Conference Behind the Scenes

It’s more than cold rooms and cookies

by Melanie G. Howe, Florida League of Cities

Most 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.

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 Meeting Planners Heidi Hogarth (left) and Angela Delune.

Photo courtesy of Sydney Fraser

In the meantime, we are also working with the hotel and other vendors to arrange proper meeting room setups, make food and beverage selections and order various audiovisual equipment, decor and entertainment. Time is also spent proofing and printing name badges, making signs and stuffing registration packets.

When everything comes together for the final event, it frequently passes in a blur for the meeting planners. Our typical day on-site starts before dawn as we arrive before everyone else to check that the meeting rooms are set correctly and the right equipment is in each room. The rest of the day is spent in response mode as requests come in to make meeting rooms warmer or cooler and add more coffee to refreshment breaks or more chairs in a workshop.

When the event is over, there are weeks of conference closure, including registration reports, refunds and reviewing the usually massive hotel bill. Then everything starts all over again for the following year.

Every day in the life of a meeting planner is different, and we never know what new crisis might present itself, a concept all municipal officials can relate to. And this past year has been full of crises – COVID-19 threw the meeting planning world for a loop. We spent our time canceling more meetings than we planned and negotiating numerous future contracts with hotels to mitigate enormous cancellation fees and penalties.

It’s been hard to juggle everyone’s desire to get back to meeting in person with the need to keep everyone as safe as possible. The hotel industry took a big hit, and it could be years before standards of service return to what they were pre-pandemic, if they ever do.

Despite it all, there’s also no better feeling than standing in the back of a general session, taking in the lights and the noise while watching the audience loudly applaud for a keynote speaker … and to think that you had a small part in making that little piece of magic happen.

Melanie G. Howe, CAE, CMP, is Meetings Manager at the Florida League of Cities.

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.