Parliament and Diversity Dinner

There were three evening events that I attended tonight. One of them was the new member welcome to the conference. Since the conference actually starts tomorrow for real, the organizers wanted to say hi to all the new people that are at the conference. Following the new member welcome (which was really just a five minute speech and then the President of the Board of Directors for ATLA said, ok now network!), everyone went to the opening reception for the conference. This is the first event that I have seen Michael at; I was able to chat with him and his wife for a while.

Then, ATLA has just formed a Special Committee on Diversity within the association. it only took four years of exploratory committee work to decide that the committee was necessary! We got to go up to the 23rd floor of the Westin to the Bonaventure suite to have dinner with the committee. So this first picture is of the parliament building from above. I didn’t think I’d get another opportunity for a picture like this isn’t it cool? The picture of the bear is in exactly the same place exactly two hours later after it got completely dark. You can’t see the parliamentary building anymore.




The final picture is just insanity. As you may be able to tell from the picture, this phone is hanging directly above the toilet in the suite that the dinner was held in. The part that was the most shocking was that not only is there a phone in the bathroom, hanging above the toilet, but that the message light was flashing. I had this immediate image of being the person in that hotel room thinking, gee, I wonder who could have left a message for me on the phone in my hotel room’s bathroom!?!






Nighttime from the 23rd floor of the Westin hotel. On the balcony outside the Bonaventure suite (room 2318!)