Hey all,

Rising Tide 6 is coming to Xavier University on August 27th, from 9am-6pm…so really, go register, you won’t regret it…

Keynote speakers will be David Simon, creator and executive producer of Treme, and Richard Campenella, who among other things, wrote Bienville’s Dilemma which is a great, great book about the geography of New Orleans and how it contributed to or even defined much of the city’s history…I’m fortunate enough to have read it myself and it’s definitely worthwhile.

And that’s not all…there’ll be a bar too, and panel discussions about Social Media and Social Justice, the British Petroleum Catastraphuk, New Orleans Food, Brass Bands, a performance by the TBC Brass Band and they’ll of course be handing out the Ashley Morris Award (cough, cough, my pick: Slabbed) and I would imagine of particular interest to the people who check this site often would be the  “Re-Capping the Well Panel”:

Panel Discussion: Re-capping the well
The aftermath of the Macondo oil disaster and the future of the Gulf Coast. A discussion about how what’s just happened over the past year will affect the land and the people for years to come.

Moderator: Alex Woodward – staff writer, Gambit, covering the environment, arts and culture of south Louisiana.

• Anne Rolfes – Founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. Anne began her organizing career in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo. It was there that she first witnessed the destruction of oil production. After six years of working on Nigerian issues, Anne returned to Louisiana in 1999 to protect her home state from petrochemical pollution. Anne was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana where many people made their fortunes from the oil industry. She has seen the wealth and the poverty created by oil production and seeks to make the industry more equitable. In October 2007 Anne was recognized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a Community Health Leader.
• David Hammer – An award-winning reporter for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. He led the paper’s investigation of what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon rig and broke several stories about key engineering decisions that contributed to the BP well blowout. His beats since the oil spill also include the drilling moratorium and Kenneth Feinberg’s administration of spill claims. Hammer is a seventh-generation New Orleanian and a graduate of Harvard University. He worked five years for newspapers in New England and four years with The Associated Press.
• Dr. Len Bahr – The former director of the Governor’s Applied Coastal Science Program who currently publishes the La Coast Post website.
• Drake Toulouse– A BP and Gulf Coast Claims Facility critic who writes at Disenfranchised Citizen

Yeah, that guy at the bottom of the above list, that would be me, on a stage, in front of people, with the expectation I will say things, even say things loud enough so others can hear me say things. I’ll be easy to spot…just look for the guy with the casual, confident expression of sweating terror speaking great truths from behind the biggest beer glass I can find…

Rising Tide 6!

Definitely check it out…went to my first last year and it was worth it, informative and a hell of a lot of fun with good people…

For more info, go to the Rising Tide Blog and Rising Tide Website.

See you there…

Have a nice day.

– Drake