Bob Brummond
Bob Brummond founded R.A.I.S.E., the Asheville, North Carolina radio reading service (now known as Mountain Area Radio Reading Service, MARRS). He was a long time member of IAAIS, serving on the board in the early nineties, and was awarded the C. Stanley Potter Lifetime Achievement award in 2000. Bob was one of the first IAAIS members to recognize the possibilities of using the internet to get programming to print-impaired individuals and the reading services that serve them. He followed the earliest developments in Internet "Radio" receivers, and arranged demonstrations at the IAAIS conferences.
When Bob first conceived of a central server to distribute Reading Service Programs, few of us had fast internet connections, and nobody knew how it could work.
When the National Association of Radio Reading Services changed its name to the International Association of Audio Information Services, Bob was one of the motivators. He acted as an ambassador to people from all over the world who came to our conferences to learn how they could provide reading services in their communities, and he helped open our eyes to the fact that our future will be filled with opportunities and challenges as FM subcarriers cease to be the dominant way to reach our listeners.
Bob Brummond is remembered as a mentor and friend by many radio reading service professionals.
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Bob visualized
schemes that were wholly internet-based, and also ways to utilize the NPR satellite system.
Bob passed away a few years ago, while we were still working on implementing his ideas. But this is what he wanted, a way dozens of services could exchange programming
at little or no cost, and with very little staff time. We think he'd like it.