By Kelly Linkowski
Intersteno’s 15th edition of the International Keyboarding Championship by Internet will take place April 17 through May 9. Each year, the numbers of international participants has increased, starting with 262 competitors 15 years ago to more than 1,700 last year. The Internet contest is a great way to test your own skills and may whet your appetite to travel to Berlin for the 51st Intersteno Congress, July 22-28.
NCRA will publish more news on how to register for the Intersteno competition in an upcoming JCR Weekly. Registration for Internet Keyboarding Competition closes April 16, so sign up soon.
Competitors can use a variety of methods for inputting straight copy during the contest. I use my steno machine (aka Jamie) with the keyboard macro in Eclipse to compete. Intersteno provides a Taki download on your computer that displays text, so I was typing what I read. Take time before the test to familiarize yourselves with the competition system at intersteno.org/intersteno-internet-contests/training-with-taki-version/. Only one shot per language is allowed, so work out any bugs beforehand! For my fellow American writers, the English text does not include double spaces after full stops; this is considered an error, and believe me, they can add up!
Reporters are commonly life-long learners; we expect the best of ourselves and we consistently improve our skills no matter how many years we’ve been at our machines. Even when competitors miss only one word in a dictation, you won’t hear “that was near perfect” but “next time, I’ll write it this way.”
As you seek to be the best writer you can be, you won’t be disappointed in the Internet competition. I look forward to competing with you in April!
Kelly Linkowski, RPR, CRR, CRC, CPE, is a broadcast captioner based in Rittman, Ohio. She can be reached at klinkowski@neo.rr.com. Linkowski is a member of NCRA’s Intersteno Task Force and a past participant in Intersteno’s Internet Contests.
Learn more about the contests.
Registration for Internet Keyboarding Competition closes April 16
