Vice Presidential Candidate Chat Questions

MELANIE: Technology has always been a huge part of our profession, both challenging and enhancing. As computers improve, so will voice-recognition software and voice-produced realtime. As the speed of society increases in general, so will the demand from our clients to provide more services practically instantaneously, leading inevitably to the realization that realtime reporting is the gold standard in our profession. Each reporter is personally responsible for undertaking the continuing education and equipment investment required to keep up with and stay abreast of realtime writing, Internet transmission of information, digital signatures, and other rapidly invented enhancements.

JASON: Our CAT software will get more intuitive. VoiceCAT will continue to improve and impose real challenges. With increased Internet use, we’ll see new marketing opportunities with remote services; not just remote CART type services, but rural officials who can cover a number of counties or parishes without leaving their home office. This will increase the attraction of official reporters in those districts.

But those opportunities bring challenges. Worried about offshore transcription? How about offshore reporting? We must plan for such eventualities and fold them into our strategies.

2. What leadership skills do you feel are important to fill the position of NCRA’s V.P. or board member? What leadership skills do you feel are your strongest and your weakest? (Answer this question in regards to the board position you are campaigning for only.)

MELANIE: My strongest leadership skill is helping people believe in themselves and the capabilities they possess. I’m very inclusive, a team player, and appreciate transparency in all my dealings. I have infectious enthusiasm for everything reporting related; I’m a positive, optimistic people magnet. My least-developed skill is accepting glacial change in today’s fast-moving world. I move quickly and make and implement decisions quickly.

JASON: Important leadership skills: Good moderation skills. The ability to listen and synthesize all views and, with a reasoned, measured approach, help the Board reach the most sensible and best conclusion. It’s important to moderate and not try to dictate one’s own pet views. And a leader needs the ability to represent our interests to our membership and associated professions.

Weak area: I’m not the guy to go into a roomful of people and make small talk. I’m more interested in finding out what people need and how we can help them rather than engaging in the social niceties. I’m improving on that.

I don’t play games with my questions. I am diplomatic and encourage civil discussion, but I’ll ask, outright, a question that I want answered. Some people find this uncomfortable. It sure has gotten us to the bottom line in Finance Committee meetings, though.

My strengths, and I can say this because it’s been affirmed by the boards I’ve worked with: Thoughtful moderation, intelligent analysis, an open mind, and personal eloquence. I’m also a tenacious researcher on a given issue and will know all sides to an issue when it’s discussed. And my commitment to court reporting and our membership is unflinching.

3. How is the practice of incentive gift-giving, contracting and discount pricing affecting, first, the firm owner; second, the freelance reporter and, third, the consumer litigant?

MELANIE: For the firm owner, it has created undreamed-of competitive demands and changed our landscape from providing a professional, quality service to encouraging lowballing of rates, both charged to consumers and paid to reporters. It has, however, increased diversification in revenue-generating services firms provide and forced firm owners to more closely examine their models as businesspeople, as opposed to thinking as court reporters, and increased reliance on technology to improve productivity.

The freelance reporters have often been caught between a rock and a hard place, often agreeing to work for discounted rates or producing less work for “traditional” rates. Each reporter has responsibility in deciding how to practice our profession, and many have made a difference in the thinking of the firm owners and clients they educate through their interaction. Through NCRA’s Train the Trainer on Court Reporter Value program, in-the-field reporters are learning how to stand up for themselves and point out the undeniable benefits of a realtime reporter compared to alternative technologies. We are the sales force to make a difference for ourselves . . . but we have to speak up and continue to prove our worth.

The consumer litigants are sometimes the forgotten player in this scenario. Through interaction with the bench, bar, and public, I’m hoping we can educate the masses to realize that any gifts and discounted pricing belong to the client but balance that with the old adage of “You get what you pay for.” Unfortunately, in recent years many jurisdictions have decided that an “adequate” record is appropriate compared to an “accurate” record, again affecting the end user, the consumer. This ties to marketing court reporter value beyond the deposition suites and into mainstream America, which would then, I believe, attract more students into our schools. We’ve been a silent profession for a long time. If we don’t market ourselves, who will?

JASON: These practices are having a huge impact. Far too many of our members are becoming demoralized, just as we need them the most, and wonder about their viability.

These practices are making for a very uneven playing field for the traditional reporter versus a firm capitalized for incentives. And they turn what should be our professional services into a marketable commodity.

Now, the size of the reporting firm is mostly driven by market, over which we have little influence. But when a reporting office turns to unsavory promotions, it gets our traditional and hard-working members pretty irate and questioning of the direction of the profession, and understandably so.

NCRA was founded upon the talents and impartiality of the individual reporter. The practices mentioned here divert our clients’ reliance from our skills to our marketing practices. Their view of us changes from a fellow professional to a vendor. Sometimes the quality of the work and the reporter’s pay suffers in these promotions and in production practices.

