The Louisiana Art and Science Museum announced Wednesday it will host the 2012 International Planetarium Society’s biennial conference.The IPS selected the Irene W. Pennington Planetarium in downtown Baton Rouge to host the conference instead of the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and the Astronef Planetarium in Saint-Etienne, France.The convention will be held between July 22 and July 26 in 2012.Hundreds of national and international IPS members will visit the planetarium during the convention to share ideas and technology. Visiting members will be given the opportunity to share their productions and view Pennington Planetarium shows.Baton Rouge’s proximity to other Louisiana cities may provide visitors an opportunity to see planetariums in both Lafayette and New Orleans, said Carol Gikas, president of the Louisiana Art and Science Museum.Past conventions have been held in cities like Melbourne, Australia; Washington D.C.; Osaka, Japan; and London.Next year’s convention will be held in Alexandria, Egypt.”It takes a team effort to get the word of this city to Toulouse, France, where a committee must decide between so many other great cities,” said East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Kip Holden.Holden said the team effort includes the planetarium staff and the museum’s extraordinary facilities, which include state-of-the-art digital projectors with digital surround sound speakers. The planetarium is regarded by the IPS as the premiere exhibit in the state.It also didn’t hurt their chances that planetarium director Jon Elvert served on the IPS board and visited France to petition for the city.Paul Arrigo, president of the Baton Rouge area convention and visitor’s bureau, said Louisiana is an attractive location for international conventions because of its unique atmosphere.The city has been actively expanding its capacity to support conventions as part of its long-term plans for city growth.”We have been real good at putting on conferences,” Holden said. “We want our visitors to become ambassadors, to go back to say how friendly we are and that we never meet a stranger.”Holden said the delegates from more than 35 countries will help to put an international spotlight on a city hoping to expand rapidly in the next few years.”When you look at the fact that this conference is being held in  cities around the world, you find people are finding the diamond in the rough called Baton Rouge,” Holden said. “And people are starting to polish that diamond.”The 400 attendees from 35 countries do not seem like a particularly large convention when compared to the some 66,000 bowlers who will arrive for a Baton Rouge convention in the same year, but Holden said he cannot remember a convention with so many international visitors.The IPS is made up of about 700 members worldwide.Baton Rouge officials expect the conference to have a more than a half-million dollar impact on the city’s economy, according to Elvert.Gikas said the next two years will be spent in preparation for the convention.She said the equipment will be upgraded with the most up-to-date technology as often as possible. Gikas also said the 6-year-old facility will be expanded during those years to make room for more guests.—-Contact Adam Duvernay at [email protected]