Welcome from the VRA President
Dear colleagues,
The 25th Annual Conference of the Visual Resources Association will be held March 27-31, 2007, in Kansas City, Missouri. We are going back to our roots by celebrating our Silver Jubilee in the state of our founding.
The silver anniversary theme will be reflected in the conference’s exciting programming, special events and receptions. VRA*25 will cover topics of critical importance to our profession: digital imaging, information management, and teaching with technology; and will attract professionals from major academic institutions, cultural organizations, and the commercial sector. In addition to professional sessions, workshops, and seminars, conference goers will experience Kansas City’s art museum collections, famous restaurants, and other cultural attractions unique to the city dubbed the "Heart of America."
Conference headquarters will be the InterContinental Kansas City at the Plaza. The hotel offers exceptional service, luxurious guest rooms, superb meeting facilities, an on-site restaurant and the Oak Bar featuring more than 300 martinis, a sushi bar and nightly performances by some of Kansas City's finest jazz musicians. The InterContinental is a short walk to the many restaurants, shops, and attractions of Country Club Plaza, designed in 1922 as the nation's first suburban shopping district. The Plaza features Spanish-style architecture, sculpture and fountains as well as more than 120 stores and restaurants in a 14 block district.
Our conference organizers, Vice-Presidents Rebecca Moss and Betha Whitlow, assisted by our Silver Jubilee committee and other volunteers, are planning an event not to be missed.
Highlights include:
- A special opening session: “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” The VRA at 25: Understanding Our Past & Framing a Future.
- Informative Sessions and In-depth Seminars on aggregation issues, disaster planning, strategies for data migration, the future of our 35mm slide collections, creating a digital image matchmaking commons, interoperability strategies, color management, image indexing, delivering rich media content to the classroom, communication strategies, a preliminary report on the Professional Status Survey and more.
- Workshops presented by experts in the field on topics such as Educating the Educators; XML, the VRA Core and the Image Collection; VRA Core 4.0 and CCO; the Religions of Asia: Towards an Asian Authority; Assessing Copyright Risk; and an Image Metadata Crash Course.
Vendor exhibits, Special Interest Groups, and Ask the Expert sessions provide other opportunities to learn about new technologies, emerging products, and shared professional interests.
A new feature will be Birds of a Feather lunches -- issue-oriented lunch groups hosted and facilitated by VRA professionals, specifically but not exclusively geared toward new members of the organization and first time attendees.
Special Events include: a very special Silver Jubilee Members’ Reception and Dinner with keynote speaker Eleanor Fink, the second president of VRA, now the Senior Cultural Heritage Specialist at the World Bank; the ever-popular Tansey Educational Fundraising Dinner, and the always entertaining VRAffle emceed by Patti McRae with the able assistance of the Raffle-Rousers.
Tours will include visits to the Nelson-Atkins Art Gallery and the Kemper Gallery, the Jazz Museum and Hallmark’s Visitor Center, a driving tour of Kansas City and a trip to the Boulevard Brewery.
VRA*25 will be an excellent opportunity to learn new things, share experiences with enthusiastic and knowledgeable colleagues, and enjoy local culture, architecture, and art and while celebrating our Association’s venerable past. Please join us for a conference experience and you, too, will be saying “Everything really is up to date in Kansas City!”
Macie Hall
President, Visual Resources Association