To be fair, these practices do not always equate to a loss of pay for these reporters. We do find reporters in the huge firms that have contented, well-paid professional lives, and NCRA represents those reporters, too. But when we see marketing practices with a “yuck” factor, we know that the public faces the hazard of having a work product gained through marketing enticements, rather than for the high skill and impartiality of the reporter.

4. What do you feel are the five most important accomplishments that NCRA has achieved over the last several years? Why do these five accomplishments rise to the level of most important in your mind?

MELANIE:

• Updated NCRA’s Strategic Plan -- because it increases continuity of leadership and transparency of future direction;
• Increased visibility of the profession through congressional funding for realtime training – because we’ve trained our members to advocate for themselves and increased awareness of our realtime/captioning profession to the general public;
• Increased technological awareness of and implementation by our members through seminars, demonstrations by vendors, TechTracker, and Town Hall meetings – because the grassroots approach to training and information dissemination helps us learn to help ourselves with guidance and oversight from NCRA, empowering our members with knowledge and tools;
• Created more opportunities for testing and certification, both online and with more programs – because NCRA certifications are objective standards with which to educate the public and hiring authorities and supports our mission statement of promoting excellence;
• Created the Certified Legal Video Specialist Council – because it prioritizes the service to and inclusion of this underserved portion of our membership.

JASON:

1. Engate defense. There was really no choice. Without NCRA, every individual reporter in the country faced the possibility of paying tribute to patent leeching. Without getting into the specifics, which are mind-boggling, this was a bright, shining moment for NCRA in its defense and promotion of its members and court reporters everywhere.
2. Lobbying, with the help of grassroots training and participation. We have to promote schools and bring in new students. NCRA has leveraged members’ dues dollars many times over with funding for schools at the Federal level. Meanwhile, among the lobbying of those billion-dollar industries, our Government Relations team continues to gain tremendous respect on Capitol Hill. States and individual reporters have clearly reaped the rewards of our lobbying and PR efforts when they’ve had their own crises and NCRA has stepped in to help.
3. Leadership training. NCRA holds wonderfully high-quality seminars through its Leadership and Legislative Boot Camp programs. They flow through and benefit the governance of all participating associations.
4. The ER Task Force has been trouble-shooting and problem-solving around the country. Reporters in many states are much more equipped and confident now in engaging their legislators, administrators, and competitors. This program has gotten rave reviews and visibly ratcheted up the confidence level of every group it’s been to.
5. Direct Member Voting. Talk about transparency! Now every voting member of NCRA has voice in shaping the leadership and laws of our Association. This cannot be emphasized enough in engaging our members in their Association.

5. How do you feel NCRA can best serve its members?

MELANIE: I think of NCRA as our collective home, as President Sanchez put it so well a few years ago. It’s a safe haven where we can learn from each other -- including disagreeing from time to time – and we can fraternize, interact – online and in person – test together, pass and fail together, mentor new students, and continue to educate ourselves and others. NCRA is a strong, outspoken, well-respected advocate for our core membership, steno writers, among the hard-of-hearing communities and through Intersteno. NCRA is a source of information collection and dissemination, sometimes of information we’d rather ignore.

Through the Member Value Proposition and our updated Strategic Plan, we’ve identified areas to improve and expand our programs, including short response times to member inquiries, increased ease of access through our Web site, online testing, and exploration of a "legal tech" certificate for media moguls, videographers, paralegals, and anybody involved in litigation support and/or courtroom playback of media. Let's market what we're good at to people who need it and create streams of nondues revenue.

JASON: By being a uniting force in our common cause. By providing effective lobbying. By providing quality training, not just in reporting issues but the way we relate to the world at large. By being an effective representative of our interests to everyone. By promoting the love we must have for our profession and its importance both to our membership and to society.

6. How do you differentiate the inclusion of other methods of speech-to-text modes of the verbatim record into our profession today as compared to that which happened when Gregg and Pitman writers experienced the threat of Stenograph writers entering their profession?

MELANIE: I see the situations as similar, in that various methods were and are used to accomplish state-of-the-art record making. Realtime is now the standard in our profession. If you do realtime with a stone tablet, with a pen, with your fingers, or with your voice, I’m glad you’re doing realtime. I respect the fact that NCRA members have said twice -- in 2001 and 2004 – that we shouldn’t expand membership. Do I think that resources -- dues dollars and staff time -- should be spent convincing or persuading members to embrace those using alternate technology as members? No, I don't. I'd rather see our money spent on marketing our certification programs and encouraging our members to write realtime and perfect our skills through CE opportunities.

JASON: If you actually read the history of that experience, the parallels are more striking than the differences. The big arguments today are that voice reporting does not take the same level of talent, cheapens the profession, is a competitor system, and is not true shorthand. Those exact arguments were made in the 1920s against stenotype.

7. Using 2010 as a reference point in time, what do you see as NCRA's biggest struggle moving into the next decade? How do your foresee NCRA members, state leadership and vendors partnering with NCRA to address these struggles?

