Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Introducing JetWit.com
Hajimemashite, SWET Members. My name is Steven Horowitz, I’m an alumnus of the JET Programme (Aichi-ken, Kariya-shi, 1992-94) now based in New York City and the creator of both JetWit.com and the Writers Interpreters Translators (WIT) Group.
I recently learned of the existence of SWET from Ruth Stevens when I was invited to attend a shinnenkai for the Nichibei Exchange group in New York City. Ruth put me in touch with Lynne Riggs and Sako Eaton, and as I read the organization’s history I realized that I had wonderfully stumbled into something with much greater scope and experience than I had ever conceived of when I started the WIT Group.
Last year, completely oblivious to the existence of SWET, I began organizing a group for JET alumni and Friends of JET (i.e., a catch-all term for the rest of humanity) called the Writers Interpreters Translators (WIT) Group. The group was created to share work opportunities and information, get answers to questions, create opportunities for collaboration and generally leverage the resources of a relatively loose alumni network of people who are connected to Japan in some way.
Soon after creating the WIT Group, I created the JetWit.com website/blog to be a sort of public face for the group. A place to publish work by JET alums, post job opportunities, give exposure to the creative accomplishments of JET alums and provide a directory of JET alum authors, journalists, translators, etc.
The irony in all of this is that I’m not necessarily a writer and I’m certainly not a translator or interpreter. (At least not of any language.) By day I have a job that involves bankruptcy law and various other devastatingly dry topics. But for the last seven years I served as the editor of the JET Alumni Association - New York’s quarterly alumni publication, and found I really enjoyed gathering people, coming up with ideas and creating structures to enable them to contribute in a way that would be both entertaining and helpful to JET alumni and others connected to Japan.
If anyone is interested in linking up with WIT and/or JetWit, I encourage you to take a look at the JetWit.com site and to get in touch. There’s also a JetWit group on Facebook. I’m always happy to be in touch with people who can provide insight and perspectives to what is a relatively young group (though there are some members who are fairly established in their respective fields). I’m also always willing to chat and brainstorm with anyone interested in writing posts on relevant topics for JetWit.com. (Unfortunately, I haven’t come anywhere close to making money on all of this, so I can’t pay anyone for their writing at this point, though I would love to attract some advertising in order to be able to provide at least a little bit of compensation to those who contribute.)
I hope you find JetWit.com and perhaps the WIT Group to be useful resources. I’m open to any suggestions and feedback as they are great platforms for experimenting with new ideas.