Much has also stayed the same: Our main client base remains Federal government agencies, with a diverse range of organizations in both the public and private sectors.  Most importantly, our commitment to personal excellence and overall dedication to customer satisfaction, high ethical standards, and being a source for good in the community has only grown stronger and more solid with time.

To highlight our successful decade, NCC is pleased to announce a special anniversary event for invited guests, which will showcase our services and our goal to continue delivering a GOOD future to all we come across, from our clients and our corporate partners to our employees and fellow community members.  We hope to make it as much a celebration of the past ten years as a kick-off of the next ten, and look forward to sharing this time with everyone who has made our growth and success possible.

At an event with so many participants and attendees, having an eye-catching display was a key conversation starter for both current and potential clients.  Multimedia Client Manager Lindsay Rice was proud to stand at our exhibit and represent NCC, stating, “This was a great opportunity to speak with customers face-to-face and to allow them to visit a display that truly represents NCC and the quality of work that we stand for.”  It was a bonus that this conference display was the perfect way to demonstrate the work of our Conference and Peer Review Management Division.

Though this was our first exhibit at the OSDBU conference, we were by no means strangers to the other attendees.  CEO and President Chris Marquez noted that while the term Federal Government often seems monolithic and bureaucratic, our staff members were hugged and greeted warmly by our contacts at HHS, NIH, NRC, NSF, DoED, WHS, and others; a reminder to our team that agencies which may seem impersonal as a whole are actually filled with human beings who not only care about doing their work, but also about the contractors who help them do it efficiently and well.  As Lindsay Rice said, “It was gratifying to meet with so many representatives in person and find that they are outgoing, friendly, and genuinely interested in the work that we do here.”

Our team was encouraged to see both the extent of the small business base represented at the conference as well as the government’s continued emphasis on, and support for, small businesses.  The goal of this conference is to promote collaboration and competition among government contractors in order to improve efficiency, facilitate the establishment of best practices, and, of course, fuel innovation.  NCC looks forward to attending the 23rd Annual OSDBU Procurement Conference next year, as well as continuing to demonstrate the quality and thought that goes into our work, underscoring our company’s mission to achieve excellence in everything we do and deliver a GOOD future.

Over its 30 years, the program’s fleet of five shuttles flew 135 missions, working on space stations including Russia’s Mir, capturing spectacular images and scientific information to further our understanding of the universe around us, and inspiring generations of Americans.  And although its missions are over, the impact of the Space Shuttle Era is clear even today.  In the course of gazing out our 10th-story window at the shuttle-airplane duo, we made a discovery of our own: the children from the St. Thomas More Cathedral School next door were gathered in the playground below, transfixed by the display.

Every time the shuttle went out of sight, our employees would reluctantly trudge back to their desks, only to be summoned back to the window by our “canary warning system”: the excited shouts of a hundred kids, waving their arms at the pilots to say hello.  They even formed the shape of a rocket for the occasion!  CEO Chris Marquez took a picture of this land-based spectacle, which was featured in Arlington-based ARL Now’s Morning Notes on April 19.

Today Discovery arrived at its new home, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum‘s Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly.  As the world takes a moment to remember the achievements of the Space Shuttle program, we join all Americans in looking forward to what’s next for NASA, an NCC client.   Here’s to a future of countless more discoveries!

Hero Dogs, Inc. is a two-year old, Maryland-based 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that focuses its efforts on raising, training, and placing service dogs with disabled military veterans, at zero cost to the veteran. While both Ike and Teddy elicited petting and coos from our dog-loving staff members upon first appearance, everyone in the room was completely smitten as they demonstrated their ability to pick up coins and credit cards to return to their trainers, turned light switches on and off, and even made sure we knew an alarm was ringing.

Teddy Flips the Lights
© hawxhurst.com

During her presentation, Jennifer shared that each service dog, donated by local breeders, lives with volunteer raisers and is trained to assist veterans with multiple disabilities in sessions conducted by experienced instructors over an intensive two-year training period. Raisers are instructed to praise the puppies whenever they indulge their instinct to hold things in their mouths, explore new environments fearlessly, and of course lavish them with hugs and affection. All this is part of the rigorous preparation required to ensure the puppy becomes an incredibly versatile and useful service dog.

And for those cat lovers out there — don’t worry, we’re not anti-cat! Jennifer and Ilene assured us that Hero Dogs has a feline representative as well, SWAT, who helps acclimate the service dogs to cats in order to prevent any unfortunate incidents.

Ike and Jennifer Accept NCC's Donation
© hawxhurst.com

After asking our fill of questions about the best breeds for service dogs (only Labradors and Golden Retrievers, Multimedia Client Services Manager Lindsay Rice!), how long they typically remain in service (until they’re about 10 years old; Lindsay, give someone else a chance to ask a question!), and where they go after they’re retired (usually adopted by the people who raised them, HR & Finance Manager Lisa Harris!), NCC staff watched as CEO Chris Marquez presented Jennifer and Ilene with a check for $3,600,the cost to sponsor a puppy through the two-year training period.