MELANIE: I see member apathy and distrust as our biggest struggle, which I think is partly a reflection of societal changes with increased instant access and “need to know.“

I’m determined to increase our sense of community and connection with each other through inclusivity and accessibility of our national and state leaders. Through our continued training of state leaders and partnering on specific local issues, NCRA remains a mentor and resource. As members’ skills and services continue to improve and NCRA certification as a universal standard gains recognition, membership will increase. CAT and other technology vendors play a huge role in improving members’ skills and teaching us to work smarter and utilize innovation. As services improve and income increases for quality reporting and captioning, our members will trust and appreciate the “mother ship” of NCRA more and encourage their friends and coworkers to join. Happy members draw in more members, and increased membership gives us collective strength.

JASON: The biggest struggle moving forward from this point is getting our numbers up to have a critical mass of reporters to do the work. If we want steno reporting to survive and thrive, we must provide effective reporting training that draws in new students. NCRA sees this; witness the pilot Total Immersion program. Vendors see this; witness Stenograph’s ownership of two reporting schools. If state associations are not involved in their local schools, they need to get started on that.

8. What do you feel is NCRA’s role as regards to court reporting schools, their curriculum, and NCRA’s relationship with the individual student?

MELANIE: I think our role is in helping all schools help themselves to succeed through teacher training and certification, developing and sharing best practices, guiding curricula, recruiting, and helping develop aptitude tests. I think a small number of specialized, regional schools -- turning out high-quality realtime-ready, service-oriented reporters, captioners, and CART providers – is not totally farfetched. I think our online mentoring program has tremendous potential to bridge the gap from student to professional member by, again, building our community and welcoming our future generations. I think mentoring is a two-way street that brings rejuvenation to a mature career and adds valuable real-life experience to a new graduate.

JASON: NCRA is already addressing the need to make it easier for schools to flourish rather than having a heavily regulatory type of environment. NCRA has a natural role in cooperating with training programs, reporters, employers, and students. We want more students, more successful students, and we must work with these others to bring the students in, get them through in a reasonable time, and with much lower attrition rates.

9. Do you feel NCRA should be more transparent in their governance of the profession? If yes, what do you propose as a solution?

MELANIE: NCRA Board meetings, excluding executive session, are open to all members, and minutes are available and published very shortly after each meeting. All Board members’ names and contact information is published in the Journal, and, to a person, we welcome your input and questions. Mark Golden and our headquarters staff are amazingly available, both to us and to you, and there are very few things about our governance that are not transparent. Before I became a director, I often asked questions and got my answers, just as we all can.

There are items – budget, COPE complaints, DSA selections – that I think are very appropriately handled in executive session, which excludes members, as well as NCRA staff. When possible, we schedule these at times convenient to our guests. I would like to increase attendance of state leaders and local visitors at our meetings. I often invite them to arrive in advance of their Leadership or Boot Camp sessions to attend and observe us in action. I would like an e-mail link on the NCRA Web site to further improve our accessibility.

JASON: There is an Open Meetings Law in a number of states that essentially declares government meetings to be open at all times, except for employee discussions, contract negotiations, and attorney-client discussions. That’s a good model for NCRA Board discussions and is, in fact, pretty close to what’s being done already.

Before I was on the Board, I did not perceive any questionable lack of transparency. As a Board member, it appears to me that we go to great lengths to keep the members informed. Of course, everything can be improved, and we can work toward further transparency through encouragement of attendance at Board meetings, distribution of meeting results through our information sources, and greater use of Town Hall meetings at reporter seminars and conventions.

10. What is your plan to build membership and member participation in NCRA’s activities?

MELANIE: I believe fulfilled reporters, captioners, and CART providers exude enthusiasm and professional pride. I believe unhappy people spread unhappy ripples and thoughts. A stronger sense of community, of belonging, of promoting excellence, of being supported to achieve professional expertise goes a long way toward engaging future members. Our Call for Volunteers program gives everyone the chance to present a seminar, write an article, or offer to serve on a committee.

As more and more reporters embrace realtime and the technological advancements available for working smarter and writing shorter with less fatigue, their professional satisfaction will increase. As more student members become professionals, they’ll remain in the NCRA family throughout their career because they’ve been welcomed and mentored and encouraged to pursue continuing education. Working together, with collective enthusiasm, we’ll continue to create an inclusive community of support for and peer-to-peer interaction with each other.

JASON: It must start with the schools and bringing more reporters into the profession.

It continues with exploring our actual and potential markets as energetically as we can. The Strategic Plan is a good outline for this, sets forth the goals of the Board, and is well worth a read.

Membership is enhanced by the promotion of our mission and our pride in it through NCRA and state association media, national conventions, local conventions, and all other available means.

At one time, personal referrals were the top means of bringing students into schools. We need to meet the challenges of our times and regain our pride and joy in what we do. It will show, and the obvious benefits that we reap can only encourage others to join our profession to share in them.