This week I learned that the RWC workshop that was tentatively planned for the Lotud language in Sabah, Malaysia is definitely "on". This was exciting news for me because for the past number of months, it was on again, off again.

My supervisor, Verna Stutzman, had no experience with these workshops, so she decided to go and observe this one.  She lives near Dallas, TX and I live near Charlotte, NC, so we are on separate flights to Los Angeles, but we're booked on the same flights from there to Kota Kinabalu. (For those of you who know our family's history, that's as much of a mouthful as Ouagadougou!) We leave our homes on Sunday morning, September 15 and - if all goes as is printed on paper (since I did print out my itinerary) - we'll arrive in Malaysia Tuesday morning, September 17.

I will be functioning as the consultant for the workshop, teaching Lotud people how the Rapid Word Collection method works and training one of them in particular to be able to lead more of these workshops in the future - without me being present! We expect to do 3 days of training, 5 days of word collection, and then 3 days of cleanup, before Verna and I leave on September 30th to come back to the U.S. This will be Verna's first experience with a RWC workshop, so she will be observing, learning, - and filming! We would like to put together a demo video, showing live footage of how a RWC workshop is done. We plan to upload the video to the RapidWords.net website so that inquirers can get a better idea what it's all about.

My name is Kevin Warfel, and I am a linguist working with SIL. Currently I am based in North Carolina, but I spent 19 years in Burkina Faso (West Africa): 1990-2009, doing linguistic research in the Puguli (Phuien) language and assisting other linguists through administrative and support tasks with the local branch of SIL.

This blog is intended to be a running commentary on developments relative to my current role as Associate Dictionary & Lexicography Services Coordinator (a.k.a. Dictionary Development Coordinator) with SIL International. I accepted an invitation to serve in this position in the summer of 2012 and officially began in this role October 1, 2012.

My primary area of responsibility in this role is the promotion of the Rapid Word Collection (RWC) technique, as developed by SIL linguist, Ron Moe, and refined by a group of other interested SIL members, myself included. Many more details about RWC can be found at RapidWords.net. Questions about the methodology can be directed to me via the link on that website.