Now, the ABA has been very very good to me (sounds better with a Sammy Sosa accent, but oh well), so I don’t highlight this issue lightly. I’m genuinely fond of the organization.
But this strikes me as more than a bit ridiculous:
What’s wrong with an airport hotel? I mean, I loved my trip to Cancun a few years ago, but honestly — did we get more work done there than we could have in, say, Cleveland?
And now they want to go on a cruise? Let’s be honest: the minute you get on a boat, the last thing you want to do is spend 6-8 hours a day talking about governance, publication schedules, budgets and logistics. You want to be in the pool, on the sun deck, drinking, dancing and eating.
And I’m not even getting into the PR nightmare this could be…
Well, to quote Governor Ahhnold: "where there's smoke there's usually fire" and so the PR nightmare would be because it would be correctly surmised that this was an über-Boondogle and not a justified use of the dues paid by ABA members.
ReplyDeleteAmen, Rick.
ReplyDeleteAmen, Ernie.
How many of those CLE credits are for Ethics?
A cruise ship is not all that different from many of the resorts at which meetings are usually held. I think the rationale is to make attendance more attractive to the volunteers who do most of the work of the organization. That's the theory, anyway.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I don't think the theory works all that well. At the meetings that I attended, I was sometimes frustrated that too many attendees seemed more interested in doing the things that you typically do at resorts than working on LPMS business.
My sense is that if you hold meetings at resorts and cruise ships, you tend to attract people who want subsidized visits to resorts and cruise ships. I believe you would attract a different crowd--and in some ways more desirable crowd--if meetings were held at airport hotels.