The SDLP has a lot to be happy about. Its leader, John Hume, has been chosen as joint recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Asked in advance about his chances, Mr Hume liked to say that the only prize he wanted was peace.
This weekend, the SDLP has both the Nobel award and peace of a sort. It can't be said there is a definitive peace, in view of the Omagh atrocity and the continuing series of murders and paramilitary mutilation attacks, but there is a settlement in place which could be the foundation for a permanent peace.
The party has many reasons to be self-satisfied and even smug. Its philosophy has been accepted to varying degrees by both republican and unionist rivals. The language in which that philosophy is expressed - known as "Humespeak" - has been widely adopted: Sinn Fein has taken it to new heights and even top civil servants have begun lapsing into Hume-style rhetoric and turns of phrase. The people have voted, in Hume's words, "to spill their sweat and not their blood" and for the first time since the mid-1970s the party stands on the threshold of power. Already, Mr Seamus Mallon has the post of Deputy First Minister-designate and most observers agree there will be 10 cabinet positions for sharing among the parties.
Under the d'Hondt system of proportionality that will give the SDLP three ministries. There also presumably will be junior posts for sharing out, not to mention committee chairs and vice-chairs.
Already some senior SDLP people are looking past the euphoria to the new era of taking the responsibility and the "flak" for government decisions. For example, who will be the first Northern politician to announce the closure of a hospital?
The media - party-poopers all - have already been focusing attention on the question of the SDLP ministries. Two names are being taken more or less for granted: Mr Mark Durkan is seen as a likely choice for a cabinet post, possibly the poisoned chalice of Health, and Ms Brid Rodgers is also a strong contender, with a "CHATS" portfolio (Culture, Heritage, Art, Tourism and Sport) being mentioned.
After that it gets difficult. The choice for the third ministry is said to be between Mr Eddie McGrady and Mr Sean Farren. Mr Farren was a key member of the negotiating team at the talks - as one party source put it, "Sean is very much part of Hume's inner circle"; Mr McGrady represents South Down at Westminster and his profile has been particularly high in recent months.
Mr Farren is regarded as the front-runner, not least because Mr McGrady will be expected to mind the shop at Westminster. An economic development ministry is said to be at stake and the choice rests ultimately with Mr Hume, although he will no doubt consult Mr Mallon before an announcement is made. The one certainty is that Mr Hume, as always, will keep his cards close to his chest.
Motions for the conference range from the minimum wage through parades to tax-raising powers for the assembly, but nowhere will you find the topic that has convulsed the peace process for the past six months - decommissioning.
A party spokesman said no motions had been submitted on the subject. Several SDLP sources said it was not a topic that greatly exercised the minds of the nationalist community: they were more interested in implementing the Agreement as a whole than finding ways to exclude one party or another. Nevertheless it is going to be odd that a party conference fails to discuss a motion on the key issue in contemporary politics in Northern Ireland.
SDLP sources say the fact that there is now a formal structure in place which provides a career path for the aspiring politician has begun to attract young people to the party. The age profile has been a serious problem up to now, e.g., Mr Hume at 61 is the youngest of the party's MPs. Now the party has 24 Assembly seats with good salaries and expenses. Talented young graduates, in particular, have been taking a second look at politics as a professional option.
Certainly the SDLP needs an injection of younger blood although not so much as the Ulster Unionists who, in the parlance of political correctness, are even more "chronologically challenged".
The problem acquires even greater urgency in view of the new challenge posed by Sinn Fein. No longer distracted so much by paramilitary matters, the republicans have been throwing themselves with a will into bread-and-butter politics. They may have baggage, but they are hungry. Senior Sinn Fein figures like to say that the SDLP may have had a "clear run" in the past but now they will be put to the test.
But even to mention these things will be seen as ungracious by SDLP loyalists who will point to the major political and philosophical achievements in the past year, the fruit of three decades of hard graft when Mr Hume and his friends often seemed like voices in the wilderness.
Cheeks will be flush and hands will be red and raw as Hume receives the mother of all standing ovations in Newry tomorrow - party colleagues who doubted his wisdom in starting the Hume-Adams dialogue have been thoroughly confounded. More than a few tears will be wiped away at the memory of the long, barren years when hope almost ebbed away for good. But there will be no doubt in any delegate's mind that it was all worth it.