Well Seasoned The Podcast
Well Seasoned The Podcast
Extended MPI WEC 2020 Recap
Staceyann and Patrick discuss their experience at MPI's 2020 WEC event: Hybrid sessions. Virtual hosts. Hand sanitizer. Socially distanced transportation. Fire alarms. Personal amplification devices.
And Plexi. Lots of Plexi.
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Patrick.
Patrick Brochu:Yes.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:You have a mask on.
Patrick Brochu:I'm doing to protect myself, Stacey.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Patrick, you're in your hotel room. By yourself. By yourself, Patrick.
Patrick Brochu:Yeah, I'm just trying to be safe, Stacey.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Oh my god. So tired.
Patrick Brochu:And now it's time to start this week's episode.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Welcome to another episode of Well Seasoned the Podcast. I am Staceyanne and you are Patrick. Welcome, Patrick. I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you for joining us on our podcast, Patrick. Patrick and I have a special episode for everyone. We are at WEC about five rooms away from each other recording this podcast
Patrick Brochu:It does feel awkward because she's literally right down the hall in another room and I'm in my room. I guess if we look out the window, we're seeing the same airplane flying by.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Oh, see I close my window to kind of help with sound because that is how I show that I care.
Patrick Brochu:This week's episode we wanted to do a recap about what we just experienced at WEC tonight. As we're recording, there is still one night left of the closing reception, so I will also be attending that and give any feedback from that that I can probably on the next episode. But today we wanted to just go through and let you guys know what we experienced.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Let me also start off by welcoming all of our new listeners that joined from WEC. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for subscribing. And we are doing a recap of everything on our Instagram feed. So if you go to WellSeasonedThePodcast, uh, you'll get to see some photos because the stories will be expired right then. But you'll see some photos of what we were doing and all those that are actually following us on Instagram. You probably already saw it. So let's get into our recap. Starting with day one.
Patrick Brochu:Tuesday, November 3.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Was hosted buyer on Monday or was it on Tuesday?
Patrick Brochu:I believe the hosted buyer, people arrived on Monday. And they started hosted buyer on Tuesday for general attendees Tuesday -- which was Election Day in America -- Tuesday was registration, those sorts of things. And then we had the opening night reception Tuesday night.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Got it. It was pretty interesting right from the beginning. We're talking about a show that generally has about...
Patrick Brochu:3 to 4000 people.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:And now the numbers that they shared with everybody was about 600.
Patrick Brochu:And Stacey and I both talked about this and that number is probably the people that registered but I can tell you from being on the ground here in person and keep me honest Stacey, I'm gonna say it's closer to 500.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:I agree. And they said about 1100 people virtually.
Patrick Brochu:Right.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:And so right from the start, you feel that a regular WEC, you get off the plane, and you're immediately greeted by so many of your peers.
Patrick Brochu:And from my experience coming from a destination like a Miami or Fort Lauderdale. This was the first one that I didn't know a single person on the plane that I was on.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:I'm coming from Reno and I know people on planes. So it's it's definitely different. But you do feel that immediately. And obviously, we account that to the times that we're in. So that's fine. So we checked in to Grapevine and you could see that as with everything that you see in your daily life, there's Plexiglas that separating you from the people that are checking you in. There's a lot of this six feet markers, they have everything standard and off. And this is in Dallas. And unfortunately, in terms of the COVID rates on this date, they are increasing. So I will give it to the hotel and the teams here that they are doing the most to make sure that everyone stays safe. So you check into your room. They have hand sanitizer everywhere. And the room experience is pretty much the same. There's nothing changing once you get into your room and hand sanitizers in the room. I think that was about it. They didn't have a mask or anything when you checked in did they?
Patrick Brochu:Yeah, there were no masks. And then room service is request only
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Oh yes.
Patrick Brochu:So you don't have people coming in the room unless you're doing a special request. So that means no towels. I was just thinking today Oh, my garbage is kind of a little fool. Maybe I should have handled that. But tomorrow is my last day. So I'm just kind of letting it go. I woke up and made my own bed. I didn't want to feel like I was living in a messy place.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yep.
Patrick Brochu:But different things like that.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Right. Right.
Patrick Brochu:One thing that you mentioned and we're going to go to the show floor in a minute, but the hand sanitizers everywhere, specifically at the top and the bottom of every escalator.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yes.
Patrick Brochu:Because you're not even thinking to yourself, you're getting on the escalator and you're holding on to the handrail and then you get off and you're like, Oh crap, I just touched the handrail, let me hand sanitize.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Same thing with the elevators too. Right by the entrance and exits of the elevator on every floor.
Patrick Brochu:The amount of hand sanitizer electronic units that you just put your hand underneath it sprays is amazing. It's everywhere.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yes. And it's good hand sanitizers, not stuff that dries you out. So, kudos to Gaylord for doing that. And it's at the Gaylord if we didn't say that, in Grapevine.
