IMLA News
(Wednesday, Feb. 17) - Draft Seminar Program
Our draft program for the Mid-Year Seminar (April 18-20) is now available by clicking here. This program will be updated often in the coming weeks.
(Tuesday, February 16) - Breaking News!! - IMLA Conference Location Change
Dear IMLA Members:
IMLA has been forced to deal with a very ticklish issue involving our Conference this year. Since September various hotels in San Francisco, including the conference hotel have been without a union contract. We were alerted to this fact in early January and began looking into the situation. While the Hotel is committed to provide a great conference for us and believes it can commit to doing so even without a contract, we recognize that many of our members will be unable to attend due to this situation. Indeed, there are a number of organizations asking that organizations like ours boycott these hotels. We know that many of our members have delicate labor relations that they need to manage and requests from their unions to boycott our conference could affect their decision to do so. Similarly, the elected leaders in those cities may be urged to insure that a boycott is respected. Because our conference is such an important part of IMLA’s fiscal health and its image and because we do not want our conference to affect our members negatively, we have worked with the hotel to find an alternate venue for our 2010 Conference and have agreed to hold our 2013 Conference in San Francisco.
I am delighted to tell you that we will be holding our 2010 Conference in New Orleans. The dates remain the same October 10-13. Like San Francisco, New Orleans is a great city replete with the type of amenities that help make a great program. Obviously, we know that this change will be disruptive and we hope that our members will understand and look forward to coming to a great program, but in a different city.
The past few weeks have been a struggle for us as we have tried to deal with this issue. I cannot tell you how grateful we are for the help and understanding that we received from the Hilton Hotels and the City of San Francisco. I wish to especially thank our First Vice President Dennis Herrera for his help.
While all of us are disappointed that we will not be in San Francisco this year, we were able to negotiate an attractive room rate of $219 at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside and we have a strong line-up of great conference cities for the next five years.
As always, should you have any comments, questions or complaints, please contact me.
Chuck
Charles W. Thompson, Jr.
Executive Director/General Counsel
This website will be updated in the coming days with more information on this change.
