Convention Post Mortem

We haven't done our official post mortem for the convention, not to mention the volunteer party for all those who contributed. Still, I thought I'd scribble down a few thoughts before they're lost to Alzheimer's, denial or or therapy.

On the whole, my realm of responsibility --registration-- went pretty well. It's actually a larger role than just checking off people as they arrive: it's the focal point for customer information, directions, tour coordination and so much more. What was I thinking?

• I wish I had an extra hour to prepare before the desk officially opened the first time so I could have had absolutely every ready. I didn't have the printed lists I wanted so I would be ready to confirm tours and meals for those who couldn't remember whether they registered or not. I was able to fix that overnight but Thursday's shift was a little rough.
  
• I wish I had taken the time to set up a more sophisticated office space before the convention started. While we had enough space to work, better organization of our limited stationery supplies would have made life easier. Having an extra laptop preconfigured on the network and with printer drivers for whoever needed it would have been a good idea too.
  
• Opening up registration on Wednesday evening seriously took a huge load off Thursday's shift.
  
• The next person who is late bringing essential documents for the registration packets will be laughed at, then shot.
  
• Each night following a day of registration, I was up until 1:30 AM or so, catching up on data entry. There's got to be a better way.
  
• I never did get a chance to collect on all of those promised cocktails. There's got to be a better way.
  
• Despite a bewildering array of restaurants, I had only enough time to eat one meal per day. There's got to be a better way.
  
• I've only just today felt like I've caught up on my backlog of sleep. Yay for regaining normal energy levels without the assistance of massive quantities of sugar and caffeine! (And yeah, there has to be a better way.)
  
• At my (and others') insistence, we ordered only 800 metal water bottles to give away to registrants. That was quite reasonable when our pre-registrations totaled 720 people. As the at-the-door registrants surged past 800 however I began to get a little worried. Fortunately, not everyone picked up a water bottle so they stretched pretty far but we did run out.
  
• We have, oh, 100+ t-shirts still leftover. Our marketing guy ordered far too many. We still have some polo shirts left over but only in small and 2XL sizes: the sizes between went quickly. There were 1,000 souvenir pins but we ran out by the third day... wtf?! Sadly, we have to store the extras until we find a creative way of using the extras. Maybe we'll stitch together a zeppelin or something.
  
• Moron that I am, I neglected to pack multiple changes of shoes. I knew I wouldn't be dancing so I thought my most comfortable dress walking shoes would be enough. Doh! My feet and especially my right knee were killing me every hour of the convention.
  
• We had an executive suite at the hotel. It was beautiful but what kind of suite has a huge bar and no glasses! Having such a nice room was kind of a waste though since we didn't spend more than a few hours in it all weekend.
  
• Thank god for cell phone networks. The hotel gave us Nextel telephones for communicating between each other and the hotel staff but I preferred my own cell phone and the house phone in the office.
• Our big innovation --randomly assigning tables for the banquet and brunch-- was well received. To this moment, I haven't heard a single complaint but lots of compliments. In the past, a map of the tables in the dining hall was laid out and people were invited to peel a pre-printed label with their name from the lists and apply them to a seat at the table of their choice. Sadly, this has frequently resulted in a maddening and unseemly feeding frenzy as people struggled to locate their names and those of their friends, grab the lot and apply them to the best table they can find. In our method, people could assemble a table of friends but the location of the table would be randomly assigned later.
  
• My major freak-out moment of the weekend was related to the banquet tables. While checking out the table lists, I noticed they were 99% full but there were still 80+ names left for assignment. Even subtracting the folks who hadn't checked in yet, that was still far more than there were remaining seats. Juanita calmed me down in a moment though, pointing out that we had removed 10 tables from the pool for VIPs but hadn't removed the names from the lists since we didn't know who, say, the Chicago or Atlanta committees would be seating at their VIP tables. After consulting with the appropriate committees and boards, we rearranged some names and tables, suddenly making everything right. We did add two catch-all tables to the hall to offset any miscounts of banquet seats. In the end, all was well.
  
• The centerpieces for the banquet and brunch dining tables were lovely but there was nearly a disaster. A couple of the assembled pieces slid to one side, pushing the plastic bits up against the light causing it to start smoking. We nearly became remembered as the convention where the water sprinklers doused the everyone at the Saturday banquet. Well, no one would forget us.
  