Patrick Brochu:Gaylord Texan, not yet a sponsor, but we will plug them.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Every time you say a name. So I actually got here a few hours before Patrick. So once Patrick came in, we went and grabbed lunch real quick, a lot of the locations on site, unfortunately, signe of the times, were closed. There's an Italian restaurant here that it was closed, and they had limited food and beverage outlets open during the time again, space seating, limited seating, lots of plexiglass, but that experience would be much like any experience in your hometown right now due to COVID. So getting to the stuff that we want to know now we're starting to get to the conferences and registering. What MPI did was they instituted health and safety checks prior to actually passing any threshold into the conference. So the Gaylord is a very long hallway that you walk through before you can get an escalator. And that escalator leads you upstairs to where most of the meetings are happening. So at the beginning of that hallway, everything here is QR code related. So you're not getting any paper menus or papers in general They do still do the daily magazine that they slide under your room door. But that's it. That's the only thing that you'll get. But everything is QR code related. So you have to scan a QR code and you sign a form that says that you have no COVID symptoms and that you're not in contact with anybody that you believe to have had COVID you sign that form. And it gives you a text message and Adobe form that says you've been cleared to enter this conference.
Patrick Brochu:Every day, you had to go in answer those few questions. And then you show up to a table prior to entering the conference area where you had to show that on your phone, you had to show the thumbs up, the green thumbs up, and then they take your temperature there. And then they give you a wristband and every day there was a different color wristband so the wristband is good for one day.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:You get that wristband, you walk up a few more feet. And there's lots of volunteers, of course, it's WEC checking to make sure that you got that wristband to be clear before you can get to the escalator. So now you get to the escalator, you go upstairs, the first thing you notice is lots of virtual elements. And like I said, the QR codes. So there's a QR code to scan so you can see what the menu is for the day, QR code scan so you can see what your health screening is. And you get upstairs off the elevator. And there's a virtual host to the meeting. And this virtual host is on a screen.
Patrick Brochu:Yeah, not yet a sponsor, but Cloud Touch provided those screens that had an interactive virtual host.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah, yeah. And this person is actually working from their home. And they're briefed on everything for the conference. So the location, the meeting, any questions you may have. So if you get to the top of that escalator and you realize you're lost that person is standing in their home, looking straight at the escalator, you wave at them, you say hi, and you could ask them anything from Where's chicken? Where's this room? I have a question about the meal. So that was a really cool feature to have. And it just kind of shows that even if you're not able to get all of your volunteers on site, you're still able to incorporate them and still have that touch for your attendees here. So you go further up the stairs and that's where registration is. That's where MPI TV was taking place. That day, I think there was just a coffee and tea station there. So you check in, you get your badge. Again, it's a touchless process, you tell them your name, they make sure that your name is looking good on an iPad, they print your badge. And that's it. And the first thing you got was your kind of tchotchke box with everything. So you were used to getting these room drops per day. But now since you can't enter someone's room each day in this, it's very limited, they give you everything all at once. And of course everything is more related to safety. So you're getting the hand wipes, the hand sanitizers, what are those keys called Patrick? Those keys where you could kind of use it to touch things?
Patrick Brochu:I'm not sure what the name of them are, but it's got like a round area that you can put your finger in it's on like a little key chain and then at the end is almost looks like an old skeleton key. There's kind of like a hook on it. So you can hold it, touch the door handle pull a door and then there's like a little nub at the end that you can hit like in an elevator hit the elevator button so you're not touching anything. The new giveaway.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah, that's the new giveaway kind of like when everyone was giving away fidget spinners? Because I know we got to them and some sunglasses so they give you a box with everything and the box is already sealed. So where before they would give you a bag that you would know that everyone's kind of making it beforehand, this box looks like something that they worked with a fulfillment center to create prior to it coming here, so less people were touching it. So that was pretty nice to have. That's the registration process. There's nothing too fancy about it, besides the fact that they added the virtual elements of having someone there to greet you and lots of QR codes. So just something for the meetings that you're planning, the QR codes that they did were on anything from easels to column wraps, and it's a very inexpensive, easy way to get information out to the public without having to be in contact with them. That night, they did have a welcome reception. I did not attend that. Patrick, you want to talk about that first night, welcome?
Patrick Brochu:Sure. At the beginning, we had the bus station, it was an off site event in downtown Grapevine. Not too far of a drive. So everybody was asked to be at the bus station. And they're losing people on the buses, one at a time, asking people to keep a few seats in between each other. So there were a lot more buses with less attendees, if you think about it that way that you would need to accomplish something like this to keep safe distance. So people were getting on, there was a tour guide to tell us a little bit about downtown Grapevine, etc. You get off of the bus. And then you walk in, you're greeted by people that are looking for your wristbands again. So not just your conference name tag, but your wristband. There were some people that were also getting temperatures rechecked to walk in, you walk in, like any other opening reception, there were lots of activities, bands playing all of those types of things going on. But at all the bars, there was the plexi glass, all of the food stations were served. People either already portioned out meals or things that were dispersed by a person or somebody was serving from behind Plexiglas to keep everybody safe. And then as far as the COVID modifications, I think that was pretty much it at the opening and plenty of signs everywhere to remind people, they did it in the theme of Texas, which I thought was kind of smart. It was like mask up y'all.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:And they had on those like church fan kind of things sothat people were walking around.
