David*Macinnis*Gill.com

Other folks did a fan­tas­tic job of blog­ging ALAN/NCTE (yep, we’re now more impor­tant than in NCTE in my world), among them 

jbknowles

‚ 

david­lubar

 , 

pro­fes­sor­nana

‚ 

halse­an­der­son

.  (If I missed any­one, I’ll edit this post.)  How they could take phots and update their blogs, I have no idea, and my hats are off to them (both the ball­cap and the crab hat). For me, the five days were a blur, and any mem­o­ries I have are use­less, so I’ll let the par­tic­i­pants tell you what they saw and heard and loved.

You might notice that I’ve changed my jour­nal title from “President-Elect” to “Pres­i­dent.”  A year from last night, I’ll be in San Anto­nio drink­ing a cold one and toast­ing the end of the 2008 work­shop (prob­a­bly toast­ing to myself, as every­body has to hit the door fly­ing to make flights).  In the interim, how­ever, there is work to be done. The ALAN Pres­i­dent is in charge of the whole work­shop, from cre­at­ing pan­els, to select­ing the break­out ses­sions , to choos­ing the room lay­out, to secur­ing AV, to design­ing the pro­gram cover.  It will be hec­tic, fun, tax­ing, bed­lam, and there will be hun­dreds of emails fly­ing back and forth.  I’m look­ing for­ward to it, and more impor­tantly, I’m look­ing for­ward to see YOU there.  Yes, you.

ALAN 2008 will be in San Anto­nio.  The theme of the work­shop is “Nego­ti­a­tions & Love Songs: The Lit­er­a­ture of Young Adults.”  The form for sub­mit­ting a pro­posal for a break­out ses­sion is avail­able here.  Any­one can sub­mit a pro­posal, and if you’re won­der­ing, ‘hey, what a ter­rific work­shop, how can I become a part of it?’ this is the best route to take. 

One caveat, though.  The theme was writ­ten to inspire thought, not to to encour­age a slav­ish ded­i­ca­tion to one idea.  There are many, many places you smart peo­ple can take this theme. We want to go there with you.