Since our inception a decade ago, we have been committed to increasing accessibility and facilitating communication for the disabled. We are privileged to have the opportunity to partner with Hero Dogs in this critical service for truly deserving recipients and to assist them in their goal of raising $100,000 this year. (And it doesn’t hurt, frankly, that we are just crazy about dogs!)

We invite you to support Hero Dogs, too, by following them on their Facebook page, making a financial donation, or spending your time to raise or train a puppy. Check out their website for more ideas on how members of the community can get involved, and stay tuned here for updates on our sponsored puppy.

Please check out the updated Services and Solutions page, where you can find links to our three main service divisions: Multimedia Solutions (Captioning, Transcription, and Post-production), Conference and Peer Review Management, and Audiovisual and Technology Solutions. Contact us for more information on any of our services or with comments and feedback on the site.

Our exhibit will showcase NCC’s broad range of work in support of communication and accessibility.  Representatives from each of our service divisions will be present to discuss NCC’s approach and commitment to customer satisfaction.  In addition, we will have demonstrations of some new audiovisual equipment along with literature and information highlighting our capabilities.

We invite you to visit us at Booth 767 - we look forward to meeting you and answering any questions you may have.

NCC personnel will be responsible for attending advisory committee meetings for the FDA’s Office of Pediatric Therapeutics (OPT), recording audio of the proceedings, and generating detailed notes which will then be used to create verbatim transcripts of the meeting discussions.  OPT is responsible for the coordination and facilitation of all activities of the FDA that may affect pediatric populations or may involve pediatric issues, with focus areas in scientific, ethical, safety, and international concerns – areas in which NCC has accumulated a great deal of experience over the course of 10 years supporting health- and science-based federal institutions.  OPT’s meetings are scheduled to take place in May and September of this year.

Additionally, on behalf of its Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), FDA reached out directly to NCC with an urgent request to provide transcription services for a two-day public meeting entitled Utilizing Innovative Technologies and Other Conditions of Safe Use to Expand Access to Nonprescription Drugs.  This important event took place March 22 – March 23.

As a company with significant experience working with health-, science-, and research-focused clients and subject matter, NCC will leverage a high level of topical expertise in support of OPT and CDER.  We look forward to offering ongoing support for important advisory committees and technical meetings throughout 2012, not only on behalf of FDA’s Offices and Centers, but also in fulfillment of additional recent contract awards from clients such as the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Specifically, NCC will provide on-site reporting and transcription services for the spring and fall meetings of the NSF Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education (AC ERE) and the NSF Advisory Committee for Geosciences (AC GEO), comprehensively recording and transcribing up to 25 advisory committee members, various NSF staff, and esteemed presenters.

NCC was prepared to begin serving NSF immediately following contract award.  Two days after receiving notice from NSF that we had been selected for the project, we deployed team members to NSF headquarters and successfully supported the March 14 – March 15 AC ERE meeting.  Additional meeting dates for AC ERE and AC GEO have been confirmed for April, September, and October of this year.

As a company with proven experience recording, transcribing, and editing the proceedings of advisory committees and otherwise highly technical meetings, our Multimedia Division is eager to apply a well-developed and time-vetted expertise to the transcription effort in service to NSF.  NCC’s support will allow NSF to focus on its mission free of distraction and better serve the public.

This contract represents further expansion of NCC’s voice-to-text and language services into federal and court-based environments where the content is especially sensitive and verbatim accuracy is critical.  NCC’s associates will work on-site at USPTO facilities, setting up and monitoring equipment to record the hearings firsthand while taking detailed notes of testimony and legal proceedings.  This source material will then be used by transcribers and editors at our Arlington headquarters to produce highly accurate, custom-formatted transcripts.

USPTO strives to foster innovation and competitiveness by providing high-quality and timely examination of patent and trademark applications, guiding domestic and international intellectual property policy, and delivering intellectual property information and education worldwide.  NCC looks forward to supporting the USPTO mission as we document the hearings held and decisions reached by the BPAI and OGC.  We anticipate the development of a healthy and mutually rewarding partnership with USPTO over the next five years as we welcome the agency into our community of satisfied clients.

Specifically, NCC will provide ongoing on-site webcasting support, as well as closed captioning, transcription, and annotation services for NIH events taking place off the main campus.  Among other responsibilities, NCC personnel will set up equipment, test connections, continuously monitor live webcast streams, troubleshoot issues and questions, and maintain a robust webcast archive.

Webcasting is one of the primary mediums that NIH uses to publish and share information with national and global research communities.  The thousands of hours of video available in NIH’s webcast archives are evidence that NIH began leveraging this technology well before many of its contemporaries.  NCC’s technical experience and shared dedication to pursuing innovative approaches in the dissemination of information position us to well as we strengthen our partnership with NIH.

We are excited by this opportunity to implement world-class webcasting solutions for NIH and add it to our roster of satisfied clients that includes such federal agencies as the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).  NIH DMA was NCC’s first client upon our inception in 2002 as a requestor of voice-to-text services, and a decade later our relationship has proven to be productive and enduring.  In 2012, we will add new depth to our experience with the provision of webcasting support services.

Update: A recent example of this collaboration can be found here.