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Behind the Scenes By Michelle Russell
Food for theSoul Here’s to the people who make sure that our ‘glass is never empty.’ M
y mother always said that you could tell a lot about the character of a
person by the way he or she treated the waiter or waitress at a restaurant, the cleaning staff at the office, and the housekeepers at hotels. When I sat with her at the hospital nearly
11 years ago—when she was receiving a stem- cell transplant to aggressively treat a cancer that kept coming back—I wasn’t surprised to hear her ask after the children of the janitor who was mopping the floor in her room. After only a few days there, sick as she was, she knew each of them by name. That wasmymom. Mythoughts turned to her, as they do often
since she passed away in March, when I listened to Brian Stevens, founding president andCEO of ConferenceDirect, deliver an acceptance speech at thePCMAEducation Foundation Dinner Celebrating Professional Achievement on April 27. Brian, who was the evening’s Sup- plier Partner Honoree, told the audience in the Washington Hilton ballroom: “There are five people in the room who are the unsung heroes of this event. They truly represent what our industry is all about: professionalism, service, and commitment.” He then shone the spotlight onWashington
Hilton banquet captains Greg Hinds, LoloVilla Gomez, and Charlie Ragusa; and banquet wait- ers HernanVargue and Francisco Peralta. All together, the five have logged more than 200 years of service at the hotel. The audience didn’t need any prompting to applaud a handful of the professionals who formthe backbone of our industry. I asked Brian how he thought to recognize
these “unsung heroes.” He got the idea, he told me, from the fact that they have worked at the hotel for all of those years, and that he knew that many people in the room knew them. “But
8 pcma convene June 2011
honestly,” he said dryly, “I always befriend the captains, to make suremyglass is never empty.” Well done, Brian.Momwould have
approved. And as the daughter of Italian immi- grants (a culture that values religion, family, and food—and not necessarily in that order), she would have understood it all: the key role that preparers, servers, and food itself play in the grand scheme of meetings and events. When I first started working at Convene,
a planner whom I interviewed told me that while attendees might have a great learning and networking experience at a conference, at the end of the day, what would stick outmost in their minds was if the meals were good and the coffee was hot. Today, their palates refined by a surfeit of cooking shows and an abundance of gourmet items available at their local supermar- kets, attendees have ever-higher expectations for the quality and variety of food they’ll be served at events. That raises the bar for plan- ners, who also happen to be working with shrinkingF&Bbudgets. Howare planners coping?Howare chefs
rising to the challenge?We askedPCMASenior Vice President of Meetings and Events Kelly Peacy, CAE,CMP, to invent a meal event with very clear parameters and a tight budget. Convene Executive Editor Christopher Durso —a fan of the Food Network shows “Dinner: Impossible” and “Restaurant: Impossible”— then took Kelly’s hypothetical RFP to seven chefs who cook for meetings and conventions. The resulting menus reflect their ingenuity, not to mention some really healthy trends— for the planet and people alike. Before you dig into our cover story andCMP
Series article, “Menu: Impossible” (p. 38), a word to the wise: Eat something first. Or, as momwould say, mangia.
SPEAKING OF FOOD: I once heard that a good magazine is like a fine meal: The short departments up front are the appetizers, the cover story and feature articles form the main course, and both should end with a nice dessert.We seem to keep adding to our appetizers. This month in Plenary, we serve up “What’s Your Story?,” where we give indus- try leaders who we think are pretty remarkable a page or so to, well, tell their story.We start with Massachusetts Convention Center Authority Executive Director James E. Rooney, on p. 20.
Michelle Russell Editor in Chief mrussell@pcma.org
MICHELLE RUSSELL PHOTOGRAPHED BY DENNIS CHALKIN; ILLUSTRATION BY BO LUNDBERG