was still fun.

We had a total of 263 Interpreters over the two days. That doesn't mean 263 different Interpreters as many of them did multiple sessions; but, it is the number of Interpreters we needed for all 5 sessions for the 16 different languages we did in the COB. Some languages don't do all sessions so we didn't have 16 different languages here at one time. I think the most we had at a time was 14.

All in all, I think it was a very positive experience. I want to do a lot of clean up between now and next conference to avoid all the last minute problems we had with trying to get people in the system. I met a couple of people who work with one of the three programs that don't talk to each other. I suggested a few changes I would like to see and was surprised to hear that at least one of my suggestions sounded like it is very doable and would make my life a LOT easier. We are supposed to have some meetings this month to talk about why there were so many people not in the system. This may be a good opportunity to get these programs talking to each other. For one thing we need to know when they deactivate an Interpreter from the Invoicing program (PLUNET) so we can also deactivate them in the Assigning program (EVENT CENTRAL). That would have avoided a lot of problems if that one thing was in sync. Obviously we would like to automate the syncing process. If we have to rely on manual input to keep them in sync it will get messed up again.

We have a busy week coming as we finish the General Authority training. We have 6 more sessions and we already have several more events scheduled for this week. So far next weekend is not scheduled. I'm not holding my breath that will last, now that the Supervisors are done with General Conference. hahaha

I hope you all had an opportunity to listen to General Conference. If not, please listed to it online. It was a wonderful conference and the Spirit was strong. I love our Savior Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for His Atonement in our behalf. I know this is the True Church of Jesus Christ and I am grateful for the wonderful opportunity I have to be an instrument in HIS hands to accomplish the monumental task of providing these wonderful messages from our beloved Prophet and other leaders into the native tongue of so many members around the world. What an AWESOME opportunity we have to be a small part of this wonderful work.

Have a WONDERFUL week.

This is Pollyanna Van Lenten. She is the Interpretation Coordinator for Marshaleese. She is a Relief Society President in her ward. The reason I have this picture is because Pollyanna and I have a mutual friend. Her first counselor in Relief Society is Cassie Call Sleight. I found out on July 4th when we went to Katie Sue's house for the Forth of July. As I was telling everyone what we do, Cassie mentioned that she knew someone who did Interpretation and mentioned Pollyanna's name. I said I knew who she was. Then I talked to Pollyanna and let her know I knew Cassie. We've been great friends ever since.