Patrick Brochu:Yeah like a church fan. And the mask was like the Texas flag, so they were playing in the theme a little bit with the conference logo and the Texas theme. So really, that's all the things that that one keep everybody separated the signs about the mask and on the ground about keeping separation.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:What I think is really nice, that is is great to know, as we're planning these meetings moving forward is that I was under the impression that we were going to lose our buffets and really lose a lot of the true creativity in food and beverage because of all the restrictions now, and they did such a great job with the meals from day one straight through. So Patrick experienced wine tastings on the train, and really cool food experiences. And that was the first night I remember he came back and he was talking about how great it was to see that. So that was day one. Day two, we actually had a session and that was the later session. But before we got to that we had general session, of course it is exactly what you would think it is very, very socially distance, we were in a ballroom that easily could have fit 1000 people seated.
Patrick Brochu:Multiple thousand people.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah.
Patrick Brochu:I believe that when Connect was in this exact ballroom A few years ago, I believe that there were 2500 to 3000 people in this room.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah.
Patrick Brochu:That now we're looking at for these 500 people. The room was almost filled with the tables but separated more than normal to have more spacing in between tables than you normally would. And I believe they were 72 inch rounds. And at each 72 inch round, you had four chairs.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yes. And what they did is every day there was a tent card at your seat, and you'd write your name on your tent card and there was a dot, so, you know, just one of those regular sticker dots, whether it's blue, or red or yellow. So when you sat down, you wrote your name on a tent card. And what that meant was, that was your seat for the day. And so you would always return to that seat. And the dots really was for exiting. So when we were all in general session, they would say okay, we're going to start with the blue dots leaving first and the green dots and the yellow dots. And so it wasn't that mass exodus and that bottleneck at the door, because they allow people to leave in waves. And what they also did, accounting for that if you notice, we're used to, you know, general session leaving and everybody has two minutes to run to their breakout session. This time it was general session ended, and you had maybe 30 or 40 minutes to go to your next session. So it actually allowed for more time for the movement, which was really nice. In terms of the actual general session, they did a great job of doing a hybrid event and making sure that the online attendees were incorporated into the general session experience. So there were screens in general session where you can see the attendees faces. You can see what they were chatting about. Dena-
Patrick Brochu:-Dena Blizzard-
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:-Dena Blizzard is the person who's emceed for five years now. She would actually ask questions of the online attendees to kind of put in chat, they had some people who volunteer to stay on cameras, so they will be interactive, they played games with them. So that was a really cool experience. We got out of the general sessions and everybody went into breakouts, but in terms of food and beverage for the breaks, a lot of things are touchless, of course, so we're used to kind of pulling the handle for coffee and tea. Now they have this thing where you kind of use your cup, and you press against it so that you're not touching anything. Condiments are no longer this open pitcher of milk and cream, or you could grab as many sugars as you want. It's-
Patrick Brochu:-everything's portioned.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah, everything's portion. So it's kind of like a little box that has your two stirrers, your two sugars, whatever it is, in a little box, you grab one box, and you leave. And so they did it that way. In terms of breaks, everything, of course, is also again portioned, so you get a box. And it's not what you think of as a typical box. So this little tray, kind of if you could imagine a divided plate would have maybe ricotta cheese with a jelly or strawberry jam, and some bread for dipping, or chocolate covered pretzels with something else or apples and peanut butter, however it may be. So you were still experiencing the brakes, but you weren't picking them up, you would get that handed to you by an attendant. All attendants are masked and gloved. And what I thought was interesting when I looked at that was there's so many times when you're planning food and beverage, and when you're planning these awesome breaks, you know, if you have 100 attendees, you might be planning for 125, or 150, because you might have a heavy eating group. Because everything's pre-portioned, I find that once you grab your break, that's it. You grab your one thing, and you leave and that's it, you're not making a huge plate of you know, 17 pieces of apples. So something to think about in the budgeting process, when you go to that, you might be able to find a little bit of cost savings there, which was not anticipated. At the same time, they are pre packaged, so you might be spending money on the packaging of it. So just something to think about.
Patrick Brochu:There was actually a conversation in one of the later sessions about this that I attended, where they were talking about the amount of waste that we're now looking to create by all of this packaging. Obviously, we're in a pandemic versus the environment. And now you have those things kind of going on hand in hand. I will say today's snack was served in a cardboard box and yesterday's snack, there was like a biodegradable tray that it was in but it did have a plastic lid.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yes.
Patrick Brochu:So the conversation was on those kind of things like how can we make it maybe more environmentally friendly, less plastic? You know, just something to keep in mind for those of us and hopefully we all are, but those of us that are minded on the environment.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah. And that's I didn't even think about that. That's important. We led a session on Wednesday in regards to leading virtual teams and the challenges we're facing in this new virtual environment, which is, I think, very successfully received by our audience. And so we'll find out when we get the surveys.
Patrick Brochu:Shout out to any listeners that are on that were in that.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yes, thank you for coming.
Patrick Brochu:We enjoyed you guys.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:We did, we enjoyed ourselves. We had a good time with that. And so we did leave that session, maybe we might do an episode and kind of give some tips on leading virtual teams in the episode too.
