Dear Families and Friends,

We are very pleased to welcome you to Sturbridge and the Sixth Biennial Northeast Cochlear Implant Convention. We'll recognize many of you who have attended previous conventions, and we look forward to meeting you if this is your first time here.

Traveling to Sturbridge via the interstates is convenient, but if there is time, there's much that can be seen on small, forgotten, out of the way rural roads. Often, you'll pass by stone walls - there are approximately 240,000 miles of stone walls in New England. The glacier dropped the stones fifteen to thirty thousand years ago, and they were subsequently covered with sediment. During the fifty years following the American Revolution, millions of those stone walls were built as farmers plowed new fields.

You'll observe varying degrees of order in the way the stone walls were constructed. Some walls are very disordered. The farmer merely tossed or dropped stones along a fence line. The next step up in orderliness is the "stacked" wall, in which stones are placed one above the other without concern for how well they fit together. In a "laid" wall, the stones are arranged with deliberate care with the objective of creating a structurally stable wall that is also a thing of beauty. Finally, a chinked wall, in which small stones are fitted into the gaps between large stones to produce a smooth surface, is a piece of art.

The theme of this convention, Technology Rocks!, reflects the many exciting technologies and approaches that will be presented. If we may be permitted a play on words, at this convention we'll show you how we build a wall of "technology rocks." These rocks come in various sizes and shapes. Implants and speech processors are the large rocks that lay the foundation of the wall, sometimes in bilateral pairs forming opposite sides of the wall. Sound-field speakers, FM and infrared assistive listening devices are technology rocks that we use to build our wall above the foundation. Among those are also rocks that represent important social, educational and communication skills.

We do not set out to build a wall that is merely dumped or stacked. Our wall will be more than just beautiful; it will be a thing of art! We shall craft this wall with each piece laid with proper grace, informed by the compassion and knowledge of the many excellent speakers who have come to offer their guidance.

We thank our speakers for coming here and giving so freely of themselves. We thank each of you for sharing your stories and experiences, which others will find helpful. We wish you a very enjoyable experience at this convention among new and old friends and helpful speakers. Thank you for participating in this convention, and may you have a safe journey home with the vision and inspiration of a gracefully crafted wall.

Warm wishes,

Larry Orloff, Chairperson, & Marilyn W. Neault, Ph.D., Co-Chairperson