2019 ALA Conference While the storms in Texas conspired against many GLA ALA members (including our own President Debra Gray and other members of the board!) from getting into Dallas to attend the 2019 ALA Annual Conference in Grapevine Texas, other travelers had their own issues waiting for a gate to be able to even get off the airplane after landing! Eventually most everyone got to the conference to learn, explore and have fun. The learning came from the 70+ wonderful selections of educational offerings in the 3 day event giving us 15+ quality educational hours. We all have our favorite classes and one of mine was 'Harnessing Headwinds' with an elite fighter pilot retired Col. Nicole Malachowski - super inspiring and fun. And you didn't have to attend to be able to log into the ALAnet.org site and go to the 2019 conference and take a look at all the wonderful educational offering and pull down the back up and presentation materials. Really good stuff there that is free to members! The exploring was helped by having over 55 expo legal vendors who look forward each year to showing us what's GLA ALA Leadership Exchange I Summer 2019 new and are genuinely excited to help us do our jobs better. These expos are always great ways to learn new things and keep on top of the new products. We also were in a huge venue - The Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, which literally was an indoor environment with glass ceilings, causing us to wonder what really was going on weatherwise outside of our conference world. The fun was to be had everywhere. We were able to network with members from across the country and world in the expo inspired events, the idea exchanges and educational sessions. While there was no real need to leave the place we jokingly called the "Biosphere", with the many restaurants, bars and stores and the ability to get easily from your room to the convention center, we did leave to have some fun with the business partners. First Legal had their Annual Client Appreciation Party at the Circle R Ranch in Flower Mound Texas. The food, dancing and armadillo wrangling was fun!! And dancing to the special DJs at the closing ALA VIP BP event was great too. Another great conference done - thanks ALA! n Submitted by Terri Oppelthttps://www.alanet.org/events/2019-events/2019-annual-conference-expo/home http://www.ALAnet.org