D 82 PCMA CONVENE JUNE 2013

id you need

something at the 2013 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference? Maybe you had a question about getting into the plenary session with Vice President Joe Biden? Or could use a hand navigating the various layers of security in and around the Walter E. Washington Convention Center? Or wondered where you might grab a bite to eat? The people who could help you out with

those sorts of things were everywhere at AIPAC 2013 — nearly 200 of them in all, some wearing red logo shirts, some wearing blue, some with clipboards and iPads and walkie-talkies, and to a person smiling and helpful. Some of them were freelance event professionals, but most were PCMA student members from meetings and hospitality programs across the country, brought in by AIPAC to serve as connective tissue at a big conference that over the last decade has added a lot of moving parts. “We decided last year we needed to bring

more firepower to this operation and build a much larger event-management team,” said Jeff Shulman, AIPAC’s director of national events, sitting in one of the many conversation areas arranged throughout the sprawling AIPAC Village space on the second day of AIPAC 2013. “…. We’ve been able to mobilize an events team that is on every corner around the convention center, every corner inside the convention center, that’s greeting delegates, that’s well- trained, and that want to be here. Particularly [for] these PCMA students that are pursuing this line of their career, I think it’s been a great experience for them. It’s been a great experience for us to have them with us.”

The Great Indoors The goal of AIPAC Village was ‘to feel like you’re going to a destination’ — with (top to bottom) a bookstore, a coffee bar, retail-style shops and booths, and conversation areas, all accented with pipe-and-drape foliage.

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