Greetings!

The International Stuttering Association (ISA) is pleased to announce it will be hosting the International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD) Online Conference in October 2016. A small team made up to Anita Blom, Dan Hudock, Keith Boss, Scott Palasik, McKenzie Jemmett, Bruce Imhoff and Hanan Hurwitz will coordinate this event, continuing the hard work of Judy Kuster who ran previous online conferences.

We are calling for submissions and for people to participate in the ‘Ask an Expert’ for the 2016 ISAD Online Conference.  This message explains the requirements and deadlines for content.

The 2016 Online Conference will start October 1 and finish October 22, to coincide with many events around the world in October 22, International Stuttering Awareness Day.  We’re including a page for associations to record what activities their association is doing for this important day.

The 2016 theme is ‘Stuttering Pride.  Respect. Dignity. Recognition’.  If you don’t see the image with this message, you can also see it at the website

isad.live/isad-2016/

We kindly ask you to post and spread the logo, the website and this message through your networks.

We welcome papers from not only people who stutter (PWS) and professionals (SLPs/SLTs), but also from those who are the partners, parents, children, colleagues and other people who support PWS.

Please be sure that your submission is directly aligned with the theme.  Where the link between your submission and the theme is unclear, authors will be asked to provide additional descriptive text explaining the relationship between the submission and the theme.

We ask for people to commit in a number of ways.

1. Write a paper.
   Write a paper (in English) of 2000 words or less.  Please provide a title. Shorter documents are also welcome, in the format of a paper, a piece of poetry, a song, a drawing or something else.  If you quote or use material from another person, please cite the reference at the bottom of the paper (APA referencing is preferred). Papers must be submitted by August 31 and should be provided in text (TXT), rich text format (RTF) or Word (DOC/X) format.  Images can be included.  Special fonts should not be used, as all papers will be presented in the same style.  The team will assess all papers and we may ask for clarification, shortening or rewording if necessary.  Please do not use complex formatting or language, as many visitors may not be native speakers of English.  If you have something visually complex to include, convert it into an image and send the image attached to your paper.

2. Make a video or audio presentation.

Record audio to be loaded to the website.  Audio must be in the format .mp3, .m4a, .ogg or .wav.  Audio recordings must not be more than seven minutes in duration.

OR

Record a video to be loaded to the website via YouTube.  We cannot accept large video files sent by email, please load them to YouTube and send us the link to the video.  Video recordings must not be more than seven minutes in duration.

For audio or video recordings, you must include a short summary of the content.  For example, ‘A video by Joe Smith about how his stutter made him a better person.’

3. Contribute to the online conference through other mediums
   We are always looking for new and unique ways of expressing your stories through social media or other methods, in a way that can be easily shared through the ISAD Online Conference.  For example, Facebook, Vines, Instagram, Twitter… or something else, get in touch with us about your ideas!

4. Be an ‘expert’.
   As in previous online conferences, we will provide a space for participants to ask questions to Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) and other experts in the field.  Experts will monitor the questions in the ‘Ask an expert…’ forum.

5. Write about the International Stuttering Awareness Day event(s) in your country.
   Write a short summary about what your association is doing for the ISAD.  One of the points of the online conference is to raise awareness of International Stuttering Awareness Day and find out what others are doing.  If your association is doing something special, please let us know;

• your country
• your association’s name
• what you are doing for International Stuttering Awareness Day this year
• include any venues, dates and times of activities, so others in your country can support you!

Send all emails/papers/requests, including your contact details, to isad@isad.live, so we can contact you if we need to.  Again, all papers are due by August 31.  If you intend to submit a paper please let us know as soon as possible so we can prepare for the number of submissions.  Late papers will not be accepted.

For all participants in the conference we ask you to:

• Provide a short bio about yourself (not more than 150 words) with a picture of your head/face attached to the file, as an introduction of who you are and your background.
• During the online conference, you will need to monitor the page where your paper is stored and respond to comments made by others every few days.

We look forward to your contribution to the ISAD online conference this year!

Kind regards

The International Stuttering Awareness Day Online Conference Team