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PCMA Planner’s Notebook By Kelly Peacy, CAE, CMP
Trying Iton for Size As we get closer to Convening Leaders 2012, we make that all-important final on-site visit. M
y team and I recently com- pleted our last pre-planning visit to San Diego before
we convene there for PCMA’s annual meeting in just a few short months. It is during this final visit before “the real deal” that we take all of the pieces that we have in our head or on paper and see if they work in the actual physical envi- ronment. It’s an important part of the planning process, because if something that we conceptualized doesn’t make sense when we see it in real life, it can have a domino effect on the other mov- ing pieces of our conference. Here’s a case in point:One of our new ini-
tiatives at Convening Leaders 2012 is to have a registration area in each of the four main hotels —in addition to one at the San Diego Conven- tion Center. But obviously we don’t need the registration area at the convention center to be as large as at past annual meetings, when there were no other places for attendees to register. So we planned on using a different part of the cen- ter than is typically used for that area. But once we got to the convention center,
we realized that what we had envisioned didn’t really work from a space perspective. As a result, we had to move it to a part of the center where we could incorporate more of a lounge area and information desk that could be open during the course of the entire meeting. The registration area, after all, takes up valuable real estate and has a short shelf life. If we hadn’t scoped out this space during
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this visit, it would have been difficult to change our plans once we came to town. This last visit to San Diego also gave us a
chance to explore many of our on-site resources. And as part of our efforts to provide a behind- the-scenes view of what has gone into the plan- ning of Convening Leaders 2012, we made three short videos about one of those resources —PCMAPremier Partner FedEx Office, which is located in the convention center. San Diego Convention Center FedEx Office General Man- ager Jay Hook helped us demonstrate some of the ways FedEx Office will make our lives easier before and after we arrive in San Diego. The first video illustrates howwe can email
files to the FedExOffice at the SanDiegoCon- vention Center in advance of ConveningLeaders and havematerials printed out and ready for us whenwe arrive, saving us timeand shipping costs.The second video shows howwe can have last-minute signage printed the same day and on- site.And the third clip has to dowith howwe will bewrapping things up—literally—at the conclusion of themeeting.We can take “odd- shaped” items to be shipped back to PCMAHQ to FedExOffice and theywill pack themup and send themoff. As easy as that. Speaking of making things easy, I need to
give a shout-out to the thoroughly professional staff at the San Diego Convention Center. They have been terrific!We’ve been working closely with them to ensure that our Convening Leaders participants’ experience will be exceptional.
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: To check out our flip-cam FedEx Office videos, visit these links:
http://youtu.be /BrU7rt1-ui8
http://youtu.be /zULxb6f3CGI
http://youtu.be /LRgkNBY2nB8
Kelly Peacy, CAE, CMP Senior Vice President of Meetings and Events kpeacy@pcma.org