QC
FEATURE
PHOTO COURTESY OF SYDNEY FRASER
Florida League of Cities Meeting Planners Heidi Hogarth (left) and Angela Delune.
MEETING PLANNING
Conference Behind the Scenes It’s more than cold rooms and cookies by Melanie G. Howe Florida League of Cities
M
ost municipal officials have been there – you’re in the grocery store or the post office, and a resident approaches you to complain about their trash pickup or the state of their neighbor’s lawn. Sometimes they stop to tell you good things, such as the police officer who went out of his way to walk their child home or the maintenance worker who found their lost tortoise while mowing in the park. Whatever the story, when the conversation is done, you can’t help but think: Those are just a fraction of the different things that go on behind the scenes to keep this city running. It’s the same for those of us who plan conferences. The League’s Meetings Division, a three-person team within the Membership Relations Department in the Tallahassee office of the Florida League of Cities, is responsible for planning and executing more than 10 major conferences per year for the League and its affiliate organizations, as well as countless trainings, board meetings and pop-up events. Each event, large or small, requires months of planning, hours of negotiating and intense attention to detail. For something as large as the League’s annual conference, work starts years in advance with securing hotel space. Our events can be space hogs, and we’re lucky that Florida boasts a wide variety of large conference hotels capable of keeping all of our events and sleeping rooms under one roof. Our negotiating skills come into play here as we work to secure reasonable room rates, discounts on parking and other services such as wireless internet (which is never complimentary in a conference hotel like it is at a Hampton Inn!), appropriate meeting space and other details. 40 QUALITY CITIES | FOURTH QUARTER 2021
Depending on the conference, planning starts in earnest about nine months to one year out. We work closely with League staff in other departments to select keynote speakers and develop workshop topics. The event schedule is analyzed to make sure it provides enough time for education, networking and the necessary annual business of the League or its affiliates. Once registration is open for an event, our staff spends hours fielding questions from members and assisting with technical issues. If a conference includes an exhibit hall, this work is doubled with outreach to exhibitor representatives to sell booths, collect payments and assist with their on-site needs.
FLORIDA LEAGUE OF CITIES
2021 ANNUAL CONFERENCE* Registrants ....................................... 640 Exhibit Hall Passes and Guests .............. 111 Exhibit Booths .................................... 108 Exhibitor Representatives .................. 500 League Staff ........................................ 54 Hotel Square Feet Used ................. 245,121 * The 2021 Annual Conference statistics were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic; usually, registration numbers would be higher and square feet used would be lower.
