Live from Philly
I’ve always suspected it, but now I know for sure–I’d never make it as a meeting planner! I’m here in Philadelphia for the 1st Annual Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, an event we’re co-producing with The Centers for Business Intelligence.
Today is set-up day, and we got up bright (?) and early to unclip the clips on the bags, unzip their interiors, and stuff their gullets with all kinds of goodies. Oy, what a job! I got calluses before we were an hour into it! But it actually was kind of fun, in a zen kind of way. I got to know my CBI colleagues better, and the mindless stuffing actually flew by.
Then it was on to getting the registration set up, the namecards stuck in the badges and alphabetized, and the detritus cleaned up before the exhibitors started wandering in to set up their booths around 1 p.m. It didn’t help that we had a little typo issue–the Forum was spelled "Fourm," which works phonetically, but made us editor types grind our teeth. So we had to re-run all the nametags and empty and restuff all the lanyards, but we got it done in record time and still ended up being ahead of the game somehow.
I spent the rest of the afternoon as a go-fer, from fetching easels to handing out badges and bags, to whatever else needed doing. I thought it was a nice touch that we opened as many boxes as we could for exhibitors before they arrived, to save them one extra step during setup. It all went fairly smoothly, but I was ready to crash by 4 p.m. But a nap was not on my agenda–it was time to stand in the lobby and greet all those nice folks coming in to attend the conference and send them off to registration.
More in a bit…
Related Topics: Meetings and conventions
