Category Archives: Conference

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So. Here is the preliminary video of the autistic advocates’ panel at the CASDA 2018 Summit. This is not the official video, which CASDA is working on getting professionally edited; this is basically the raw footage with a few edits (title and removing the final remarks of the day) by me. Once the official video goes up, I will remove mine and put a link on this post to the new one.

CONTENT WARNING: The video is just over an hour long, and as I state up front, there are some very difficult and painful things to hear (including mentions of suicide and filicide).

Comments are welcome.

😐 tagÂûght

#CASDASummit2018: Day 2 (Pt 2) – #UnspokenPriceOfAutisticAdvocacy

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So, as mentioned in the last post, this post is focused entirely on our panel – First Voice Perspective – The Unspoken Price of Advocacy. Note that the panel was recorded, and I’ll be putting up a link to that recording when it goes live.

The panel consisted of myself, Corey Walker (from BC), Patricia George-Zwicker (from NS), Jackie McMillan (from ON) – all of whom were on the CAPP Advisory Group with me – and Daniel Share-Strom (from ON). There was supposed to be one more, Bruno Hache (from ON), but unfortunately one of his best friends committed suicide on the Monday, so he couldn’t make it.

But before I get to the contents of our panel, I want to share a picture with you – a picture that was taken of pretty much all the attendees of the summit. (It’s not loading into this post, so here!)

Read on, please.

#CASDASummit2018: Day 2 (Pt 1)

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Day 2 of the CASDA Summit (Thursday April 19) started out on an interesting note. And by “started out”, I mean 1 am.

I spent the first two hours of the 19th working on the script for my portion of the “First Voice Perspective” panel – finishing writing it out, and then reading it out loud and making edits. (I spent from 1am to 2am doing the latter.) Then I managed to crash – for a while.

The Summit Day 2 session itself also started out on an interesting note.

Read on, read on!

#CASDASummit2018: Day 1 and Self-Care

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First day of the CASDA Summit of 2018 (Wednesday April 18). Woke up earlier than I meant to, which was irritating. Read an article from the Ottawa Citizen written by Senator Jim Munson, and got upset about some of the terminology used. (He saw my tweet, and apologized both on Twitter and in person, I definitely have to respect that.)

Got to the summit place (same place as last year, the Shaw Centre, which is attached to the Rideau Centre, which is kitty-corner from the hotel), grabbed breakfast and chatted to various people, including the other ASNL staff and board member there, and then settled up front at the “autistics'” table. 🙂 (AKA the table that most of us sat at, including all of us who were on the “First Voice Perspective” panel.)

Just a warning note before I get into the day’s panels: I was only able to note down certain comments (as opposed to the whole speech of each panelist – thinking of recording certain panels next year for my own info), so I went for the ones that struck me as particularly important in what each of them were saying.

Read on for more details of the morning (I skipped out on the afternoon) and what I did the rest of the day

#CASDASummit2018: Pre-Day Details

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So, I’m doing the autistic advocate panel at the CASDA Leadership Summit in Ottawa this year. (I was part of it last year, as CAPP’s last gasp, but it seems I only wrote stuff down about it on Twitter rather than this blog. But they liked us so much last year that they requested a panel by autistic adults this year too!)

I got into it a bit late, because I hadn’t even realized about the sponsorships available, but in time to join the panel. There are three others who were part of CAPP with me, and there were two other autistic advocates whom I’d heard of but not met. Unfortunately, the friend of one died recently, so he’s had to skip the conference to deal with that. (*my sympathies to him*)

So, long story short, I got in. I’m sharing a room with Patricia (like we did for the Exploring the Spectrum conference in Halifax last year), so that’s all good. (Saving what money we can!)

Read on for Today’s Tale