THE VIRGIN ISLANDS HUMANITIES COUNCIL
WTP CULTURAL HERITAGE TOURISM CONFERENCE
THE FUTURE OF THE PAST: THE BUSINESS CULTURAL
HERITAGE TOURISM
September 14, 2007
Carambola Beach Resort
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
1:30 p.m. - 3:04 p.m.
MEDIA ROUND TABLE
EDWARD LaBORDE, Jr., Moderator
GLORIA GUMBS, Panelist
JAMES O'BRYAN, JR., Panelist
ELITE REPORTING SERVICES
P.O. Box 5619
Christiansted, St. Croix
U.S. Virgin Islands 00823
(340) 713-1318
2
1 MR. LaBORDE: Good afternoon, everyone.
2 (Response.)
3 MR. LaBORDE: Thanks for coming to this
4 Media Round Table. My name is Ed LaBorde, Jr. I'll just
5 start off by telling you a little bit about who I am
6 briefly. I'm a filmmaker. That's what I do, among other
7 things. I might do a little something here and there. I
8 worked a lot with this conference, worked with Tourism,
9 and I'm down playing that side because there is something
10 more important. I think that out of all my
11 accomplishments, I think that the thing that I am most
12 proud of is something that I had no choice in and that is
13 being a Virgin Islander.
14 I think that anybody who even thinks about coming to
15 a cultural heritage conference gets it. It's kind of a
16 sort of a thing that we have to really find what we are
17 going to get out of this conference, because it could
18 turn into a preaching to the choir sort of situation. I
19 don't think there is anybody -- just even being involved
20 in putting the pieces together and watching things happen
21 to the point where we are here today, you hear people
22 make comments and talk about things and concerns that are
23 pretty much all the same, but there seems to be some kind
24 of blockage in why things can't really come together the
25 way that we need them to, especially since it has been years
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1 that these things are going on.
2 I was born in St. Thomas. My parents are Virgin
3 Islanders. Most of my family areis Virgin Islanders, even
4 the side folks, and no matter where we go in the world,
5 we carry that with us. We leave here, we are a Virgin
6 Islander still. And in my house, even if I'm living in
7 New York, we still eat fish and fungi; , we still play the
8 music; , we still dance the dance, talk the talk; and so in
9 my decision in picking a career this is something that
10 was sort of engrained in me.
11 When I was young and I would move to other places, I
12 always felt so proud of my heritage that I felt like I
13 wanted to show my friends who were from other states and
14 different places where I was from. This was something
15 that was so -- I just wished they knew where the beauty
16 of the place that I lived in and the beauty of the people
17 that are there.
18 Like I moved to New York when I was young, and kids
19 used to tease us because we talked funny, and because I
20 came from a place they didn't know, they talked about us
21 living in trees and walking barefoot, and that kind of
22 thing. For a long time that was really difficult to deal
23 with. This was something that sort of got in the way of
24 your just going to school and learning.
25 But when I got older, and in my mind these are
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1 dreams and imaginations of things that could be from
2 here, I decided that the best way that I could fight
3 something like this is in film. Film is another thing
4 that I fell in love with heavily. It is an art form that
5 is extremely powerful. I'm sure everyone in here can
6 tell you about a movie that has made you think
7 differently, dress differently or sing a different song
8 or whatever, and you live with that for the rest of your life.
9 I thought to myself,: “ wow, if you could make a
10 statement in this world, it could be with film.” And that
11 was a crazy idea , because film is an extremely difficult
12 thing to deal with; it's expensive. In order to do it,
13 you have to really collaborate with folks. You can't be
14 this kind of I'm king of the world, listen to me sort of
15 situation. Just the coming together and putting it togethet-- I can
16 go on and go on about how difficult it is. What I find
17 is that we live in a Virgin Islands that has a deficiency
18 in media literacy, and media is an afterthought.
19 We are in a small room now, but media is the biggest
20 and most powerful form of communication that we have in
21 this world today. I mean, besides all the formats that
22 we broadcast and TV and cable and all those things, now
23 we have computers and internet and YouU-tube, you could
24 spread the word in such an enormous way quickly, and now
25 the cost has even come down because the production can be
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1 cheaper. It seems that we don't have literacy in media,
2 and I say that because we watch TV; , we are consumers of
3 it;, we buy into the things that we see on TV, but we
4 haven't learned to actively participate in media in the
5 way that would most effectively help us in life. And
6 that is what those tools are really for.
7 I find that as a Virgin Islander we're usually
8 relegated to watching a movie that comes from somewhere
9 else and picking up their ideas and learning their
10 thoughts, and that's crazy, because no one -- when was
11 the last time you saw a movie or TV show that was about
12 the Virgin Islands? Anyone? Just one story.
13 Even the movies that were done here, they were not
14 about us. They used our land, they used our locations,
15 and they used our stuff, and we got a taxi driver in it,
16 and we got somebody at the hotel checking them in, and we
17 probably made money from the production coming to town,
18 but this is nothing.
19 I worked in the film office with Tourism for a
20 couple years, and that seemed to be the focus of the
21 office, is to bring business from Hollywood to come and
22 shoot films here. I mean, this is a part of the business
23 that should happen, yes, and this is why I didn't mind
24 taking on that task. But more than that, there is no
25 entity that is -- there is nothing in place for some
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1 progression in improving our presentation of ourselves to
2 the world.
