Vision and Mission
Public Speaking: The ACA Open Knowledge Online Guide
Vision and Mission Statement
Vision. What does this word truly mean? To me, and the authors and producers of this electronic textbook, I strongly believe that it means: making tomorrow possible today. The vision and mission of this project began simply enough. We wanted to bring a free multi-authored public speaking textbook to bear online, such that anyone with access to a Web-browser could view it, print it out for themselves, and use it in their classrooms and beyond. That was the idea, writ small. We wanted to make academic knowledge freely available, and do so with a global reach. Again, the idea was simple, small, portable.
But, that was then, and this is now. I am changed by this thing.
Sometimes, ideas with velocities and trajectories like this pick up collective inertia along the way. The team that produced this online textbook has three new goals for this free product in the coming year. First, we are going to add significant new modules to the work, hopefully converting a traditional public speaking textbook into a possible hybrid "public speaking / human communication" work. In fact, several noteworthy authors are already lining-up to write and submit new modules about interpersonal, small-group, organizational, nonverbal, and gender communication. There even exists a genuine interest in taking this idea into the realm of journalism and mass communication circles. Of course, we're not ready to do that, just yet. But, in time, we may be.
The second major thing we plan to do with this "assembly of efforts" is to find partners and sponsors to translate the corpus of the text into other languages. Remember, this is the World Wide Web, not just an English-speaking Wide Web. A friendly school in Latin America has already volunteered to translate the works found here into Spanish, and to mirror a site at their institution. As well, some of our colleagues in the Middle East are working to do the same thing in Arabic. Maybe there are other institutions out there reading this very vision statement, right now, who would also like to do this in other world languages? Maybe you already have additional chapters/modules written that you would like to donate to this e-book, which is very possibly becoming more of an online e-repository or e-library of communication-based works?
I certainly hope so.
The third and final thing we plan to do with this project is to expand the information delivery technology we are implementing to allow for more user-defined versatility. It's just the beginning of our foray into this mind and Cyber-space, and we humbly realize it. That's why this site is in its "Beta-testing" stage. In the future, we hope to add user-defined Tables of Contents (much like iTunes and Napster allow for the creation of "playlists"). In the future, we hope to allow for more robust content which has been scrutinized by the public through debate and criticism. And, in the future, we hope to offer the ability to host annual YouTube! persuasive speech competitions for classes that use this product. We have a lot of wonderful ideas and online applications to leverage that are married to this team effort, and we think you'll enjoy them. Stay tuned!
As American Communication Association E-textbook Committee Chair and Project Manager of this Public Speaking gift to the discipline, I hereby want to formally and personally thank each and every person who has worked on this electronic collection. Truly. You all made it happen. But first, a very big and sincere "thank you" to University of Nevada, Reno Professor Jim Owen who whispered this wise idea into my ear about a decade ago (when I was first getting into online publishing with the debut of The American Communication Journal). This product of team love would not be here today, if not for your sagacious vision. Also, a massive thank you goes out to Christine Krus, of Seton Hall University, who does the Quark-work design for our PDF-versions of this work. We completely owe our online existence to you, Christine! You rock! And, to Doug Picirillo of Chicago, Illinois, our Internet Guru Extraordinaire, you alone have taken this idea to new heights, perspectives, and expectations. Thank you ever so dearly much! And finally, an enormous "thank you" to everyone who helped with this project along the way that I may have forgotten to mention. All players had a unique and special skillset that they brought to bear to make this a reality, and freely and collaboratively applied those skills to this e-textbook. What a wonderful community effort and event this has been, for me, over the past two years. I cannot wait to see what the future holds for this seed we have planted. I think we are "on" to a robust idea made real here that, in due time, will become something highly engaging and practical. Along the way, I hope that we do some general good for communication students everywhere!
Tyrone L. Adams, Ph.D.
D'Aquin Professor of Journalism and Communication
University of Louisiana, Lafayette
September 5, 2008
("Remember, remember…the 5th of September.")
