Affordable Meetings West (Part Two)

Tales from the Ship…

Do you believe in Ghosts? I do. Well ok… so I have no proof, but I'm pretty sure they exist.

One of the highlights of the Affordable Meetings West Conference in Long Beach was getting to stay in the Queen Mary, historic ship-turned-hotel that's notoriously haunted. As you can imagine, the hotel was by no means fancy. My room had one round port-hole window and a tiny little shower, but the history and charm was the true appeal of staying here. You could visit the tourist shops inside the boat, have a drink and enjoy the view of Long Beach from the bar, eat at one of the three restaurants offered, or wander the multiple decks filled with historic exhibits. I myself was itching for a ghost sighting.

I didn't have time to take their Ghosts and Legends tour, which gives a guided tour of some of the most haunting places in the ship, but I did do my own exploring. A friend and I set out one night to explore the ship on our own, luckily running into and chatting with a friendly hotel staffer. He was happy to take us to the "Murder Suite" located on the “B” deck. We couldn't go inside, but we were able to peek through the peephole in hopes of seeing some paranormal movement while the staffer told us the tale of the murder that occurred inside. Apparently a man kept his daughter locked up in this room, then eventually killed her and took his own life. Periodically, witnesses have reported hearing the girl playing in the hallway, and strange noises coming from inside the room. There are multiple "murder rooms" the hotel is not allowed to sell to guests because of their gruesome history. He also told us about the swimming pool, which has been dry and unused for over 30 years. Witnesses have seen women in retro bathing suits frequenting the area, as well as wet footprints on the ground near the empty pool. A light "orb" has been seen dipping and "splashing" around in the again EMPTY pool! Sadly, I saw nothing supernatural, but the stories and dark hallways were enough to give me the heeby-jeebies later while I was left alone in my room.

A timeline of the Queen Mary:
War Service: March 1940 - September 1946
War History: Carried a total of 765,429 military personnel; sailed a total of 569,429 miles (916,407 km); carried up to 15,000 troops at one time; carried wounded returning to the United States; transported Winston Churchill three times to conferences; carried 12,886 G.I. brides and children.
Resumed Peacetime Passenger Service: July 31, 1947
Retired from Regular Passenger Service: September 19, 1967 (after completing 1,001 crossings of the Atlantic)
Departed on "Last Great Cruise": 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, October 31, 1967
Arrived in Long Beach, California: 10:00 a.m. Saturday, December 9, 1967
Change of Ownership: Removed from British registry and officially turned over ownership to the City of Long Beach at 10:00 a.m., Monday, December 11, 1967
*Information taken from http://www.queenmary.com/index.php?page=queenmarystats>

Read more fun facts about the Queen Mary on their website:
http://www.queenmary.com/index.php?page=factsandhistory

If you're looking for a fun, budget-friendly hotel in Long Beach, I would recommend visiting the Queen Mary for an interesting hotel experience. And guess what, they also have event space! What a great place to hold a Halloween party.

Happy haunting!

~Annie

Affordable Meetings West (Part One)

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the HSMAI's Affordable Meetings West Conference in Long Beach, CA. AMW was a two-day, session-filled conference focused on overall meeting and event planning, including a 200 booth trade show. Being that it was "affordable" (free, actually), it was definitely bare bones and frill-free. But the content was great, and the speakers were excellent. Below are some nuggets from my favorite sessions.

Mastering Memory:

A good memory is something essential to us event planners, always running around juggling a million things at once. Did you know that you can actually improve your brain and memory function with simple training? We learned a few tricks from Scott Hagwood, author and four-time National Memory Champion. He proved himself by asking our names as we entered the room, and was able to recall all 40 or so names throughout the hour and a half session! Using his tips I can now count to 10 in Mandarin Chinese by memory, using the Roman Room technique. It's been almost two weeks, and I still remember 1 through 10! Check out the technique here:
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_06.htm

I am not a master of memory, and tend to write everything down so I don't forget. Scott says if we continue to do this, it basically gives our brain permission to forget the information. In order to train your brain to retain more info, start relying on your memory more and write less down. Start small by memorizing you grocery list rather than jotting it on your usual post-it.

I'm sure this has happened to us all at some point: You meet someone, and five seconds later you forget their name. Consciously take a moment after they say their name to process it. Usually we're too busy thinking about what we're going to say next and the name just flies out of our brain. Take the time to process the name, and repeat it back to him/her. "It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sarah." Repeat her name two more times in the conversation, and you'll increase your chance of remembering it. Then, try to associate this person with someone you already know with the same name. Example: "Sarah has blonde hair, and so does my cousin Sarah." Picture both Sarah's together, and now every time you see this Sarah with her blonde hair, you'll remember she reminds you of cousin Sarah.

http://www.scotthagwood.com/

Green Meetings:

We've written about this before, but AMW held a great green meeting session, offering even more helpful green suggestions. One of their main points was communicating your intentions to your attendees! If they know they're not getting the usual paper hand-outs and bottled water because of environmental reasons, they're more likely to get on board. If you're using recycled materials in your notebooks and are reducing the number of pages, use symbols in your materials to show this.

AMW reduced their conference journal enough to result in 80% less fiber paper usage with over 900 lbs less paper used! Not only that, but they included a page in the front of the notebook showing their green efforts compared to last year, using actual quantifiers showing this change. They also used live reusable décor on the banquet tables rather than cut flowers. Sticks, moss, and potted plants can all be reused over and over. We weren't given any handouts other than the conference journal, and all PowerPoint slides and handouts were put on a CD in the back of the book. All great green efforts!

http://www.thinkoutsidethebottle.com/

Come back next week for more on the Affordable Meetings Conference.
~Annie

Audience Response Becomes Personal

All those great audience response systems we’ve told you about have one drawback: cost. At $80-100 per person, the cost scares off many would-be users. But zuku brings the cost down to just $2 per person (plus $300 set-up) by requiring each attendee to use their own cell phone for texting in their response. Normal carrier charges apply to the individual, so if an attendee does not have unlimited texting in their plan, or is from out of the country, they may chose not to participate. In that case, your event could offer them a reimbursement. But no special hardware or software is required. Just the mobile phones and the internet.

The company is still growing, and most of their event clients seem to be government and education meetings, but I walked thru a little demonstration the other day and it works pretty well. I’m not a texter, so it was a little unwieldy for me, having to type in a special code before each response. But there must be a way to keep that code on your screen and then type a response. A yes or no answer meant typing a 3 or 4 letter code, rather than hitting one button. For regular texters, this is probably cake, and for us tech dinosaurs, at least we leave the conference learning something!

The administrator can send any messages they want back to the responders individually or as a group. So conference planners could sell space on the responses to sponsors. The polling results interface that the audience sees is utilitarian, but zuku is working on a way to drop it into Powerpoint templates for a prettier presentation. Also if you wanted to display responses to the entire group, the only way to screen out responses is to read them one by one and delete the ones you don’t want seen. But I believe this is the way of the future for audience response. Check out www.zukuweb.com.

Thank you to Corbin Ball, meetings tech expert, for introducing me to zuku!

Affordable Meetings Conference Ahead

Sr. Event Coordinator, Annie Scurlock, will attend HSMAI's Affordable Meetings West conference June 11-12, 2008 in Long Beach, CA. Stay tuned later this month for a summary of her experience there! Contact Annie at annied@rtpevents.com.

http://www.groupdyne.com/
You can search by neighborhood, cuisine etc. Just type in no. of guests and $ amount per person and it will come up with possible venues.