I spent the weekend in Austin, Texas to attend VASCON2, the annual Vietnamese youth conference in the south. Originally, I was actually not intending to attend the conference, but I’ve been asked to go there to represent and promote Lenduong as well as VietACT, since I am so heavily involved in both of them. VASCON2 was a blast for me, because this is the very first time for me to attend a Vietnamese conference, where I truly did not have to work behind-the-scenes or give any presentation that I need to prepare for. As a result, I actually got to attend all workshops to my likings, learned a few new things here and there, and got to network with more Vietnamese-people-that-you-should-know-if-you-work-in-the-community. Outside of the workshops, I had pure joy meeting so many of my old friends again. It was a reunion with UVSA staff, VPS Dallas members, SoCal friends, DH4 veterans, uNAVSA attendees and Vietnam Freedom March participants, and getting drunk and clubbing with them until the wee hours was just hella fun.
Other things that emerged this weekend to note
- Ham Tran’s Journey from the Fall won the Audience Award at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. How cool is that? I offered Ham my help to maintaining the Journey from the Fall website, which has been frustratingly dead for the longest time. Certain things I can’t say No too. This is one of them.
- uNAVSA came out of DH3 because we started talking about establishing a national VSA during that conference in San Diego, but I didn’t know that VASCON came out of DH3 as well! VASCON brainchild Kym Pham attended DH3, was inspired by it and when she returned to Texas she wanted to organize something similar like that in the south as well and so VASCON was born.
- Kim Chi’s “touching” exercise on Sunday (where people were able to express their appreciation for someone in an anonymous manner) was probably the most touching and moving bonding exercise I’ve ever encountered at these kinda workshops. I thought that that combined with Mike Vu and Vu Dinh’s great work during the closing ceremony was one of the highlights of the conference!
- Since the power went out in a large segment of the city during my spiel about Lenduong, I would like to repeat the info here: the Fifth International Vietnamese Youth Conference will take place in June 2007 in South East Asia. We’ve narrowed down the location to Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand, and yes, it’s not a typo, the conference is indeed in June 2007, so better start saving vacation days and money now. Click here to see the slideshow that I meant to show and be sure to visit www.lenduong.net or www.sydney2005.net to learn more about Lenduong and its past conferences.
- VASCON was one of the most professionally organized student-run conferences I’ve ever attended. From the logistics, the email updates, to the venues, and hospitality of the local group, I am very impressed at how professionally everything was organized. It really puts the logistics of Lenduong’s biannual conference to shame, hahaha. Kudos to Nam Nguyen, Kym Pham, Frank Le, Judy Feng… and everyone else involved in the planning and execution of this great conference. I am looking forward to welcome you all to San Jose at uNAVSA-3.