And coming up . . . .

VOA has a wealth of musical talent, as well as musical knowledge, among its many employees and contractors.

I should explain that beginning two weeks ago I began an exhaustive survey of the eight Divisions and 44 Language Services of the Voice of America, looking both for active performers (music and dance), as well as those broadcasters involved in music programming, and the nature of the musical features they broadcast on radio and television. The immediate impetus was to line up a series of performers for VOA's annual Diversity Day on Wednesday, 5 May of this year (see flyer at left). That task is occupying a significant amount of my time, and will continue to do so until the program.

Those initial explorations of talents within VOA have brought exciting new discoveries, with some of them to be presented in the Diversity Day Talent Show. For the next few weeks, I'll be continuing to meet with musicians and music programmers throughout VOA, as part of an expansion of this blog, both in content and approach.

At the same time, I'll be undergoing training in a range of Web-related programs (html, Photoshop, Flash, etc.) to assist me in working with this expansion.

And finally, I've had the first of several meetings with the new Web Editor for VOA, and have begun discussions on possibilities for the development of a central presence on the VOA Website, which would bring together in one location the many fine VOA radio, television, and Web features.

The result is that for the next month I'll be posting rarely, if at all, in order to continue to pursue further contacts, consolidate my findings, and improve my Web programming skills. Thank you for your past interest, and I look forward to returning on 1 May with regular contributions on this site.