Preliminary Schedule
October 26-29 on Zoom & ACB Media
Thursday, October 26, 2023
4:00 PM PCB Board of Directors’ Meeting. All are welcome. (Zoom only)
4:00 PM Auction Item Showcase Preview. (ACB Media only) The bidding happens on Sunday, but you don’t have to wait any longer to hear the parade of great items. Start making your wish list! (Please consider donating an item to this year’s auction. Contact us at 877-617-7407 or pcboffice@pcb1.org before October 1 if you would like to donate.)
5:15 PM Dinner Break
6:15 PM Music Prelude
Conference General Session Begins
6:30 PM Call to Order and Welcome, Christine Hunsinger, PCB President
6:35 PM Invocation & Necrology Remembrance, Jacqueline Wissinger, PCB Chaplain.
6:45 PM President’s Address, Christine Hunsinger, PCB President.
7:00 PM Door Prizes
7:05 PM 2023 Proposed Resolutions, PCB Parliamentary Team. This is the first reading. The second reading and action will take place Saturday afternoon during the PCB business meeting.
7:15 PM Making the Most Out of Your Outreach Thadeus Graham, PCB Outreach & Engagement Specialist. In this presentation we will discuss some best practices for making the most of your Chapter Outreach Event. Some topics we will cover include perfecting your pitch, working through rejection, and remembering social media. There will be time for discussion, questions, and perhaps even practice of the elevator speech.
8:00 PM An Introduction to Hearing Aids and Their Users, Tony Swartz. A panel of PCB peers will discuss their recognition of hearing loss and their purchase and use of hearing aids. The presenter will provide a brief introduction to hearing loss, book recommendations, and suggest alternative devices to combat mild hearing loss.
9:00 PM Announcements and Door Prizes
9:15 PM Shout That Tune! With DJ Doug. Join the fun with PCB’s version of “Name that Tune,” where everyone guesses the hits from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Come see if you know these songs, the artists, or any fun facts about them.
Friday, October 27, 2023
9:00 AM Rise for a Prize Community Coffee, Conference Program & Planning Team. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and join us for a light conversation. Oh yes, and prizes too!
9:30 AM A Happy Exercise Moment! Lyn Lindbergh. Get ready to unleash a burst of energy and have a blast in our specially designed-session for the blind and visually impaired! In just 15 minutes, Lyn Lindbergh will guide you through a series of invigorating exercises that will leave you grinning from ear to ear.
10:00 AM Exploring Your New Pathway to Internet Participation: Meeting the Challenges of Personal, Technological, and Financial Barriers, PCB Communications Team. Our team will discuss personal, technological and financial barriers for utilizing technology and the internet to explore new pathways. We will present suggestions on how to deal with fear of new technology, offer examples of how technology assists with day-to-day activities, and present low cost or free resources and means for purchasing technology and services.
11:00 AM Door Prizes and Announcements
11:15 AM Have You Heard a Good Shell Lately? Carla Hayes. When you were a child, were you told that if you held a seashell up to your ear, you could hear the ocean? If you hold this Shell up to your ear, it will bring you an ocean of possibilities! Come and learn about the Blind Shell 2 Accessible Cell Phone and all it has to offer.
12:00 PM Newcomer’s Lunch Lounge, PCB Peer Engagement Team. (Zoom only.) All individuals attending this conference for the first time and those newer to PCB are invited to socialize to learn more about each other and PCB. Ask questions. Connect with PCB veterans and role models. Win a prize. You won’t want to miss this special time together. (Indicate on the registration form if you will attend.)
1:00 PM Do I Really Need This White Cane? PCB Vision Loss Team. Join us for a discussion between an Orientation and Mobility Specialist and team members to explore visual and non-visual strategies for traveling safely throughout your home, community and beyond. If you are new to vision loss or have experienced progressive loss in vision you may need to hear from these experienced friends on when and why to use a white cane. This session will provide you with tips and strategies to keep you on the move!
2:00 PM Exploring Travel at Street Level, PA Guide Dog Users and Supporters (PAGDUS). Whether we are utilizing a dog guide or a cane, our pathways have become much more complicated to navigate because of complex traffic patterns, electric vehicles, and easily distracted motorists. Come learn and discuss how we can contend with these challenges.
3:00 PM Break and Door Prizes
3:15 PM Protein Power-Up: Energize Your Day with a Protein-Rich Breakfast, Lyn Lindbergh. Are you tired of feeling sluggish and hungry mid-morning? Well, we’ve got just the thing for you: Protein for Breakfast! Discover the benefits of starting your day with the right amount of protein to feel more energized and fuller for longer. We’ll give you some delicious and easy breakfast recipes that are packed with protein.
