It’s very up in the air whether ALA Annual will take place in New Orleans next summer, as scheduled. While ALA hasn’t changed plans yet, we all know, deep down, that this has to be an item of discussion within Executive Board and at the very highest levels of the association.
I don’t know what I feel. My first, emotional response is “of course we should go to New Orleans.” Put up with less than perfect surroundings, help reinvigorate the economy, show what we’re made of. But my second response is what would we be returning to?
Four years ago I moved back to California, where I grew up. What I learned is that I did not move back to the place I knew from my childhood. Some of the landmarks were familiar, but the California in my head was a completely different place than the California I found myself living in.
Whether or not ALA goes to New Orleans next summer, it will not be the New Orleans we knew. It may bear some superficial resemblance, but you can’t submerge most of a city in water for over a week and expect it to be the same.
My worst-case scenario is not that New Orleans will still be recovering from Katrina and that some of the places I grew to know and love from earlier conferences will be gone or not yet open for service. My fundamental nightmare is that New Orleans will have dwindled into a small Disneyfied facade of its former self, a faux French Quarter staffed by poverty-level service workers bused in from Baton Rouge–and that we won’t know the difference.
We don’t have any of these answers yet. I’m prepared to go wherever we go. (It’s not as if we haven’t gone to Disneyfied cities in the past; I’d rather go to New Orleans and sleep in a tent than go to Orlando and stay at a five-star hotel.) But in thinking over “ALA 2006,” it conjures up a mix of memories, fears, and fantasies that no amount of bravado or wishful thinking can obliterate.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Dear USAA, Mastercard, and the Collection Agency... - 2010
- Six Dollars and Forty Two Cents - 2006
- Thoughts from the Eye of the Storm - 2004
As long as the city of New Orleans will officially be ready and able to host ALA 2006, then ALA 2006 should be held in New Orleans. If the city is ready, ALA 2006 in New Orleans will do no damage to New Orleans, nor any damage to ALA. On the other hand, our presence will not automatically help the city, either — it will be up to us to make sure our presence leaves behind, after we adjourn, a better New Orleans than we convened in. I think any of us who have been to New Orleans will be able to (a) see beyond any Disneyfied French-Quarter façades to reconnect with the true spirit of the place, and (b) actively strike out in a quest to create new memories — memories of a *New* New Orleans. But worrying about our own memories seems like an awfully trivial consideration. It seems to me we have a chance to do good things — both on a grand scale and on a personal scale — for some people who could really use some good things. That’s how you make the truly great memories.
Been thinking about this myself, Karen. As OCLC spends a ton of time on the exhibition floor, I’ve been wondering how I am going to feel being in that now sorry space, the Convention Center. People killed and small kids raped (according to reports) in a space I am giving the 312th presentation on the OCLC Environmental Scan.
Luke, just being frank with how I feel about it; neither here nor there, but I don’t feel I have trivialized the situation to point out that what we know of a place is based on memory and experience.
Damn, Karen, you ALWAYS get it. Well said.
Whether we go or stay, the city and we ourselves can not be the same.
Therefore we must: got me… That’s the problem.
Tom
I have to agree with Alane. Just being in that convention center will feel more than a little creepy.
At what point will the folks in New Orleans even know if they can host a June 2006 conference, and at what point does ALA need to decide to go elsewhere?
And just out of curiosity, what’s the short list of cities that can book a ~10,000 attendee conference with less than a year’s notice? (“Plenty of space in Orlando? Noooooo….”)
I have to agree with Alane too, not sure if I can spend time in that building again. I will also note that I am right now trying to decide how many staff to send to PLA Boston. Do I need to reserve funds for ALA? Not if it is moved to Orlando, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas….. cities I will no longer go to for conferences. I love New Orleans, I was looking forward to going there again. On the other hand my issues are nothing compared to the many Gulf Coast homeless.