Patrick Brochu:So Wednesday night, I attended the MPI Presidents' dinner, very similar to the to the conference, we had the buses to pick us up taking us socially distanced on the buses. We were at the Hilton Anatole, so everything there was the same quality as far as cleanliness hand sanitizing stations, plexi glass up in front of bartenders with food stations, etc. At that one, there were like four or five food stations. And at each one, it was pre-portioned, or there was somebody that was serving from behind the Plexi. And at this particular event, it normally is a much larger attended event. So they did a scaled down version of the program announcing that next year when we come back, they're going to give out some of the awards that they normally would have for this year at that one, but wanted to recognize some people in the room. They did something kind of cool and interesting. They had two stages set up so on one on one stage was the CEO of MPI Global, Paul Van Deventer. And on the other stage was a secondary host who is the CFO of MPI, Darren Temple. So the two of them were on two different stages, and it was kind of a back and forth volley of it, which they did to keep people spaced out because they had times where Paul might be talking on the stage and call a few people up there on the stage. And then that stage would go dark. And they would go to another stage that would have other people.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:I like that.
Patrick Brochu:A little bit more in the audio visual cost. If you're looking to do something like this.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:How is it as an attendee like experiencing?
Patrick Brochu:It was very well done. So they were there, there was a screen in between the two stages, then the two stages, and then smaller screens outside. So it was on the long side of the wall. Everybody's sitting there and casual seating. The seating at this was kind of varying heights, some lounge furniture, highboys in the back, that kind of thing. So very casual. So you're sitting there, you're able to see the whole thing. It was videoed in IMAX so you're able to see on the on the monitors as well.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Did you take any pictures of that?
Patrick Brochu:I believe I might have. I might have.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:I have to see that. That looks -- that sounds really cool. I like that. And when we keep saying socially distanced transportation, we're talking about 50 person plus passenger buses, but only filling it up halfway-
Patrick Brochu:Or less.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:-or they might have trolleys... or less yeah. So just something to think about when we're saying that.
Patrick Brochu:On my trip out to the Hilton, Anatole, and it was maybe a 15 minute ride or so. I was on an entire bus by myself.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:What? Ballin! And I went to dinner with the Caesars crew and we went to a wine location restaurant in Grapevine. I cannot remember where it was. But we had a great time it was in an outdoor patio area. And look. And we we had whatch you messed me up, Patrick.
Patrick Brochu:I'm so sorry, everybody. I just was using a hand sanitizer that was given to us in a vendor gift bag. Not one from the conference, but the hand sanitizer... smells horrible.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:His face though, when he said that? Like negative. But- Back to you Stacey. Oh, back to me. So we went to dinner and it was in a covered patio and all the windows were open windows. So you had that movement of air and you have larger tables for larger groups and all that. So that was nice. Again, it's a restaurant. So it was just really nice reconnecting with my contacts. Shout out to Pete -- PETEY PETE-- with Caesars, he is the Regional Director for the properties in the Atlantic City area. And he is absolutely awesome. Patrick and I have both done events at the Harrah's in Atlantic City and have nothing horrible to say, using what Patrick says, not a sponsor yet. So that was the end of day two. So day three, we led another session, Budgeting for Hybrid Events at 830 in the morning and did it again, virtually. And it's pretty much the same thing. That session was in a larger ballroom, it was a ballroom that probably could have been set up for 500 plus people. And they had it set up for a max of 216. Again, the 72 inch rounds with four people per round. And we probably had about what 150 ish?
Patrick Brochu:Around 150. Correct.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:So again, shout out to any of our new listeners that attended that session. Thank you for coming through it was a great session. And we had fun up there. And I think there was a lot of engagement, a lot of questions, just talking about the new world of events, because we know we're going to be looking at a lot more hybrid events.
Patrick Brochu:And one thing to consider in that setup that we had in that room, because it was a very deep room, we typically probably would have been in a much smaller breakout room than that even to hold 150-200 people, but they had to have additional screens halfway back in the room, because it was so large, but you're having to do things like that to spread people out. So there's additional audio, there's additional video components in there. So just a thought.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:So general session, everything's the same, I think we forgot to mention something that was really cool. And that is our lunch and what they did for the lunch. I know we keep saying it, but they really do stress the importance of distancing. So a very large room for the size of the group that we have. But the day before they had these stations and we were able to still have a paella station, a chicken mole, a kind of fajita station. I know I'm saying this wrong. We had different food stations that were chef-attended and, again, covered in plexiglass, they would create the meal for you and hand it to you outside of the Plexiglas there's no reaching over the food. There's no talking over the food. Everyone's covered and masked up but it was nice because you were still able to get that food and beverage experience, even though we didn't have the open buffets. What I did like about this day, what I did like is we actually had what they had called a bagged lunch. And I know you're probably immediately thinking bagged lunch and you liked it? But this bag lunch really just shows the amount of creativity that could go into it. We don't have to sacrifice the quality of our food and go to sandwiches and bags of chips and apple slices or you know a cookie. We had grilled chicken with macaroni and cheese and the corn succotash in kind of like this aluminum container with a s'mores brownie that was boxed in this like cow looking box.
