24-Hour Party People Lisa L. Dyson, CMP Director of Conference Services, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
At my former association, the Association of the Wall and Ceiling Industry, we did a high-end industry executive conference every fall, at really nice resorts. One of the things that conference always featured was, whoever was board president at the time, their large presidential suite also was the hospitality suite. So it was convention that they would invite the entire board back to their suite for cocktails and parties — normally not really an issue. So we were at this resort, everything was normal,
and I was coming back from dinner with a couple of colleagues when I ran into some board members in the lobby. They were like, “Oh, you should come up to the suite.” I said, “Well, I was heading up there to check on things anyway, so I’ll come up.” I get up there and the suite is wall-to-wall people,
and just like this raucous party going on. I was like, “Oh my goodness.” I was there for maybe five minutes
104 pcma convene September 2011
and all of a sudden there was this really loud knock on the door. And it’s the front-desk people and hotel secu- rity. I immediately thought, “Oh, good god,” because this particular president liked to party. So I introduced myself as the meeting planner and
asked, “What’s the problem?” They said, “Well, we’ve had a lot of complaints and we’re here to shut the party down.” I said, “Um, no, we can’t do that — so what are our options? These people aren’t ready to go home yet.” We talked about it and decided we were going to relo- cate my board president and his party. So we brought in a cart, we packed up the bar, and paraded everybody down to the great room of the hotel lobby. And nobody left! I think more people actually came.
The president was ecstatic. He was very proud of the fact that he was the first president in history to get kicked out of his suite because the party was too loud. — As told to Hunter R. Slaton