4:15 PM Medication Development—Understanding the Pathway from a gleam in a scientist eye to your Medicine Cabinet, Debby Hill. It is a rare person who has never taken a prescribed medication at some point in their lives. Debby will describe the methods scientists use to discover new medications, the research phases that medications go through, and the steps that are followed for FDA approval. She will also briefly talk about generic and over-the-counter medications. There will be a question-and-answer period.
5:15 PM Dinner Break
6:15 PM Music Prelude
6:30 PM Audio Prompting Demystified: Tips for a Stronger Presentation, Ann Chiapetta. This session will focus on describing the audio prompting technique, the importance of it, and how it enhances and assists in the preparation of a speaker’s performance. A review and short explanation of script preparation and the tools, both hardware and software used will be presented, followed by Q & A.
7:30 PM Door Prizes
7:40 PM Candidate Statements, PCB Nominating Team. Prepare for Saturday’s elections by getting to know more about each of the candidates through their pre-recorded remarks.
8:10 PM New Governor, New Ideas, PCB Advocacy Team. This session is for everyone interested in the issues affecting people with vision loss, aging in place, working to contend with the digital divide, health care inadequacies, and accessibility of government information. We hope to get information from several state agencies and their leaders describing how this administration with its additional emphasis on the issues mentioned above will be able to better reach out to people with vision loss in a more inclusive manner.
8:55 PM Announcements and Door Prizes
9:10 PM The Inside Out Anagram Game, hosted by Sue and Bob Lichtenfels. We’ll randomly assign you to a 3-person team to compete against your peers. Teams will work together to turn the letters from a compound word “Inside Out” to create other words. Prizes will be awarded. (Register for this event on the enclosed form.)
Saturday, October 28, 2023
8:30 AM Rise for a Prize Community Coffee, Conference Program Planning Team. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and join us for some light conversation. Oh yes, and prizes too!
9:00 AM AI Generated and Cloned Speech: It’s Impact on the Vision Loss Community, PCB Access Technology Team. The presentation will review the history of synthesized speech as it has led to today’s Ai generated speech and voice cloning. Using the products of ElevenLabs, examples of AI generated and cloned voicing will be demonstrated. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of the possible impact of the technology, its benefits and drawbacks.
9:45 AM A New Frontier in Blindness Technology: A Comparison of High-Tech Glasses, Lunda Peterson and Jule Ann Lieberman. Wearables are the wave of the future, and the blind community is no exception. Smart glasses that provide visual information seem to be the most natural thing in the world. But are they really the game changer that their makers claim? We will investigate products from the best-known players in this space, compare these devices with each other, and see how they stack up against more traditional methods.
11:00 AM Door Prizes & Announcements
11:15 AM Circling Back with the New Orbit Speak, Lisa Salinger. Scheduled to be released this fall, the Orbit Speak sounds a lot like our old friend, the Braille ‘n Speak. Lisa will introduce us to this economical, braille in, speech out device.
12:00 PM Lunch Break
1:00 PM PCB Business Meeting, Christine Hunsinger, PCB President. (Zoom only for the entire meeting)
1:05 PM Team & Project Reports.
1:45 PM Treasurer’s Report, Michael Zaken, PCB Treasurer.
2:15 PM Action on Resolutions, Carla Hayes, PCB Parliamentary Team.
2:45 PM Election of Board Members, Sue Lichtenfels, PCB Nominations Team and Chris Hunsinger, PCB President.
4:00 PM Door Prizes and Adjournment for dinner.
6:15 PM PCB Virtual Banquet Music Prelude
6:30 PM Greetings and Sponsor Acknowledgements, Chris Hunsinger, PCB President.
6:35 PM Drawing the 50/50 Conference Raffle. Please purchase these $5 tickets on the registration form.
6:40 PM Banquet speaker: Exploring New Pathways, Judy Dixon. In her remarks, Judy will look back into the history of communications for people with vision loss and forward toward the newest technology.
7:30 PM PCB Award Presentations,
8:00 PM PCB Merit Awards, Suzanne Erb, PCB Peer Engagement Team.
8:15 PM Door Prizes
8:30 PM Performance: An Improv Play by Sue Lichtenfels
Sunday, October 29, 2023
9:30 AM Family Entertainment: Movies or Stories with Audio Description. Titles to be announced.
1:30 PM Pre-Auction Showcase. Tune or zoom in to hear the prerecorded parade of great items up for bid this year. Familiarize yourself with the bidding process to give you the best chance of nabbing your favorite item.
3:00 PM PCB Live Auction, PCB Fund Development Team. Join the fun of raising funds for PCB and have a blast winning a great item. All conference registrants are automatically eligible to bid. Encourage your friends and family who want to join in the auction fun to sign up before Noon on Saturday, the 28th. Have them call 877-617-7407 or email pcboffice@pcb1.org with their full name, city and state, phone number, email address, and type of payment they plan to use (check or credit card).