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Address by Incoming President Leigh HallingbySLA-NY Annual MeetingThursday, October 15, 20096:30 – 7:30 PMSkadden ArpsFirst, I want to thank the one person Michelle has not yet thanked, which is Michelle --for being our President for 2009. We have had a very busy and highly productive year under her leadership. And I also want to second Michelle’s thanks to all the members of the Board and Advisory Committee and all others who have given back to the chapter in2009. SLA-NY is an organization run totally by volunteers, and so all generouscontributions of energy and time are greatly appreciated.Each incoming Chapter President typically selects a theme for the year, as do theAssociation Presidents. Michelle’s for 2009 has been “Exceeding Expectations.” Minefor 2010 will be “Forging a New Identity.” I was actually first inspired to choose thistheme by our Centennial Year program meetings, so capably planned by Carol Ginsberg.I hope you were all able to get to one or more of them. As you may or may notremember, we had our January program on the future of SLA and then, in honor of our 100
th
birthday, the next four programs went beyond the information profession arena tofocus on various aspects of New York:
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Opportunities of NY in February on maintainingdiversity in a challenging job environment
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Psyche of NY in March on managing change.
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The Legal of NY in April on prosecuting the Gottis.
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And finally Economics of NY in May on layoffs andtheir consequencesAs varied as these programs were, there is actually a theme that I thought emerged. If you were at the February program where Professor Michael Tushman spoke about changeand resistance to change by corporations, you may remember the wonderful example hegave of how the Swiss watch manufacturers resisted the introduction of quartz crystalwatch technology when it arrived in the 1960’s even though it was fantastically accurateand amazingly inexpensive. Why did they resist it? Because Omega and other Swisscompanies made elegant gold watches for high end customers. In other words, low- priced quartz crystal watches did not fit in with their Identity.For the May program the speaker was Louis Uchitelle of the NY Times, who
 
sharedinsights from his 2006
 
 book "The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences." One of his main points is that layoffs can be devastating for manyworkers because people’s Identity is so tied up in their jobs and careers. So there was theall-important word Identity again, this time in reference to individuals, rather than tocorporations
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