Their Lives, Our Voices 2008 Wrap-up

This was CAA's first conference, and from the feedback we've been getting, it was a success. One of our speakers told us, "Thanks for a magnificent conference. I met so many fascinating and inspiring people, had great conversations, enjoyed and learned from talks and discussions, and ate great food. Kudos to you and all of the organizers who put it together. I hope you do another one next year!"

We had a great list of speakers, including nationally recognized names like Gene Baur, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, Paul Shapiro, and Freeman Wicklund. We also had a number of less-familiar faces step up and do great sessions, including our own Gil Schwartz and Unny Nambudiripad, Lisa Kemmerer and Jen Gross from Montana State University, Billings, Natalie Khazaal of Carleton College, and Mark Berkson of Hamline University. Next year we hope to see even more new and local faces step up and share their knowledge and experience.

We also had nearly 200 people attend over the course of the weekend, including many activists from around the Midwest, and even some from Georgia. Many people came because they are passionate about animal issues, but were unsure of how best to help. Our hope is that they've come away from the conference with lots of great new ideas for helping animals, as well as the inspiration and energy to turn those ideas into action.

We've started collecting reactions and writeups to the conference on the TLOV site wiki. We had a nice writeup in the Minnesota Daily, and VegNews publisher Joseph Connelly has also started writing about TLOV in the VegNews Editors' blog.

We'd also like to thank all of our sponsors and food donors. They helped us keep registration fees low, and allowed us to provide breakfast and lunch on both days, making the experience for conference attendees that much better.

We hope to see many of you next year at TLOV 2009.