Conference Day 3

Oy! What a day. We had breakout sessions, which means that the main room is split into separate rooms and each room has different sessions throughout the day. Now on a normal day, this would have been fine. However, one of my speakers cancelled at the last minute, so we decided to run the DVD from the May conference (same speaker). Only no one could hear the sound because we couldn't get the sound going in the house system. We ended up having a microphone next to the speaker in the laptop. The people in the back couldn't hear and the people in the front said that they could barely hear a thing. I ended up taking names of people that wanted me to just send them the DVD.

Next, one of the other speakers decided not to come and not let me know. She however sent a replacement. Problem was that the replacement she sent was the speaker that we used in May that no one liked because she was unprepared and did not know what she was talking about. Then to add insult the other woman says that she didn't bring the handouts that were supposed to go with the session. So of course another list was started for people who wanted a copy of the handout.

Now, to be honest all of this I can handle. There is really nothing that can be done but to go with the flow and hope the attendees aren't that whiny. BUT, there is more. The major issue was that we had no air. Yup, that's right. It was 95 degrees outside, I have almost 300 people attending and we have no air. Needless to say that hardly anyone was happy. Apparently, Monday when that storm went through it blew out two of the units of the hotel. The ones that controlled the a/c in the meeting space. I think I handled it well, I was very apologetic and stayed calm and nice. I got up several times and spoke to the crowd and apologized and tried to be accommodating (as much as they would let me).

The hotel did not step up until Wednesday afternoon. Up until then it was we can't find a problem, even though it is a sauna in your meeting space. Anyway, when they finally admitted there was a problem, one of our tech staff had had a hissy fit on the phone with out deputy director (who was at another conference in Gatlinburg). So he came over and even though I had things well in hand - it looked like he came over and saved the day and the damsels in distress. The hotel is going to comp our meeting space but most importantly for my attendees they received free baskin & robbins ice cream and could make sundae's.

They got the air fixed in the evening before the dance (yes we have a dance). I was a little afraid that it would be hot and then no-one would show up. I mean who wants to dance if it is a sauna. But it was fixed by the time the dance started at 9pm. I actually went down and stayed until midnight. I even danced. Thankfully no-one had brought a camera to capture those moments on film. It was a lot of fun socializing and hanging out.