Hi from Philly
Thought I’d take a few minutes to catch up while waiting for my room service dinner. Despite having to come down on a flight that made me get up early on a Saturday (most decidedly not my favorite thing to do), we got here in Philadelphia for the Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum safe and sound, if a tad foot-sore already.
It’s so much bigger this year that it’s both gratifying and a little daunting—I mean, we were walking around the exhibit hall and it looked like we were preparing for one of the meeting planner association conferences (well, almost). One hotel is even building a model guest room in the hall. Wow. I can’t wait until everyone gets here and this thing gets rolling.
But today was dedicated to doing the grunt work, namely, stuffing the bags. Almost 1,000 of them. Hence the aching feet. And to add insult to injury, the room we were using for bag-stuffing had some awful muzak playing the whole time. I’m so glad this isn’t my day job. But we ended up finishing up earlier than was scheduled, probably because we had so many people working on it, including a “quality assurance” person who made sure all the mouse pads and coffee mugs were included, and that all the bags were zipped and clipped. It’s pretty interesting, being an amateur myself, watching the pros at CBI working.
I’m in the Towers part of the Marriott Philadelphia, which is pretty cool. There’s some sort of event being held here tonight, and I was greeted by extremely elegant women in gowns and jewels who were directing attendees as I made my way over here to get the elevator to my room. The convention center also has a pretty wild setup for another event tonight (ours is mainly in the hotel, not the convention center).
So far, I’m really liking this hotel. The staff have been really responsive to our every request (mostly for trash pickup so far, at least in my experience). We went through more boxes today—which makes me wonder how much trash a convention hotel must generate each day. I wonder if Philadelphia has a recycling program to deal with all that cardboard and other effluvia.
I’ll stop rambling now, seeing as the room service guy is at the door. This is going to be interesting (the conference, not the chicken quesadillas).
Related Topics: Meetings and conventions
