Some of you will have read the prequel to this piece that I posted in May. Well, now for the event itself: a four-day leadership conference for a financial client. On day one of the get-in, I regretted my earlier comments complimenting the services provided by the venue. As we started to unload, our Technical Director, Mark was informed by a representative of the hotel that we couldn’t move flight cases across the carpet of the main room without placing a layer of protective plastic on the floor.
- Did you receive all the plans and information that I sent through in advance, explaining what we were bringing into the room?
- Yessir.
- And you didn’t think to tell us that this sheeting has to be laid down first?
- Um.
- Right, well it’s going to delay us but you’d better get on with it.
- Um…
- Yes?
- Well, we don’t actually know how to use the machine. Do you think any of your guys can do it?
- *sigh*… Yes, I’m sure we can figure it out. Anything else?
- Yessir, there will be a charge to lay down the plastic.
- How much?
- Well, sir, for the privilege of delaying your build schedule and borrowing members of your crew to do work we should be doing ourselves, we’ll be charging you $500.
I may have paraphrased a little towards the end. If I were the carpet of a hotel conference room, I might consider this a level of service to surpass the napkin incident (May!). Alas, I’m an Event Producer, so I regarded it as an almighty irritation.
Fortunately, it was perhaps the greatest challenge we faced over the course of the conference. The build was delayed slightly but an accommodating client team coped admirably with relocating some rehearsals and we were all set for kick-off the following day. Accompanying the Line Up team on the project was editorial cartoonist JD Crowe, who was recruited to offer the client an outsider’s perspective on proceedings. As you can see, he injected a fresh and funny element to the four day journey.
JD’s cartoons were displayed on the conference’s “journey wall”, a visual record of the programme’s sessions that also brimmed with photographs from each day, comments from delegates and the results of various votes and decisions. For the client, the wall represented a succinct account of the business progress made in this important conference. For the crew, its movement to completion represented progress towards an end-of-project beer!
The closing address arrived, JD signed off the final image and the crew breathed a collective sigh. The reward for a successful project for the Line Up team was a chance to soak up some of the Florida sunshine with a weekend in The Keys. The highlight of the ensuing trip, however, occurred under a clouded sky. Following the car out of Miami, was Content Producer, Lawrence, biking enthusiast and now proud possessor – albeit on hire only – of an all-American Harley Davidson.
Then came the rain. The apocalyptic, impenetrable rain.
Cruising along in front, the four warm and dry members of the party cast a brief concerned glance backward before continuing with the important business of wailing along to MGMT’s ‘Time To Pretend’, later declared official anthem of the road trip. Lawrence, confident that riding a motorcycle in a state of effective blindness does not fall into the ‘Top Safety Tips’ section of the Highway Code, decided to take matters into his own hands and accelerated alongside the hire car. Dutifully, we wound down the windows, unmasking the full horror of his situation: dripping from every square inch of an outfit not exactly designed for downpours, enduring a wall of rain hitting his face with a literally painful force, weaving on the slippery-doesn’t-begin-to-describe-it road surface, he turned and bellowed to us:
- ‘I’ve got to stop! I can’t see anything… I just can’t see anything!’
How to respond to a colleague in such dire circumstances? Morality dictated we must act to help him. A cool head and clear thinking was required to devise a solution to get him off the highway as soon as possible. Responsibility was thrust upon us to come to this man’s – this friend’s – aid. What did we do? High on the coastal air of The Keys, riding the wave of post-event ecstasy, agog with holiday fever, we laughed like drunken clowns and took pictures. Some minutes later, Larry was alone in the toilets of Burger King, pouring the water from his shoes.