Patrick Brochu:It was an absolutely huge brownie. The s'more brownie.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Oh no, that brownie had weight to it. Oh my gosh, it was that we had coleslaw. We had grilled pineapples. And because again, they're not putting out water or iced tea at the tables, you would grab one of those like Lipton sweet teas or unsweetened teas, whatever it is, bottled, you would grab your bottle of water. So you still had that experience with the food even doing a bagged lunch. And again when I talk about saving money, because it's a bags lunch, as delicious as that food is and I said it to Patrick, I would have absolutely gotten more mac and cheese and absolutely gotten more chicken. But I didn't because it's a bagged lunch and I was content. And you know, I guess that's great for everybody's waistlines as we do these events, and we kept it moving. So that was awesome. In terms of the nighttime, I'm going to save our online virtual experience. I think that should be our paprika, because it was so cool.
Patrick Brochu:Okay.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Okay, so we did the virtual hybrid event, and that, as you can hear it's paprika story. But we did that. And again, another highly attended event. And it was the same hybrid Budgeting for Hybrid Events we did for our virtual audience. That was an hour and we had about 140-150 people attend that as well. So that was awesome. So thank you all for attending the session virtually.
Patrick Brochu:And that one was done through Zoom. We had a moderator in the room with us, who basically introduced us, welcomed us, monitored the chat for us as speakers. We stood on one side of the room and we had a special guest speaker with us in our session.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Oh shout out to Pawntra! Pawntra was our guest with this session, and Pawntra was amazing. Thank you Pawntra for being part of us our piri piri blend. Go ahead.
Patrick Brochu:Absolutely. Piri piri blend. So there were three of us that we spaced out. Originally, I believe they set these rooms up basically for one person in front of a computer, because there was a green screen, a computer on a table. We said okay, we need a little bit more space. So we moved the table off a little bit, move the camera back. So we were able to get a wider shot of the three of us. So then we were able to take our mask off. The one downside I will say, again, because of how they had this laid out, and I'm sure that their intention was to have one person per room... we had that one laptop. So what we were able to see was ourselves presenting or us sharing the screen, on top of what we would have shared, we couldn't see our notes or our next slide. So we needed another monitor-
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah.
Patrick Brochu:-in there in order to do this properly. And really, it would have helped if we had maybe two monitors one on each side of the laptop, because we would have been able to see our presentation, our notes and next slide on another screen, and then on the third screen, we could have seen the chat and images of some of the people.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah.
Patrick Brochu:The way that we did it, we were able to see what we were presenting. But overlaid on top of that we had the chat kind of small. So you would see us every once in a while like leaning into the computer, squinting our eyes trying to r ad it. And our session is typica ly very interactive. But it id help that we had the modera or.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:And the chat was very interactive, so we're constantly looking at it too. And it's going to be part of the MPI Sessions, right that they host online? So you'll be able to see that if you sign up for any of the online sessions later on. It's going to be part of the library. But yeah, so that one was rough. And in their defense, everyone right now has slashed budgets, and so does MPI. So they did tell us beforehand that they were very open with us. And they said, you're going to be working off of a laptop, and you're going to be working off of possibly the laptop camera, which we didn't they were able to get a camera in the rooms to kinda get a better quality going there. So that was nice. But yeah, that was a bit of a challenge. But we absolutely worked through that. And that was good.
Patrick Brochu:Awesome.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:And then last night, that was Rendezvous.
Patrick Brochu:Yes.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:So Rendezvous took place at The Glass Cactus. And you're probably wondering, it's Rendezvous, there's bars, there's drinking, there's lots of dancing. All these things did happen, it was true, but I will say whereas with Rendezvous in the past you would get something like I would say maybe a 70% turnout because people want to go to these events. Even with 500 people here, it definitely wasn't 500 people in that space that would have had 1000 plus people in there.
Patrick Brochu:I would say it was probably closer to 200 maybe.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Right.
Patrick Brochu:And even so normally it's a paid event. This one was free for all it's attendees to go to.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yep.
Patrick Brochu:You know, everybody's at a different comfort level. For instance, Stacey was not sure about going and I have been to this venue before. And I said to Stacey, well, there's an outdoor area. So we at least know that there's, you know, we can walk in if we're uncomfortable, we can leave. So we went because we felt like we wanted to share this experience with you guys. So we went in, found an area. Stacey, I'll let you talk about it.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah. And actually security looked at me because I walked in. And when I got there, there was still a group of people trying to check in. And my face just, if you know me, you know that I can't hide anything on my face. And that's including with a mask over it. And so he could kind of see my uncomfort. And he's like, What's wrong? And it said, There's a lot of people, I don't know, if I'm even comfortable. Where's the trolley? I might just go back home. And he goes, No, no, just wait. When you get past it, you'll see. So I did hang back a bit so that everyone else could check in. And then I checked in. And once you got into this space, you saw how open it was. So they had cocktail tables and high tops, again, set up with plexiglass, two seats on either side with just like a small hole at the bottom as if you were a bank teller doing a transaction. So you were sitting at each side talking to people through the glass, which there is difficulty in that, hearing somebody threw a glass with music behind you. But we walked out because I did not feel comfortable sitting inside I'll keep it real with everyone shout out to Petey-Pete, he got there early. And he was able to secure a lounge area outside right by the water and it was very empty out there. So we were able to sit in a lounge area three of us and just be very distant from everybody else. And he had the inside scoop that there was going to be a fireworks show. And we were able to be front and center to the fireworks. So we were in heaven. We were super happy about that. And we got table service. And I think that's hilarious. And when we say table service, I simply mean, they were walking around asking if you wanted wine.
