I am just back from Maritime Law Association of the United States meetings in Washington DC last Tuesday and New York, Wednesday through Friday. A couple of general observations and then a few specifics:
1. Almost every committee meeting seemed to include piracy on its agenda. I did not attend the Fisheries Committee meeting but would not be supprised if they did likewise! The Website and Technology Committee discussed some of the technologies used to combat pirates. (Kevin O'Donovan, please send me the link to the information you presented so I can link to it here).
2. The main focus of the General Meeting on Friday morning was to debate the MLA's position on the final version of the so-called Rotterdam Rules. For the uniformed, The Rotterdam Rules is the common name for the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea, which does not have a good acronym. These rules are designed to bring the law current with commercial practice and to help restore the concept of international comity with regard to maritime transportation. The meeting began at 9am but debate on the Rules did not begin until after 11 so the crowd was really thinning out by the time the final votes on questions came up.
3. I will be assuming the chair of the Website and Technology Committee and want to bring in new speakers and discussion topics. Your thoguhts and suggestions are always welcome.
4. In an effort to gauge the technological savvy of maritime practitioners, I inquired of many members as to whether they use Twitter - most of them looked at me like I was a twit. Check out this post from Carolyn Elefant as to whether lawyers should using Twitter and how. In the meanwhile, I am searching out maritime related tweets and will post a list of maritime sources on Twitter later this week.
