Looking Back at Atlanta Convention
In June this year some 47,000 delegates flooded into Atlanta Georgia for the Rotary World Conference. It was a huge and expensive occasion but as Arie said, ‘As District Governor we were expected to go.’
Arie spoke well about the event capturing some of its excitement, its international flavour and the logistics needed to host this large number of delegates from all over the world – there were 88 from New Zealand alone. Four of the six district governors from New Zealand attended.
The first problem for the Geerlofs was to find somewhere they could afford to stay. Hotels in downtown Atlanta were over $400 a night. They finally booked a Hyatt at $210 a night that was 15 Kms out of town. ‘We used Uber to get to the convention and were still on the credit side of the cost of a downtown hotel.’
They registered for the conference on the Saturday and spent much of the rest of the day in the House of Friendship were there were between 700-750 display booths. These covered all aspects of Rotary in many parts of the world
On Sunday they had the opening session of the conference and there were so many people that they had to have two sessions as the convention hall could only seat about 32,000. The highlight of this was the presentation of the centennial ball which was made by an Italian firm. Before the opening there had been an interfaith service with African-American spiritual singers.
On Monday the main sessions of the conference started. There were plenary sessions in the morning and break-out sessions in the afternoon – there were about 40 of these. The big announcement on the Monday morning was that $1.2 billion had been raised for the eradication of polio.
Tuesday there was a interview with Jack Nickleus and on Wednesday a presentation on Rotary International. Ari was impressed that R.I. was such a lean machine. Much of the money raised was spent on the District Governors and running the headquarters was a major operation.
Perhaps the best thing about conference for Ari and Janice were the people they met and the social functions.