1. LET’S PLAY JETAA NY ELECTIONS!

At this moment, everyone else reading the Newsletter needs YOUR help. Whether you’re an active member, a passive member, a “happy hour” member, just a regular Yuki or Yukio, JETAA NY wants you to consider running for an elected position to help make JETAA NY even stronger.

To learn more, click here to read the position descriptions or contact any of the current officers (El Presidente Rob Tuck, Vice Prez Megan Miller, Treasurer C.J. Hoppel or Secretary Carol Elk), Country Rep Shannan Spisak, or non-elected types (Social Chair Monica Yuki, Webmaster Lee-Sean Huang, or Newsletter Editor Steven Horowitz).

Here are the positions:

• President
• Vice President
• Treasurer
• Secretary

Ganbarimashou!

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2. JET Alums Soon to Register for Centralized Membership System

In an exciting new development, JETAA International has set up a centralized website and a Centralized Membership System for all JET alums—a community of over 40,000 and growing worldwide.

To be part of this, very soon you will be notified to go to www.jetalumni.org and register.

How will you be notified? Possibly telepathically or in a dream, but most likely in an announcement in the weekly e-mail and or Quarterly Newsletter.

Why do you need to register? Due to privacy laws in Japan and elsewhere, JETAA International is not permitted to simply get the database list from each local JETAA chapter and combine them into one comprehensive database. JETAA International needs to start from scratch, so to be in the JETAA International database, you will have to proactively enter your name and contact information.

Once you’re in the system, you’ll be able to customize the type of information you receive. The JET alumni community has some extremely capable programmers who have put this whole thing together, and others who have thought through all the privacy issues to make sure you’re not compromising your identity info.

Contrary to what you might think, JETAA is not a big, centralized, federalist system. It’s a bunch of local chapters that serve the JET alums in their communities and also try to work together on a national and international level to try to make bigger things happen. (Kind of like the original 13 colonies before they became the U.S., but without the power to go around invading countries.)

This Centralized Membership System is one of those bigger things. It’s taken several years of hard work by many JET alums around the world (including New Yorkers Shannan Spisak and Scott Norman). And now it has the ability to create a vibrant and active on-line community of JET alums—tatami timeshares, on-line forums, tracking down old friends, job hunting, permanent jetalumni.org e-mail addresses, etc. We’re a community of over 40,000 people—a fantastic resource—and this is how we’re going to begin taking full advantage of it.

So go to www.jetalumni.org, take a look around, and when the moment is upon you, make sure to seize that moment and register da yo!

YOROSHIKU ONEGAISHIMASU!

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3. Meet Your New JETAA International Officers!

In September, JETAA International announced its new roster of officers. They’re excellent folks working on your behalf, so here’s a little something about each of them.

CHAIR: Michael Adams was an ALT in Kagoshima Prefecture from 1998-2001. Instead of returning to the USA, he followed his Aussie wife to Sydney. He has been active with the JETAA Sydney chapter for four years as the secretary, treasurer, and president. Currently working as a credit manager, he is looking forward to his post-grad accountancy studies next year.

VICE CHAIR: Joseph Luk was an ALT in Karasuyama town, Tochigi prefecture, from 2002-03. As the country representative for Canada, he is trying to meet the challenges of facilitating communication among seven chapters spread across 5000 km of distance (Vancouver to Montréal). One of the tools introduced this year is the JETAA Canada Wiki, a centralized and open resource for all things country-related. He was once a software engineer in Silicon Valley, but partly through JET he discovered that instead of working with computers, he enjoys working with people far more.

SECRETARY: Michelle Fox was an ALT in Saitama Prefecture from 1999-2002. She briefly returned to Scotland before heading on out to sunny Sydney. She has been the Social Coordinator of the Sydney chapter for two years, with the highlight of her term being the successful coordination of the Sydney International Meeting in November 2006. She is an events manager by profession and loves using the skills learned in her career to hold successful events for JET Alumni.

PR/TREASURER: Liz Aveling majored in Japanese, graduating from universities in London and Paris. She joined the JET Programme as a rural CIR in Miyazaki Prefecture in 1989, moved to Tokyo for some nightlife and a job in 1991 and then roamed the planet with a backpack before returning to the UK. She worked for Itochu for a bit before taking a position with the Japan Local Government Organisation (CLAIR London), overseeing their officer training programs and public relations. It was during this time that she got involved with JETAA UK. Since then, she has become self-employed, mostly in the editing and translating business. She has been involved with JETAA International since 2000 and thoroughly enjoys helping to contribute to the success of a program which has so enriched her own life.

WEBMASTERS: Paul Donovan/Sean Lowry

Paul Donovan (webmaster) was an ALT in Fukuoka prefecture from 1991-94 and has served as the JETAA International webmaster and Content Management System (CMS) developer for a number of years. He has also served as the president, events coordinator and Newsletter editor for JETAA British Columbia. He is a survivor of the Kobe earthquake and has lived in Vancouver, British Columbia since 1996 where he owns and runs Living Productions Inc. (www.livingproductions.com), a web, graphic design, audio and video production company.

Sean Lowry (assistant webmaster) lives in New Zealand. We will provide you with more information about Sean when we feel that you are ready to handle it.

For more information about the JET Alumni Association at the international level, go to www.jetalumni.org.