Lionel at the Japan interpreter has written at least two a very good posts on the curse of not actually meeting people, but just “liking” or “adding” or “RT:ing” or whatever it is we are doing. One of the inconveniences about being an international community like translators or interpreters is of course that many of us are not located in the same country or even the same continent. But communication is also about having honest discussions about important matters and since we are all freelancing this may be threatened by our professional situation. For good and for bad, we are not just colleagues, but competitors too. Lionel took a great initiative to bridge both geographical and professional gorges and started the #IntJC over at Twitter.com where it has been a raving success.

Meanwhile one of the participants in #IntJC, Al Navas started exploring the Google+ hangouts. He  teamed up with Gerda Prato-Espejo @Gerdabilingual and Esther Navarro-Hall @MmeInterpreter and they created the #1nt and #xl8t Endless Possibilities talks at Google+.

They kick off this week-end, Saturday at 12 noon Los Angeles-time. 5 a.m Tokyo time (poor Lionel) and 9 p.m. Central European Time. And what will happen then?
Well, Esther Navarro-Hall will tell us her journey to become an interpreter. She will also answer questions both from the other participants in the hangout (@Gerdabilingual, @InterpDiaries, @Blogbootheando and me, @tulkur), and from people who will watch the live stream and interact through chat. We are all crossing our fingers that this new technology will work; it is still young technology, and may not be available during the weekend hours..

I am very excited and happy and proud to be part of this talk and this project. Thank you Al, Esther and Gerda for taking the initiative. So come and watch it live this Saturday, February 11th. #1nt and #xl8 Endless Possibilities is the place to be.

Update in 2019: This now sounds like eons ago. Esther passed away in the late autumn of 2018, both Al and Lionel has left the interpreter blogging sphere. But if you would like to watch that first hangout it’s still on YouTube here. Lionel does not blog about interpreting anymore, but if you would like organize a trip to Japan you should contact him here.