• We briefly toyed with redoing the table locations for the brunch but thought that this might be pushing the experiment one step too far and would simply add another level of confusion and difficulty to the project.
  
• We had $10k worth of at-the-door registrations and walk-ins on Saturday alone. I still need to finish the data entry for the day rate folks but I'm estimating we had 890 people registered.
  
• I still need to finish the report to All Join Hands for the first-time attendees so we can get the promised reimbursement for their discounted registration. Hopefully, I can get that done tomorrow.
  
• Despite the struggle, I'm a little sad we can't do it all over again. 80% of the work was in the early planning, establishing of contacts, negotiating deals and so on before the actual convention. Now that we've done all of that, we could easily pull off a second convention with minimal pain. Alas, all of this work will be obsolete by the next time a window rolls around, 2015 at the earliest.
  
• I took not a single photo the entire weekend. There was simply no time.
  
• Being busy and productive is an addiction. The withdrawal has been a little distressing yesterday & today. I'll just have to tough it out doing more mundane things like curing cancer and solving third-world hunger.
  
• My dues are now paid: I'm off the convention planning hook for another 15 years or so.
  

Convention Post Mortem

We haven't done our official post mortem for the convention, not to mention the volunteer party for all those who contributed. Still, I thought I'd scribble down a few thoughts before they're lost to Alzheimer's, denial or or therapy.

On the whole, my realm of responsibility --registration-- went pretty well. It's actually a larger role than just checking off people as they arrive: it's the focal point for customer information, directions, tour coordination and so much more. What was I thinking?

• I wish I had an extra hour to prepare before the desk officially opened the first time so I could have had absolutely every ready. I didn't have the printed lists I wanted so I would be ready to confirm tours and meals for those who couldn't remember whether they registered or not. I was able to fix that overnight but Thursday's shift was a little rough.
  
• I wish I had taken the time to set up a more sophisticated office space before the convention started. While we had enough space to work, better organization of our limited stationery supplies would have made life easier. Having an extra laptop preconfigured on the network and with printer drivers for whoever needed it would have been a good idea too.
  
• Opening up registration on Wednesday evening seriously took a huge load off Thursday's shift.
  
• The next person who is late bringing essential documents for the registration packets will be laughed at, then shot.
  
• Each night following a day of registration, I was up until 1:30 AM or so, catching up on data entry. There's got to be a better way.
  
• I never did get a chance to collect on all of those promised cocktails. There's got to be a better way.
  
• Despite a bewildering array of restaurants, I had only enough time to eat one meal per day. There's got to be a better way.
  
• I've only just today felt like I've caught up on my backlog of sleep. Yay for regaining normal energy levels without the assistance of massive quantities of sugar and caffeine! (And yeah, there has to be a better way.)
  
• At my (and others') insistence, we ordered only 800 metal water bottles to give away to registrants. That was quite reasonable when our pre-registrations totaled 720 people. As the at-the-door registrants surged past 800 however I began to get a little worried. Fortunately, not everyone picked up a water bottle so they stretched pretty far but we did run out.
  
• We have, oh, 100+ t-shirts still leftover. Our marketing guy ordered far too many. We still have some polo shirts left over but only in small and 2XL sizes: the sizes between went quickly. There were 1,000 souvenir pins but we ran out by the third day... wtf?! Sadly, we have to store the extras until we find a creative way of using the extras. Maybe we'll stitch together a zeppelin or something.
  
• Moron that I am, I neglected to pack multiple changes of shoes. I knew I wouldn't be dancing so I thought my most comfortable dress walking shoes would be enough. Doh! My feet and especially my right knee were killing me every hour of the convention.
  
• We had an executive suite at the hotel. It was beautiful but what kind of suite has a huge bar and no glasses! Having such a nice room was kind of a waste though since we didn't spend more than a few hours in it all weekend.
  
