A belated thanks to Museum-L. The Diversity by Design conference came off as planned (for the most part) on Friday, November 3rd. It was better attended than we had originally hoped, with 325 participants. About two thirds of the audience were museum staff, and the remaining third designers or museum/design students. The panelists were uniformly superb, in dramatically different ways. A few provoked controversy, which for me was one of the best parts of the conference. I can't resist recounting George Covington's advice to designers. George is legally blind, and railed against exhibit designers who sacrifice legibility to other aesthetic considerations. To designers who want to exercise this aesthetic leeway, the most polite variant of his advice was "go sell shoes." I must add that the designers in the audience presented a very creditable and sophisticated defense of their profession and their aesthetic prerogatives. Others panelists recounted the inside story of fascinating and diverse projects, including "Mining the Museum" (Fred Wilson), "Teen Tokyo" (Leslie Bedford), The Mashantucket Pequot Museum (Mike Hanke), The Lower East Side Tenement Museum (Renee Eps) The Brooklyn Children Museum (Carol Enseki). Others discussed new media experiments, including Rob Semper of the Exploratorium, and David Tarnow, an audio producer. Particular thanks to the panel moderators Susan Yelavich and Sam Taylor. They were real pro's. Ralph Applebaum delivered a real stem-winder in his keynote. In his own thoughtful way, he conveyed a passionate conviction about the importance of museums to this society. By the end of the conference, I felt genuinely proud that I am part of the museum profession. The way that museums are dealing with their responsibilities to their audiences, to their collections, and to their interpretive missions is, at its best, creative, generous, and thoughtful. The New York State Council on the Arts is providing funding for a transcript of the conference. I will make some attempt to edit this transcript and post it on some FTP site or another, and give all our museum web sites URL's to link. That'll take a few months. Many of the ideas behind the conference were germinated here on the list, and a show of hands indicated a fair representation of Museum-l'ers among the participants. For both of these, my thanks, and thanks from the Museums Council of New York. Eric Siegel The New York Botanical Garden [log in to unmask]