Planning Meetings with Aplomb

by: Nancy St. Clair Finch, Guest Contributor

Years ago when I found that planning and managing my agency’s annual meeting would be one of my duties in a new job, I was intrigued. Sounded like fun. That was until we unknowingly pulled an old list of former board members from the files for the invitations. We invited some long-deceased former board members and their hurt spouses didn’t hesitate to call and remind us.

Another time, there were audio visual glitches, like the equipment not being compatible with the speaker’s power point presentation. Then there was the time we took a group of editors on a tour of Jamestown and didn’t do a headcount.  On the way home, we discovered we were missing one of our guests! I quickly realized this meeting business is not for the faint of heart.

Now when I attend a meeting, all of these memories of past disasters come flooding back but I am relieved and grateful that there is such an animal as a professional meeting planner.

They can adeptly manage communications, meeting notices, registration websites, programs, speaker arrangements, and participant travel for trade shows and events. They ensure audio visual, sound and lighting technology runs smoothly for presentations and that food, flowers, name tags, special needs and emergency situations are covered flawlessly.

Add dealing with celebrities, payment for services, plus much more and you have a very valuable partner that will make your event shine.

That is exactly what Covington Travel’s Meeting and Events team does. The staff “meets a meeting with aplomb.” Nothing demonstrated this more than the full day Business Summit I attended in January. The day-long meeting for 500 attendees would have been a nightmare of logistics to the novice, but was old hat to the experienced hands at Covington. The AV equipment worked, the speakers showed up and, to my knowledge, the invitation lists had been weeded of the deceased and no one was left behind. If there were wrinkles, no one ever knew it.

Nancy St. Clair Finch is a former reporter, public relations practitioner and lobbyist from Richmond. In an earlier life as Information Director of the Virginia Community College System, her job entailed assisting with planning and coordinating the annual meeting for boards of the 23 Community Colleges. There she learned that meeting planning is an art in which she is not gifted.