• Thank god for cell phone networks. The hotel gave us Nextel telephones for communicating between each other and the hotel staff but I preferred my own cell phone and the house phone in the office.
• Our big innovation --randomly assigning tables for the banquet and brunch-- was well received. To this moment, I haven't heard a single complaint but lots of compliments. In the past, a map of the tables in the dining hall was laid out and people were invited to peel a pre-printed label with their name from the lists and apply them to a seat at the table of their choice. Sadly, this has frequently resulted in a maddening and unseemly feeding frenzy as people struggled to locate their names and those of their friends, grab the lot and apply them to the best table they can find. In our method, people could assemble a table of friends but the location of the table would be randomly assigned later.
  
• My major freak-out moment of the weekend was related to the banquet tables. While checking out the table lists, I noticed they were 99% full but there were still 80+ names left for assignment. Even subtracting the folks who hadn't checked in yet, that was still far more than there were remaining seats. Juanita calmed me down in a moment though, pointing out that we had removed 10 tables from the pool for VIPs but hadn't removed the names from the lists since we didn't know who, say, the Chicago or Atlanta committees would be seating at their VIP tables. After consulting with the appropriate committees and boards, we rearranged some names and tables, suddenly making everything right. We did add two catch-all tables to the hall to offset any miscounts of banquet seats. In the end, all was well.
  
• The centerpieces for the banquet and brunch dining tables were lovely but there was nearly a disaster. A couple of the assembled pieces slid to one side, pushing the plastic bits up against the light causing it to start smoking. We nearly became remembered as the convention where the water sprinklers doused the everyone at the Saturday banquet. Well, no one would forget us.
  
• We briefly toyed with redoing the table locations for the brunch but thought that this might be pushing the experiment one step too far and would simply add another level of confusion and difficulty to the project.
  
• We had $10k worth of at-the-door registrations and walk-ins on Saturday alone. I still need to finish the data entry for the day rate folks but I'm estimating we had 890 people registered.
  
• I still need to finish the report to All Join Hands for the first-time attendees so we can get the promised reimbursement for their discounted registration. Hopefully, I can get that done tomorrow.
  
• Despite the struggle, I'm a little sad we can't do it all over again. 80% of the work was in the early planning, establishing of contacts, negotiating deals and so on before the actual convention. Now that we've done all of that, we could easily pull off a second convention with minimal pain. Alas, all of this work will be obsolete by the next time a window rolls around, 2015 at the earliest.
  
• I took not a single photo the entire weekend. There was simply no time.
  
• Being busy and productive is an addiction. The withdrawal has been a little distressing yesterday & today. I'll just have to tough it out doing more mundane things like curing cancer and solving third-world hunger.
  
• My dues are now paid: I'm off the convention planning hook for another 15 years or so.
  

Domesticity Restarted

Life post-convention is finally settling into old patterns.

• I'm spending more time at the data center and working on various office projects.
  
• cuyahogarvr is visiting friends & family in Cleveland this week... he'll be back Saturday. And yes, we know where the chicken broth is located.
  
• kent4str has returned to the workforce after a three month absence. He's now working for a law firm in the Georgetown area of Washington DC. It seems to be going well; while we were doing OK, I'm relieved our household safety net is being restored now that we're back to two full incomes.
  
• jearbear65oh was in town the past few days and we met up with him & friends for dinner last night.
  
• I'd like to get to the trailer to de-winterize sometime soon now that the camping season has started but kent4str's lack of vacation leave is complicating issues. We'll figure out something.
  
• The Chesapeake Squares' fly-in in Rehoboth Beach, MD, is in only two weeks... oy!
  

Domesticity Restarted

Life post-convention is finally settling into old patterns.

• I'm spending more time at the data center and working on various office projects.
  
• cuyahogarvr is visiting friends & family in Cleveland this week... he'll be back Saturday. And yes, we know where the chicken broth is located.
  
• kent4str has returned to the workforce after a three month absence. He's now working for a law firm in the Georgetown area of Washington DC. It seems to be going well; while we were doing OK, I'm relieved our household safety net is being restored now that we're back to two full incomes.
  
• jearbear65oh was in town the past few days and we met up with him & friends for dinner last night.
  
• I'd like to get to the trailer to de-winterize sometime soon now that the camping season has started but kent4str's lack of vacation leave is complicating issues. We'll figure out something.
  
• The Chesapeake Squares' fly-in in Rehoboth Beach, MD, is in only two weeks... oy!