Lunches at Conferences

Photo courtesy of tpsdave via Pixabay - CC 0 Public Domain license

Today I'm talking about conferences.  And in particular, my favourite bit of conferences, lunches.

Now, when you're organising a conference, there is a pecking order that you can't help but put the speakers in.  You'll have one of your best speakers right at the start as a keynote speaker, to set the tone and invigorate the crowd for the day.  You may well have your second best speaker at the end, although this is always a risk as people may start vanishing at the end as they realise the benefits of leaving 20-30 minutes early (i.e. reduced traffic and an earlier return to home)

Generally people in the "graveyard slot" (the one right after lunch) aren't the most exciting in the world, they're the people that you need to include on the agenda but it isn't the end of the world if someone takes a nap during their talk.  Sometimes people mix it up by putting an exciting speaker after lunch to keep people awake, but this only messes with peoples digestive practices as their brain attempts to keep awake a body headed into sloth after consuming three triangular sandwiches, a chicken drumstick, and an onion bhaji.

But I think one slot overlooked by event organisers is the one before lunch.

This slot is clearly for your controversial speakers, the ones that you're pleased to have but that might just say something that you're a bit nervous about people hearing.

The reason why this is the ideal slot is that about halfway into their talk, a door in the conference room will open and all the attendees will catch the little rattle of the kitchen trolley bringing in the lunch.

And from that point the speaker has lost any hope of holding their audience.  Instead, everything person is glancing at the lunch and at the clock, only gazing at the speaker perfunctorily, and they'll be thinking the following things:

• Lunch is here.
• When is this guy going to stop?  Surely they can see lunch is here too.
• Look how small that trolley is.  I don't think there's enough food there for all of us. Better make sure I'm at the front of the queue.
• How much plastic wrap do they need to put round those sandwiches? It'll take forever to open better. Better make sure I'm second to the front of the queue so I don't have to open them.
• I can see little pork pies cut in half! Screw the diet, I'm having one.
• Ooh, look at the gluten-free diet wrapped up by itself.  What is gluten anyway?  I think Collegehumor had a video about it.
• Lunch lunch lunch lunch lunch. I want lunch, please stop talking, because I want to eat lunch.

And the longer the speaker keeps going, the more the crowd starts to hate them for delaying their lunch.

If you enjoyed this, here's a post about a particular conference I went to a while back which featured some unexpected guests...

I'm going to be setting up some guest posts to run over the next few weeks as I'm getting married and hopefully going on honeymoon - I'll do my best to intersperse the guest posts with my own, but I've been very pleased with all the support the blogging community has made in sending me posts!  If you'd like to get involved, let me know.

Secure catering

I was at a conference a little while back. For those that may not have experienced the delight that is a conference, a typical conference is at a decent sized building, where you go, sign a register, get a coffee, maybe a pen and an agenda or other handouts (pen drives are quite fashionable nowadays), sit through a few seminars, eat some lunch (which varies but is usually a buffet which includes sandwiches), a few more seminars, and then an almighty dash for the exit. Quite often attendance reduces as the afternoon goes on as people, scanning the agenda, decide that they can miss the last item or two and get home early.

Conferences are typically supported by the venues management and support staff, and let me be very clear, mainly the support staff.  Management are typically very much in presence for the planning of any events, however when it gets to the day of the event, it will be the receptionists, caretakers, and catering team that handle the high workload which includes:

• Around a hundred people in suits getting lost
• People asking where the "Birch Triad Room" is (or some other slightly unusual name - they can never name them something simple like "Room 2")
• Fixing the toilets after someone dropped a onion bhaji down them
• Attempting to hook up one of the presenters laptops to the projector - which is never a straightforward process
• Ensuring drinks are topped up
• Getting food out
• Clearing up plates after people have eaten

The list of activities goes on, generally ensuring that the support team are quite slender due to the fact that they haven't stopped moving - even to sleep - for several days.

However, the one I went to recently had different support staff. Every single one of them were suited up (the norm for event support is trousers and polo shirt), complete with security-type earbuds, the sort of thing you'd see on doormen at nightclubs.  This is particularly odd as I wasn't actually at a work conference for once, but instead one for people to attend in their own time.  Not unreasonably the majority of people attending had elected not to wear business attire on their day off, so for once the support staff actually looked smarter than the attendees.

None of them smiled either, and looked fairly well built, making it feel that the Secret Service were taking a day off guarding the President of the United States to hand out sandwiches.  I entertained myself by imagining what was going through the earbuds:

 "Cub One to Wolf King, contact."
 "Wolf King to Cub One.  How many?"
 "We have twenty four, two four, people headed for the main entry point."
 "Acknowledged, Cub One, keep monitoring and providing updates.  Do not engage unless attacked.  Wolf King to Cub Two, you have incoming.  Status?"
 "Pens and agendas at the ready."
 "Wolf King, this is Cub Four.  We have a delay of zero-two minutes on coffee, I repeat we have a delay of zero-two minutes on coffee."
 "Acknowledged, Cub Four.  Wolf King to Cub Two, fumble the pens when you pass them out, is that clear?  We need to buy Four some time."
 "Yes sir, fumbling."

I made sure to get out of that conference a little early, after all if the conference was being catered by a national security service there may well have been some sort of undercover operation going on.  Best to keep out of harms reach, I feel.