IVP Batch 2005 in Florida: Fun and frolic in Tampa Bay

To the IVP Batch 2005: Here are some of the best shots I could muster to put in this blog during our backyard barbecue session at the house of Gary Springer, cool environmentalist guy who is leading a movement to conserve and protect the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico. I remember Esther, Aor, me, and other colleagues taking lots of pictures using my camera. (I just borrowed that camera from a friend) But most of the pictures were blurred and I don’t know why. Maybe, it’s because during that time, beers of all brands, tastes, and subtleties were flowing abundantly like those waters that are constantly drenching the Florida Everglades. That’s an indicator of the occasion’s great success as well as Gary and his wife’s savvy as hosts. Thanks for that, Gary.

The Tampa Bay episode of the IVP is probably one of the most memorable for some reasons. One, those sessions at the Poynter on ethics and the use of photos and graphics to enhance newspaper pages were really very good. Poynter guys really prepared well for that. I guess we all felt they were taking us quite seriously. I learned a lot. The big loss was the cancellation of the sessions on media convergence and the economics of newspaper publishing as promised in the original itinerary. But then again, as old soldiers would tend to say, all plans do not usually survive the first skirmish with the enemy (I mean reality). The flipside to it was that we got more time for the beach. Not a bad trade off. If you don’t get education, you get the chance to go to the beach—Florida beach at that! So if Washington and New York were academics, Tampa Bay was recess.