I enjoyed the Biennial ISAAC Conference in Vancouver and wish to thank those who planned and hosted the Conference for their excellent work. To focus on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for 4 to 6 days was a great opportunity for all of us in attendance. During the Conference, I focused primarily on my personal knowledge base by attending presentations and poster sessions and by talking at length with colleagues from around the world. Now, I am home again, and those of us who had the opportunity to attend the ISAAC Conference walk around with smiles on our faces, while those who did not attend feel a bit left out. We have scheduled some meetings to share the experience, but it is apparent that human memory and verbal narratives have their limitations.

An experience like ISAAC 1996 is great for developing the personal knowledge bases of those who attended, but its limitations for developing the corporate knowledge base are already apparent. If we who attended have trouble retaining the ISAAC experience over a few months, what about new individuals coming to the AAC field 2 years from now? For them, ISAAC 1996 will be largely an irretrievable event. The printed word remains the best medium for long-term storage, accessibility, and retrieval of information. Realizing this, the ISAAC published a Proceedings of the 7th Biennial Conference,which all attendees received. The Proceedings contains a two-page summary of Conference presentations and is available for purchase through the ISAAC Secretariat (see the announcement at the end of this editorial).

At the ISAAC awards ceremony, we honored all authors who published their work in AAC since the ISAAC Conference in Maastricht, in a public effort to remember that the individuals who submit their work to AAC are the lifeblood of the journal. In addition, we gave special recognition to those who received the AAC Editor’s Awards for 1994 and 1995. In 1994, Linda A. Hoag, Jan L. Bedrosian, Dallas E. Johnson, and Barry Molineux received the researcher’s award for their article entitled "Variables Affecting Perceptions of Social Aspects of the Communicative Competence of an Adult AAC User." The student researcher awards were given to Doreen M. Blischak for her article entitled "Phonologic Awareness: Implications for Individuals with Little or No Functional Speech" and David McNaughton, Karen Fallon, Julie Tod, Frederick Weiner, and John Neisworth for their article entitled "Effect of Repeated Listening Experience on the Intelligibility of Synthesized Speech." In 1995, D. Jeffrey Higginbotham and Elizabeth Baird received the researcher’s award for their article "Analysis of Listeners’ summaries of Synthesized Speech Passages." The student researcher award was given to Gloria Soto and Wanta Toro-Zambrana for their article "Investigation of Blissymbol Use from a Language Research Paradigm."

For 10 years, the Prentke Romich Company has sponsored the AAC Editor’s Awards. For nearly the entire existence of AAC, this company has actively encouraged AAC authors by providing substantial cash awards. For all of ISAAC, I wish to thank Barry Romich, President of Prentke Romich Company, for his commitment to AAC.

Back to the ISAAC Conference. As I participated in the Conference, I was impressed again by what it means to be a writer in a cultural context. The tasks of developing personal and corporate knowledge bases are quite different. Those who are active learners develop personal knowledge bases and, through the application of that knowledge, do a great deal of good in the lives of those whom we assist. It is a worthy effort to develop one’s personal knowledge base in order to serve others effectively.

Those who share what they have learned by talking about it, as many did at ISAAC 1996, expand their zones of influence. Their listeners can develop their personal knowledge bases and, just as importantly, can be motivated to behave in ways that are new and different from what we have done in the past. The spoken word can be used effectively to transform as well as inform the listener.

However, it is the writers in a culture that best capture the knowledge of their era, in a form that can be shared across geography and time. As I talked with participants at the Conference about their futures as writers, some were encouraging, but others were careful to inform me that they did not intend to accept that cultural role for themselves. Through the upcoming months. I hope that AAC can capture much of the research content of ISAAC 1996. To do that, some of you will need to take another step in your roles as contributors to the corporate AAC knowledge base. If you wish to communicate about this role shift, please fell free to contact me or any of the associate editors of AAC.

While at ISAAC, I spent some time each day writing in my personal journal in an effort to capture the event for myself. On the plane back to Nebraska, I "surfed" my journal to review my thinking and found a few quotations that caught my attention—again. One that I have carried with me for years goes like this: "I like to think of myself as a writer, but I just don’t like to write." Some who choose to write enjoy the process for its own sake. I envy them. However, many of us don’t really like to write very much, but we do so for a host of reasons: to clarify our thinking, to share what we have struggled to learn, and to fill a culture role.

A few years ago, Tone Finne from Norway spent several weeks at Nebraska. During that time, my colleagues and I were collaboratively writing a chapter. Tone attended our meetings, adding her perspectives. After returning to Norway she wrote about her reflections. In the end, she concluded that "Writing is the process of turning coffee into words." I guess that I had never thought about it that way, naively assuming that holding a cup of coffee was just something to do with my hands while waiting for my reluctant brain to generate something of sufficient quality for my fingers to release to the keyboard.

Recently, AAC has taken several more steps to encourage the development of the corporate AAC knowledge base. David McNaughton agreed to serve as an associate editor who will facilitate the use of electronic communication technology to bring people "together" in order to discuss issues, synthesize information, and prepare manuscripts that will benefit all of us.

In a continuing effort to increase the efficiency of the AAC review process, AAC has appointed two additional associate editors to manage manuscripts. Because of the broad range of issues dealt with in the AAC, associate editors tend to specialize in specific content areas. Therefore, depending upon the flow of manuscripts, individual associate editors can be overwhelmed with the number of manuscripts in their individual areas. This happened to two of our associate editors this past year. To assist with this situation, Kathleen Kangas and Carole Zangari have agreed to serve AAC as new associate editors. I wish to thank David, Kathleen, and Carole for their willingness to serve.

During the ISAAC Conference, several meetings were held with personnel from the AAC research and development centers located internationally. Our goal is to develop a journal format that will provide AAC readers with consistent information about emerging technologies and technological applications. Currently, I am recruiting an associate editor who will guide this effort.

Another year is concluded and I would like to thank the authors, consulting editors, citation and abstract editors, associate editors, and staffs at Nebraska and Decker Periodicals for supporting AAC. Although the processing of writing is a rather solitary activity, the task of regularly publishing AAC is obviously a team effort.

Electronically printed with permission from ISAAC (http://www.isaac-online.org/isaac.html)