What We Can Do’ Mike Butts, executive director of Visit Charlotte, on courting, welcoming, and leveraging the 2012 Democratic National Convention:
Why Charlotte? We also bid on the RNC at the same time. But the politics of the state, just having elected a new Democratic governor for the first time in a while, and [with Charlotte having] a Democratic mayor, that really set things in a political direction so that we would be able to have a more successful run. Plus the fact that North Carolina is a swing state.
Southern hospitality We printed 10,000 [Charlotte in 2012 hospitality handbooks] for
Host City: ‘Let Folks Know
frontline personnel to help them, because there are so many people in town. There are thousands of volunteers as well as all of our regular hospitality folks. We had planning meetings with taxi companies, limousine companies, destination management companies, hotels, restaurants, and different venue attractions, and pushed this information out.
A global stage It is a great opportunity to showcase the destination. Put it on a global stage and let folks know what we can do. You can’t get much more prestige than something like this. We have had events where we have had more people, but as for prestige, this is it. I think next we need to go host the RNC.
Work at Bank of America started much later, at the end
of August — and, it turned out, would be for naught, thanks to those rains. Hargrove started breaking down the stadium on Wednesday, as soon as the decision was made to move the final program to Time Warner. On Thursday night, with Hargrove’s hospitality lounge filling up with clients, staff, and guests, Bracco was philosophical. “I think the biggest thing for us, and we are working through it now, is there was a request for additional cabling — fiber — to run from here to provide a feed to the convention center,” he said, “so [the DNCC] could do large watch parties at the convention center [for people who had tickets for Bank of America]. And most of the tracks were already laid, so it is a mad dash to run cables. And even that was not terribly surprising or difficult.” Breakdown at Time Warner would begin that night, after
the convention was over, and the DNCC would turn the build- ing back over to the city of Charlotte on Sept. 26 — completely restored to its former state. Bank of America needed to be back in shape for a Carolina Panthers home game on Sept. 16. And at the convention center, Sanford said, there would be “three or four days” to move out. It takes four years to build a political convention, and a few weeks to unbuild one. “It’s always a challenge to put together an event where
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› To learn more about the 2012 Democratic National Convention, visit demconvention.com.
ON THE WEB
› For more information about the Charlotte in 2012 Convention Host Committee, visit charlottein2012.com.
you have so many different groups of people coming in,” LeCompte said. “You’ve got the media, you’ve got delegates, you’ve got folks from the campaign. Balancing the different needs to different groups is always a challenge in any setting. And it’s certainly one we embrace here at the convention. We spend a lot of time focusing on making sure that we get all the convention attendees exactly what they need in order to do their job or to have fun. Whatever their goal happens to be.”
Christopher Durso is executive editor of Convene. PCMA.ORG NOVEMBER 2012 PCMA CONVENE 51