A self-advocacy column by Eric Gmeinder

I’ve attended Futures Explored Practical Film and Media Workshop, for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), for almost a year and a half. For not being an accredited school, Futures Explored offers a lot of frankly exotic hands-on experiences. In the past, students have gone to Lodi and San Diego within California, and cross-country to Arkansas and New York City.

And from Sunday, April 8, to Tuesday, April 10, I and about ten other students are heading to Las Vegas for the annual National Association of Broadcasters conference. Think of it as Comic-Con for filmmaking technology.

We won’t be there the whole conference due to time constraints, but from what I understand, the panels will mostly be filmmakers introducing their new technologies, especially cameras. The event will already have people filming it, so those who film on their own behalf may be ejected. (Vegas is very vigilant about people filming inside establishments, although outside is allowed.) We are being told to treat this as a job, and that the better we act, the better we represent Futures Explored. And that, along with wanting to shake up my routine (which is boring me to tears), is primarily why I wanted to go.

Most of us will be staying at Circus Circus, which I stayed at when I came to Las Vegas before, when I was ten. Others will be at another hotel, which I can’t remember the name of. A couple of the students are actually coming from our sister film camp, Inclusion Films, in Livermore, and I’ll be sharing a room with one.

I’m told that Futures Explored may start looking for a job for me after the end of the current semester in July. Regardless of whether that happens at that time, this trip will both give me a taste and be good practice for when I get as high on the entertainment ladder as I want to be.

Eric Gmeinder, Guest Columnist