One of the sessions attended concerned Historic Preservation and Heritage Tourism Working Together for Your Community. This session was conducted by Teresa Caldwell, Assistant State Coordinator for the Heritage Tourism Program at the Texas Historical Commission. Her program provided numerous statistics concerning the economic value of Heritage Tourism throughout the State and how communities can be positively impacted by promoting Heritage Tourism within their community. Ms. Caldwell previously served as Parks and Recreation Director for Chambers County.

Other sessions attended were “Volunteer Recruitment and Retention“, “Protecting Our Maritime Heritage“, “Planning Fundraising Events“, “Finding Funding for Your Preservation Program” and “Collections Management: Preparing for Disaster”. This last session was conducted by Patsy Herrington, Curator of the W.H. Stark House Museum in Orange and Ware Petznick, Curator of the McFaddin-Ward House Museum in Beaumont. They described the procedures they used in preparing the museums and valuable collections for Hurricane Rita last year. Although neither museum suffered major losses, they are both continuing to recover and renovate their premises as a result of the storm.

The Conference was attended by some 375 participants from all parts of the State of Texas. The next Conference will be held in April 2007, at the Lakeway Inn Conference Resort on Lake Travis near Austin.