The conference and convention of the Audio Engineering Society, scheduled to start on September 21 at the Javits Center in New York City, has been postponed.
The official statement from Roger Furness, AES executive director, follows:
In view of the tragic events that took place yesterday, there has been a lot of speculation as to whether the AES 111th Convention would proceed next week as planned.
There were several factors to be taken into consideration and a necessity to have discussions with other parties. For this reason, we did not make a hasty statement.
We have just returned from the Javits Center, where we had a meeting with their top management. We learned that the New York City Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have taken over large portions of the Javits Center for use in coordinating emergency services. We also learned that FEMA will have complete control of these spaces and any others that they need, for an undetermined period. This obviously makes holding the event as planned impossible. However, we were able to reschedule the convention, rather than just cancel it. Most of the people who contacted us hoped that this would be the solution.
The new dates will be Friday, November 30 to Monday, December 3, 2001, with the same exhibit, demo and conference space as would have been used next week.
We at the Audio Engineering Society would like to thank those of you who took the time and trouble to inquire about the safety of the staff here in the New York office and to wish us well and give us your support. This was much appreciated.
Lastly, at this sad time, we would like to spare a thought for those who have had their lives so much more severely disrupted than any of us. We were, and are, very sensitive to their feelings. Let us hope that we can look forward to better times ahead.
For more, visit www.aes.org.
