SBL 2006 Has Begun!

Okay, we safe in at the Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel (click here), and I've been in pre-conference colloquium and CRC business meetings most of the day. I shall try to blog ever day from SBL, but I'm not sure at what time of day the posts will come, since I'm really very busy.

There are 11,000 people here at the conference, which is huge, another record number. Catherine and I are lucky to be right near the convention center, where many of the talks and the book display will be located. This is really very convenient. We're also up on the top floor, floor 16 which is very nice!

Matthew Collins met with us at CRC, so I've got some up to the minute news on things. The notion that many people hold that the AAR and SBL are coming together again in 2011 to do a joint meeting is really not true. We'll be together in San Francisco that year, but not in any way like a true joint meeting. What is true is that ASOR today and tomorrow is discussing coming back and joining SBL again. We may be able to report some news on that decision over the next few days.

One final interesting thing, and then I've got to get some rest. Matthew thinks the printed-and-mailed program book will soon be a thing of the past. It's outdated already by the time it reaches the SBL membership and it costs something like $100,000 to print and mail. The future equivalent may well be a CD-Rom that is mailed to the membership each year, and that updates automatically off of the internet when you run it from your home computer.

Well, check the blog each day for updates direct from SBL! Thanks! ---SLC