3 I caught a little bit of the Arts and Humanities
4 presentationthing there, and Wayne James really made some points that
5 I live by. You can't really wait for a government. You
6 can't wait for other folks to do. This is the way that I
7 live.
8 In making film, I was living in California in the
9 Bay area. I moved there to make film. I had this idea
10 that I would do these movies. Now, no one missioned me
11 to do the films. I will wake up having had dreams or
12 having had ideas, and I would just feverishly think about
13 these ideas to the point where I could write a whole book
14 about an idea that I have, and no one came to me and
15 said, Ed, do this, we need this. I saw it and I wanted
16 it so bad that I went out and I did it myself, and then
17 when others see it, they say, wow, look what they did.
18 That is what he meant with taking and doing for self
19 and not to underestimate the power of one, which is
20 extremely powerful for us, especially to those of us who,
21 like I said in the beginning, anybody that decided that
22 they would come to a cultural heritage conference gets
23 it. And if you get it and you got it, then you need to
24 go out there and do the things that you think about.
25 These ideas of how come we can't have this, because you
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1 didn't do it. You thought about it, but it was just a
2 thought to you. It wasn't something that you believed in
3 so much that you would actually create that product for
4 it to happen.
5 As we get into our discussion here and as we
6 continue to go into the conference, it's the action that
7 is most important. As I learned about film, it's an
8 industry in which don't tell me, show me. You do a lot
9 of talk in film, it's nothing. I was going to film
10 school and I learned that real quick. In fact, I think I
11 entered film school with that idea, and so when we would
12 get into classes and have discussions about stuff, it
13 just got me upset. It was like I am going to make a
14 movie. You guys go have this discussion, and I'm going
15 to make it happen. I am not going to sit here and talk
16 about I am going to do this, we are going to do that, how
17 come we can't get together and do this. There is no need
18 to talk about it. We know what we need to do, and action
19 needs to start happening.
20 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So we can leave then,
21 since we don't need to talk.
22 MR. LaBORDE: That's right. Let's go.
23 But that's a good point, because this is a good
24 starting point. This is a good jump off, because we -- I
25 mean, we do need to make connections, but we need to make
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1 them in which that when you leave here and you have met
2 people and you have network and you heard what their
3 opinions are, you realize that they are serious, don't be
4 afraid to really make a real connection and make
5 something happen, because you could leave here and this
6 whole event would have been in the past. And then 15
7 years from now, when things are the same, you are going
8 to say, man, they had that 15 years ago and ain't nothing
9 changed since. And that has happened, because this
10 conference has happened before, as I understand.
11 Anyway, I got two people on my panel, and the two of
12 them, I'll tell you this about them, I could probably
13 read you their resumes and their bios, but these are two
14 people that I see in the community often. The reason why
15 I am really excited that they're here, number one, they
16 made me feel comfortable that I am not here by myself;
17 but, also, they are people of action. These are two
18 people that do it everyday. While people talk about
19 stuff that they want to do and have ideas about things
20 that they want to try and discuss this and that, these
21 are two people that are doers.
22 We have a question to tackle. We have to talk about
23 how government entities and travel and tourism industries
24 can assist the media in promoting the cultural and
25 heritage natural resources of the Virgin Islands.
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1 So, with that, I will start with introducing
2 Mr. James O'Bryan, Jr., who is currently the general
3 manager for Ackley Media Group, and I'll let him tell you
4 a little bit more about himself now.
5 MR. O'BRYAN: Good afternoon, everyone.
6 (Response.)
7 MR. O'BRYAN: Well, since leaving office on
8 the 29th of December, I've been made the general manager
9 of Ackley Media Group, which is comprised of today four
10 radio stations, WVWI, Pirate Radio, KISS, which is 101.5,
11 and JAMS which is 105.3. Pirate is White Rock; WVWI is a
12 talk show format, educational, sports, the like; JAMS is
13 urban music, the hip hop that I don't even understand.
14 I think it's the strangest appointment I ever had.
15 I was made the general manager and was told about the
16 stations I never listened to before in my life, but it is
17 an interesting portfolio to have after serving eight
18 years as the official spokesman of the Virgin Islands
19 Government.
20 Included in my portfolio was being liaison to the
21 Department of Tourism on behalf of the governor. I also
22 represented him on the Carnival Committee. I go back to
23 the Farrelly administration where I served for four years
24 as the press secretary also with the responsibility of
25 the Department oOf Economic Development and Agriculture at
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1 the time.
2 One of the interesting things about my Farrelly
3 years is about 1993 I was tasked with conducting in
4 conjunction with the officials of Tourism at the time,
5 Leona Bryan. I don't know if Claire Roker was here, but
6 was the Assistant Commissioner of St. Croix. We did a
7 comprehensive review of the tourism product at that time
8 and provided a summary of our conclusions to Governor
9 Farrelly, which was long in detail. There were specific
10 requirements that we had that over the years, I think
11 that I can comfortably say that maybe about 95 percent of
12 our recommendations have been adopted and become part of
13 the tourism program with the territory.
14 The honest truth about it as I see it, the
15 conclusion we made in '93 still holds, that despite being
16 out spent by most of our Caribbean neighbors, we have
17 gotten a good bang for our buck in terms of the promotion
18 of tourism and because of your leadership role that we
19 presently play. We clearly have our challenges, and I
20 will list them in a second, but overall I believe that we