Patrick Brochu:The team that would have been there typically that would just be there to help clean up take glasses, and we're actually coming over saying hey, can we grab you something else, which I don't think in a normal they would have been doing. They would have just been clearing. But it was very much catered like that.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah. So they're trying to reduce the lines and bar and the movement. And they did a great job. Because typically you'd be crowded at a bar waiting and you never saw that you never ever saw that.
Patrick Brochu:No, there's never line.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Right. And Peter, Pete was like, I feel I haven't experienced table service in so long, I have no idea what this is. I was like, You're such a fool. But we were able to sit outside, fresh air.
Patrick Brochu:A few times in the dance floor area, the DJ, I did hear come across and do the reminders about keeping distance on the dance floor, there were signs up on the dance floor, reminding people to have fun, but dance at a six foot distance. And also there were constant reminders for people to make sure you're putting on your mask.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Mask up. Yeah, the same volunteers that are walking around with their church fans were walking around during the events with their church fans telling you to mask up and what they did on the dance floors, they created huge floor decals that showed you where to stand for dancing. And that's what they did. I personally am a dancer, but this year, I did not because again, I was not comfortable. But you can see on the dance floor again, how empty it was that everyone was distancing. And that's really nice. Maybe this is negative, I'm just gonna say it. And Patrick, tell me if it's wrong if we need to take it out, but unfortunately, there is drinking involved. And one of the things you would see at a normal MPI is people would over drink, and there would be those that were intoxicated, right? And that's where the safety, especially during this time comes into play, which is why I was not comfortable. I just didn't want to be around someone who would get drunk and invade my bubble, or you know, would not be safe. And everyone was super responsible, you didn't see that you didn't see anyone get intoxicated, everyone had a good time. And everyone was just really, really safe and what they were doing, because I think that a lot of people on the trolley, and a lot of people are heard say, I'm just coming in, see what it is. And I'm gonna leave if I don't feel comfortable. So everyone had their guard up. So because of that, it just felt, it was nice being in public and being social and still being super safe. Do you agree with me on that?
Patrick Brochu:Absolutely. Absolutely. And one other thing about that venue, The Glass Cactus, earlier, Stacey and I, we did not attend as a hosted buyer. So we weren't involved with that. But that same space was the space that they used for hosted buyer.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Oh, I didn't know that. Okay.
Patrick Brochu:Those bank tellers style, plexiglass dividers that you mentioned, were there because of hosted buyer. So one of the things about hosted buyer that I have heard, and again, I'm just repeating a secondary thing. I was not there. I can't tell you. The one complaint that I did hear about hosted buyer and how this had to happen with people wearing their mask. And this plexiglass divider is that people were having very hard time hearing each other. So you're trying to talk about a property through your mask and into the Plexiglass that the people on the other side, were having a hard time hearing, and it was in a restaurant area. So the sound was bouncing from what I've heard. So the one complaint that I have heard at the entire conference was on the hosted buyer about that. How we get around that I don't know, I'm just sharing that with our listeners, something to think about. If you're thinking to yourself about us having our hosted buyer event and you were thinking about the plexiglass and people wearing their mask. Keep in mind, there's something about people being able to hear each other
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Sound amplification, and we've seen it use at the conference.
Patrick Brochu:Yes. And actually, that's where I was going with this, Stacey so.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah.
Patrick Brochu:And we're going to be very nice here, Stacey. One very -- what's the word I can use here? -- creative thing that Stacey and I saw, there was an attendee walking around, who had a face mask on and then a face shield. And then they came up with this very creative solution to hear them. And their creative solution was to wear a microphone with a little speaker, like a tour guide might wear in Europe. A very interesting, creative thing. One of the funny things I found is that I could hear the conversation wherever it was happening across the place. But- I can't!-maybe that sound amplifier, maybe something like that might work in the hosted buyer situation.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:In a hosted buyer situation, that totally makes sense. It's those tour guide amplification systems that we see in museums, but yes.
Patrick Brochu:Something to think about.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah. Last night, too, I was invited to another Caesars event, where it was, um, they called it Plant Some Sunshine. And it was a really awesome event, where they said, you know, everyone's struggling with COVID. And usually they do a nice dinner or reception cocktails, some kind of party element. And they decided this year, we wanted to give back and they did it for seniors in the Las Vegas area. They're having -- seniors in an assisted living facility, they obviously are having a hard time right now not seeing their family even down to the home attendance that they would have. They're not having that a lot of them suffer from dementia. So wearing face masks, they're not able to recognize people. So they're doing creative things like wearing pictures of themselves on their uniform, so that they can kind of jog their memory and, they're depressed. Much like any other age group, they're suffering. So what they did was we created these custom plant pots and painted them to kind of give them to these seniors just let them know that someone's out there thinking of them. So that was really nice. So that was the end of that day. And now we're here. It is Friday, November...
