How times have changed . . .

Although I was only at the Marco Island conference for a short time, the experience led me to ponder how the conferences have changed.

I remember my first conference at Puget Sound in 1992 after I'd been teaching for one year.  Lots of people stayed in dorms, it was a much smaller group than our impressive numbers at Marco Island, and there was a strong sense of community built in some part on the "we are the misunderstood and underappreciated few."  But we stood in solidarity.

I remember another LWI conference a few years later when I met one of my co-blog-editors as she and her family arrived late at the dorm, weary and with children, only to discover a paucity of mattresses in their dorm room.  We bonded as we dragged mattresses from room to room sometime around midnight.  It might have been at that same conference when I sat with another colleague in the TV room in the dorm lounge, getting to know him.

Our specialty--our legal writing community--has changed a lot, but I hope that we will always have that sense of solidarity and that sense of mutual support.  And whatever the Marco Island version of bonding experience, I hope that lots of participants met colleagues who will become friends.

Other conference memories and stories?

(njs)