Li Ming took this extraordinary photo of 400 Focusers together at the gala.
Here he is readying the shot:
The International Focusing Conference in Vienna honoring Eugene Gendlin was an amazing event with almost 450 people registered. We'll give a fuller report in a future News Feed, but today we want to be sure that we highlight the incredible volunteers who made it all possible.
The conference's success was due to the 116 people who took on volunteer roles -- and that number is not even including those who took on roles of leading workshops, panels or speaking roles! If we included those, we'd be adding more than 100 more names!
Volunteers took on many roles, and we want to especially highlight a few people who took on larger tasks:
Monika Lindner (Germany, pictured L with Gugga Johannesdottir) organized all of our translators. This was an enormous job that she worked on all year, managing our community volunteers (Markus Aigner, Evelyn Fendler-Lee, Anthony Winiski, Alexandra Johnson, Monica Fröhlich, Amona Buechler, Susanne Rieger, Heidrun Rosenzweig, Margarita Weiser, Susana Tichauer, Christiane Buchner, Anouk Mayer, Aaron Scheer, Lynne Zhang, Jimena Camón, Myriam Kettani, Samia Drissi) plus working closely with Judith and Silvi Rennert, professors in the Centre for Translation Studies of the University of Vienna and their 21 students.
Florian Christensen (L) helped to organize the Gala, got us our "bling" (bags, notebooks, pens). Peter Leidlmair (R) secured the venue for the Gala, and helped with a number of organizational details. Both of them met every Thursday with Catherine Torpey and Sabine Aydt for many months in the lead-up to the conference and played a big role in helping accommodate about 200 more participants than originally anticipated.
Heidi Smolka (R) and Irmi Walli created the beautiful Gendlin Walk Vienna book. She's pictured here with Ruth Sar Shalom in front of the memorial to Gene and all the students expelled from Gene's gymnasium (high school).
Peter Pressnitz (R) helped us acquire an Austrian accountant to assure our conformity with tax law, and also connected us with the Mayor's Office to invite Valerie Kaup-Hasler (L) to formally open the conference.
Olga Hueso (pictured here with Frans Sandbergen) did a wonderful job with the complexities of organizing the Expo on Saturday afternoon, with about 30 different tables with a variety of individuals and organizations promoting their various Focusing initiatives.
Peter Afford and Heidrun Essler organized the Follies on Friday. They're pictured here making an announcement in advance of the Follies to recruit acts.
Derick Deal recruited and organized our Hospitality volunteers, who welcomed participants on opening day by greeting people at key transportation hubs and checking everyone in.
Janina Obermueller-Riemer organized the Book Table which meant communicating with many authors and scheduling many volunteers. She's shown here (L) helping participants at the Book Table.
Filip Zitnik (L) and Andreas Riemer (R) each took one building as their responsibility, and took it upon themselves to ensure that each presenter had the equipment they needed for their presentations and had successfully connected. They each carried backpacks full of cables to ensure that no one was without the equipment they needed to make the workshops begin on time and run smoothly.
The 7 members of the Board of The International Focusing Institute led our Home Groups each morning.
Philip Bender assisted with organizing the Changes Groups and with the Opening to help it run smoothly. He's pictured here in conversation with Marta Fabregat (L) and Beatrice Blake (center).
And finally, of course, Ruth Sar Shalom (L) and Sabine Aydt (R) were the core organizers who worked closely with Catherine Torpey (center) for two years, having already set the stage for almost two years prior to that!
All of these wonderful volunteers worked with teams, and all the names are listed here.
THANK YOU to everyone who took on so many tasks, large and small, to make the conference such a wonderful experience!