Patrick Brochu:November, the sixth.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:November sixth. Sheesh. Today's closing reception was again, sponsored by Caesars so we're constantly mentioning them Caesars had a great part in this conference. And they did a plated lunch for us, which was really creative. I had the glass domes that they took off of each plate so everything was covered and preset and it was awesome. I cannot remember the musical act because I'm not a You Got Talent guy. But apparently he some opera guy that Simon told him to go learn an Italian song and come back in an hour and sing it. And that was just like thing, which was pretty crazy. And I will say he did an opera version of Aerosmith that I had no idea could exist in Italian. So good for you, bruh. That was nice. That was that in tonight is the closing reception. So that is a very detailed recap of WEC. And we kind of just wanted to share that with you because I know it's an experience that lots of people wanted, but they were either unable to come, not comfortable with coming, their companies and they have the funds to pay for them to attend. And for us, like Patrick said at the very beginning, it was important for us to attend, because we wanted to see how the meetings and event industry would come back. And we wanted to see if we could do it safely. And we can.
Patrick Brochu:I will say from what I've heard from people that were watching on the virtual side. WEC, I believe did a really good job of integrating them. They had their own courses, so they had a separate string of courses that they were taking, but we all came together for the general session. And they did a good job. They had some people that were watching from home, who volunteered to have their cameras open. So they would have the virtual people on the screen from time to time in the general session. So they did a really good job of being able to pull it all together. So big kudos to MPI.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah. So thank you for attending our MPI WEC 2020 recap. And we're gonna go on to paprika. I can't wait to tell this story. It's -- Patrick and I have a universal paprika, we're gonna go back to our virtual hybrid session.
Patrick Brochu:So we were doing our virtual session Budgeting for Hybrid Events. That was our session, again with our good friend Pawntra, who joined us in the live segment, agreed to be tortured a little bit more in come with us for the virtual. And we were in a room with the green screen, etc. And we were literally just getting ready to go. Our host that was in the room with us, was just getting through our bios and announcing who we were. And then...
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:...and then it happened. So what he does is he goes through our bios, and he goes through the rules of the platform and basically tells everyone does a professional atmosphere. If you have any feedback, share it in the feedback survey. We want everybody's mics to be muted as we start as soon as he says the mic should be muted, we hear something that's like, This is an emergency. Please do not take elevators and you stairs or escalators to exit the building. And I'm like, Didn't he just say mute the mic?
Patrick Brochu:I thought we were hacked.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:He thought we were hacked. I'm like, He just said to mute the mic, bruh. Like, why is someone's mic on?
Patrick Brochu:And then we're seeing flashing in the room.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah, I see like strobing lights. Now what you guys need to understand, for me, maybe this is another paprika for another day is that I've been through too many fires in my life. And so once it connected that it was us, when I tell you, this black girl was out? I found my purse. I grabbed a snack, I had my phone.
Patrick Brochu:A snack.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:I did though. I was like, Time to go. I see flashing lights. This is not a drill. And Jay was our person that was in the room, our moderator, and he's like, Oh, um so apparently there's a fire alarm that's going off. I think we need to exit the building. I'm like, let's go. Let's go. Let's go, we got to get out of here. We got to get out of here. Jay, in all of his glory and shows how dedicated he is, turns and says, I think I should stay with the attendees. And I looked at him and said, The Zoom attendees that logged on from home that are safe as we are in a burning building? Get up and leave. And I'm like, Let's go let's go let's go. So Patrick's getting ready to leave. And he's walking out the room. And I'm like, get your book bag, Patrick. And he's like, uhhhh. I'm like, Pick up your book bag. Let's go. So I'm ready to like leave. And at the time, we left so quickly that the poor attendees that logged on for a hybrid session had no idea what was going on, because Jay just stopped talking.
Patrick Brochu:So luckily for me, I had seen a few friends of mine that were logged on. So I reached out I actually called Shannon Jones, a listener of our show, shout out to Shannon Jones, former past president of MPI Tennessee Chapter and a good friend of Stacy and I's. So we reached out to her and she said, Hey, what's going on? Are you guys okay? And I said, Yeah, I said, You know, just the fire alarm. We don't know if it's real or what's going on. So she said, Okay, well, you know, in the chat, everybody's trying to figure out what's going on. So she went in the chat and let everybody knows happening for us. And told everybody to stay on standby. And I told her I would let her know when we were going back in. So then we're out in the parking lot. And...
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:...we actually see fire trucks and everything go by. So now at this point, we actually think This is not good. Something serious might be going down. And we're like, well, let's try to log in from out here. We did try, for online attendees, we tried. But the host computer was upstairs.
