Tuesday, May 28, 2013

First Conference: Done. And done Awesomely.

This was written right after I had completed my very first conference about a week and a half ago.
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I'm sitting here at the hotel bar, eating dinner, and drinking some diet Pepsi and a cocktail. (Don't worry, anyone from work who might read this, the cocktail is on my dime!)

I just finished up my very first conference here at my new (ish) job. From start to finish, this baby was mine. I got the speakers, chose the topics (well, for the most part) and made copies and put together all 110 freaking notebooks. (Not an easy, quick or fun chore, for sure). Oh, plus, I deal with no one but attorneys.........so there's that. 


The hardest part was that it was in Birmingham, AL and trying to plan a conference for completely different state, not knowing anyone, is really hard. 

But you know what?

It was great.

All of my speakers showed up and were on time. Most of the attendees were pleased. (You can't please everyone. Some people are just miserable.) and there were no "hitches" that weren't easily taken care of. 

But this morning? I was a nervous bag of bones. To give you an idea, here are some questions that went through my head last night and today:

Will I hear my alarm?
Will all my attendees show up?
Will I have a crap ton of walk-ins?
WILL ALL MY SPEAKERS SHOW UP, OH GAWD WILL AL MY SPEAKERS SHOW UP?
Will any speakers be late?
Will everyone complain?
Will the room get too warm?
Will the room get too cold?
Will someone else from the meeting down the hall try to sneak in our buffet line??

But, again, everything went better than I could have imagined.




I got tons of compliments from both the speakers and attendees. And it made me feel good! It gave me the confidence boost I needed to be able to get through the rest of the conferences this year.

I am actually looking forward to putting more of these together! Hopefully they will all go just as well, and I won't need to use anymore weird breathing techniques to calm me down!!



As always, thanks for reading!



 

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