I’m attending the annual gathering-of-the-property/casualty-industry-tribes, vendor trinket-and-trash -ree-for-all, expense-account-depletion event known as RIMS (Risk and Insurance Management Society’s annual meeting), and will be blogging from New Orleans for the next three days.

Before I dive into the exhibit hall, a quick note complimenting the organizers for their commitment to the local folks. This year RIMS coordinated a volunteer day, wherein insurance types donned working garb (jeans., not suits) and headed out to communities in the city to continue the clean up from Katrina.

This was not only a great thing for the organizers and organization to do, it may well have been a sobering experience for the risk managers. Few have ever seen the likes of the devastation they were cleaning up yesterday. Picking up debris while surrounded by broken glass, trash-strewn streets, empty lots and condemned buildings can’t help but add raw appreciation of the reality of “risk”; risk that in most cases has been viewed solely from a financial perspective.

This Risk:Real World may well be worth repeating.