Sorry to be so quiet today—I have no kidding 50 things backed up I want to talk about. But instead I spent today wresting with getting some magazine production done (we ship to the printer next week) and building a new site for Katrina-related news and resources. In the meantime, check out what our sister magazine, Special Events, has done. There are listings of people willing to open their homes to industry refugees, positions open, stories from survivors, just some amazing stuff.

Of course, we want to continue what they started. If you have ways you want to help your colleagues in hurricane-hit areas, stories to share, or resources you can provide, drop me an e-mail. As soon as I get the site up, there will be a way to post things yourself. Hopefully, that’ll be tomorrow.

updateChange in plan. I created some new categories for face2face instead of setting up yet another place to go, since I seem to be obsessing about Katrina-related news anyway. Changes to the site coming shortly. And I’m now up to 87 items I want to post…

This hadn’t even crossed my mind, but it probably has yours. Anyway, if you have a mailing going out in the near future, know that, effective immediately, the U.S. Postal Service is not accepting any periodical or standard mail destined for certain areas in Mississippi and Louisiana, including New Orleans. I’d suggest upi suppress these addresses on your mailing lists until mail service is restored.

For more information on the specific zip codes impacted, please see the USPS’s latest service posting.

From Steve Hacker with IAEM wants to let you know that organizers with events in the storm-affected region who have to relocate events should contact him by e-mail. IEAM will provide a form to complete that will allow us to distribute the venue replacement request through a network of sources.

Here’s Steve Hacker’s e-mail again.

For anything you want to know about Katrina, check out the Wikipedia entry. For example, I hadn’t heard this:

The hurricane has struck just days before Southern Decadence, a festival which is the second-largest money-maker for New Orleans businesses after Mardi Gras. It is predicted that outside of the obvious costs of the direct effect of the storm, the city will lose millions of dollars in tourist monies because of the cancellation of this festival and others in coming months and years.