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 panels or workshops! If we included those, we'd be adding more than 100 more names!
Volunteers took on many roles, and they are all listed here.
In this News Feed, we want to especially highlight a few people who took on larger tasks.
Long before the conference began, we had a Scholarship Committee (Mary Jennings, Jane Quayle and Clare Myatt) as well as the Proposals Review Committee (Robert Lee, Dieter Mueller and Charlotte Rutz) who helped us determine who would be present and who would present! In this InFocus News Feed, we celebrate those who took on roles during the conference itself, with as many photos as we could fit in.
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, Monika Fröhlich, Amona Buechler, Susanne Rieger, Heidrun Rosenzweig, Margarita Weiser (Chete), Susana Tichauer, Christiane Buchner, Anouk Mayer, Aaron Scheer, Lynne Zhang, Blanca de Rojas, Jimena Camón, Myriam Kettani, Samia Drissi, Lucia Logean, Florentina Sassoli) plus working closely with Judith Platter and Silvi Rennert (professors in the Centre for Translation Studies of the University of Vienna) and their 21 student translators -- those names are listed in our complete list of volunteers.
Florian Christensen (L) helped to organize the Gala and 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 (L) and Sabine Aydt (R) 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. Sabine was one of the main organizers of the conference and worked for 4 years to bring it to life.
Heidi Smolka (R) 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). Ruth was one of the main organizers of the conference. Heidi worked with Irmi Walli (not pictured) who took Heidi's text and created a beautiful book which you can find listed in our online bookstore. If you go to Vienna, be sure to buy a copy to bring with you so that you can take the self-guided Gene tour!
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. Mrs. Kaup-Hasler is the Executive City Councillor for Culture and Science (Amtsführende Stadträtin für Kultur und Wissenschaft) of the City of Vienna. Also pictured here are Gene Gendlin's son Gerry Gendlin (L), Catherine Torpey, Sabine Aydt and Lore Korbei, who is organizing another conference in honor of Gene in Vienna in October.
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 giving their pitch to one of the "Home Rooms" to recruit acts for the Follies. They did a beautiful job leading the Follies, in German and English, and encountered more than they'd bargained for when a group asked to have time in the midst of the festivities to address a difficult issue with the community. Thankfully we had these two very experienced Focusers, among others, to help navigate the various needs of the moment, which continue to reverberate as we seek a Focusing way forward when confronting difficult situations together.
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. He's shown here giving his workshop on "The Sacred Middle: The Importance of the Middle of the Body in Focusing and Indigenous Epistemology in the Bolivian Andes."
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. Most books and other items are available online; we've collected those links in our online bookstore and you can find that list here.
Filip Zitnik (L) and Andreas Riemer (R) each took responsibility for one of the two buildings where workshops were held. They took it upon themselves to ensure that each presenter had the equipment needed for their presentations. They were running from room to room to check that everyone had successfully connected their computers to the projection equipment, if needed. They carried backpacks full of cables so that all would have whatever they needed. This helped immeasurably in a tightly packed schedule to see to it that everything began on time and ran smoothly.
The 7 members of the Board of The International Focusing Institute led our Home Rooms each morning. They meet each month online, so it was a treat for them to be together in person. They are, L to R, Laura Bavalics, Florentina Sassoli, Tom Larkin, Darryl Commings, Eveline Moor, Bill Gayner and Detlef Girke.
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 once-in-a-lifetime experience!