The Better You Do...

Some of you know what I do for work, other may not have the foggiest. I'll just break it down for ya'll anyway:

I work for a company called TBA Global Events, LLC. It's not just an "event" company, it's considered a Business Communications and Connective Marketing company (so, well, okay that means event company still). Anyway, the company as a whole has produced such events (on their client's behalf) as the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the Lance Armstrong Tour of Hope, and the Ben & Jerry's marketing campaign of "Random Acts of Cone-ness" (where street-marketing teams would go into offices or places of public service (fire departments, police stations, hospitals) and they would give out Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone products). We also did the open ceremonies for the Olympics in Italy and many other cool corporate events all around the nation and the world.

The piece of the pie that I work in is called "Destination Services" where once a Meeting Planner has planned their meetings and booked a hotel room block and reserved hotel ballroom space and contracted with a production agency (we do this too) to execute the meeting (A/V, speakers, staging, branded materials, etc.)--once they do all that they call a DMC (Destination Management Company) to produce all the other services and components AROUND the meeting such as tours, activities, airport coordination (arrivals/departures), receptions, award ceremonies, and a butt-load of other fun stuff. Pretty much we'll never say no. Holiday parties? sure. Trasnfering people A-to-B? Bring it on. Beach parties (how original)? Do it all the time.

Continuing on: yesterday I wrote a proposal for a small communications company, you may not have heard of them, AT&T, for their convention in 2008. They are going to have 4 waves of people over a course of a few days and need a large event space for this group. When I say (and by "say", I mean "type") "waves" of people, I mean 1,100 people come in all at once and are here for a short time, then the same day they leave, 500 people come in replacing them. When those people leave another group (the same day) of 435 replaces them, and when they leave the last group of 200 comes in and replaces those people. It will probably be 3 days each wave, totalling in 12 days straight of non-stop madness. A kind of madness a Meeting Planner (or a me) would love to witness (or make a commission on). So we had to find several options of event spaces that could work for 1,100 people all the way scaling down to 200 (and the 2 other tiers in between) PLUS 10 tours/activity options for this group. Think that's enough? No. We had to propose--not only San Diego--by Las Vegas, San Francisco and Phoenix as well. It was the largest proposal I've ever seen this office do and I got to be a part of it. Final product was 90-some pages in length, and it was down-right amazing and I'm sure you are all dying of boredom but I think it's freaking awesome.

So that's what I do all day long, I plan parties and make up tours and so on. It's fun and great and good for me but every job has it's dark side and future blogs I'm sure will reveal the darker side of party planners--mwah-ha-ha-ha!! (that's a cackle--fyi.) Thanks for reading--I leave you with a saying that I have in my cubicle which pretty much sums up the corporate world (and Adam Nordost): "Remember: The Better You Do, The More They Expect."