Patrick Brochu:We tried to access it to get back on we thought Oh, how fun would this be if the three of us hopped back on while we're in the parking lot, and just kind of started going and talking about things, but we couldn't get into the meeting because it was locked and the host had to let you in. So you're like, Oh, man.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:It was so funny.
Patrick Brochu:Luckily, when we got back up, we still had 150-some people.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:I mean, honestly, you guys are awesome.
Patrick Brochu:Shout out to you guys for hanging out for us. It was about a 1520 minute delay.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah.
Patrick Brochu:And then on top of that, while we -- and this is what I love about our industry, because people care so much -- this session that we did, we did it in an hour and a half the day before. We now had to do it virtually, but in an hour's time. And so I made the announcement during our session. Hey, guys, that's really the end of our time for our session. But we're going to keep going. And then Jay informed everybody that if you need to log off, you can log off in the rest of the session, the recording would be up later. I will tell you, those
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:They sure did. people hung on.
Patrick Brochu:And we went more than an hour in total time of actually speaking. So those people hung on they stuck with us and they were so interactive in the chat. We had so many questions. So, so much going on. So a huge shout out to you guys. Thank you guys for sticking with us and staying there.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yeah. And what's so nice is because they were so interactive in the chat, they were talking to each other, they were talking to us, they were making jokes. We still felt the energy of everybody. And we were able to feed off of that and hopefully our attendees were able to feel the energy we're giving back to them. It was a great experience. And I truly am thankful to everyone that attended. And we hope that we delivered the information you needed, or you wanted out of that session, and you hope we learned something to take with you on your events. But that was our paprika of how our session was interrupted by a possible fire. I thought that was funny. I don't know if there's anything else you want to share. If you had another paprika on your mind or not?
Patrick Brochu:One thing that I will say maybe a paprika mine is I had my moments of, Hey, am I doing the right thing by traveling? You know, I've been in lockdown this long. I'd had done one other traveled for personal on a plane earlier on. And that was really weird, closer to the height of things, but on this one is like home and my gonna be putting myself in jeopardy, am I going to be putting my family in jeopardy? And like Stacey, and I said, you know, not to sound like martyrs, but we felt like it was our duty in hosting this podcast and being leaders in our industry that we wanted to see, we wanted to support, A, and B wanting to see what was being done here and report back very honestly, the good, the bad, the ugly. So we decided to do it. But I will say I never felt like there were any moments that were not thought about. There were never moments where I felt like totally unsafe. Or if I did feel like there were moments where Oh, okay, there are too many people there. There was another option for me to be somewhere else.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Yes.
Patrick Brochu:So I will say that's one huge accomplishment that was done here. And it was so nice being back around people, even though you're masked and it's awkward, and it's hard to hear sometimes. But like several people were saying, when they walked in the ballroom, and there was a live band, they were like, Oh, I forgot what live music was like, yeah, and now I mean, you forget all of these things. And Stacey and I right before this, Stacey was mentioning that she was kind of tired. And we were joking about not being in conference shape, because we're used to going to so many conferences. You guys all know that feeling at home. When you go go, go, go go and then you get home. Okay, so my wife likes to say that, whenever I have a conference on the schedule coming up, she adds an additional four days, two days before. And two days after. Cuz the two days before I'm checked out mentally because I'm packing and going through my mental checklist about what's going on or what I'm about to do. And then two days after I come home and I normally -- I go hard at conferences, I go go go go go. I don't like to miss anything. I might be out at an industry event and be at the last event at the last hour. But I always make it back for that general session in the morning.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:You sure do.
Patrick Brochu:I might be out till a little too late. Maybe 2am. Maybe later, but but I will be there at 730. But this time yeah, you're right.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:It was nice. General sessions were moved to like 11 or 12. It was so nice. Oh my gosh, please MPI, somebody from MPI listen to this and know that we love that.
Patrick Brochu:Let's stop with the 7am general sessions.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Can we please is not necessary.
Patrick Brochu:IMEX Group, can you hear me?
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Putting that out there. But yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And, you know, I think we talked about this before. I am an introvert. And so I will say being at this conference, my first time back and being in this situation, it was heightened for me because I my introverted extrovert, but I noticed that it was hard for me to get into the extrovert mode. I mean, I said to Patrick, one of the first dates, we went up serious registration, or I said, Oh, I'm gonna make myself a cup of tea, and I went to make myself a cup of tea. And I turned around and Patrick wasn't there. And when I tell you, I was like a child in supermarket that lost their mother? I went into full panic mode, because I'm horrible with names and then forget it, you can't see anyone's faces. So I didn't know who was who. And I think Patrick found me walking in a circle looking for him or standing against the wall. And so it took me a while to get back into the, it's okay to talk to people and mingle and even now, I'm singing to Patrick, we have the closing event and I mentally try and get myself in the mindset of having to be around people and mingling again, because I'm mentally drained. I'm physically and mentally drained. But mentally, it's hard. And we are doing the best to be very safe, and we are taking so many precautions in our end. I walk around with a... what is this? A 10 ounce bottle of GermX, that I'm constantly using, Patrick is starting podcasts in his room with his mask on like a fool. But, you know, and I'm not saying that, you know, there's a little part of me that's like, should I, when I get home immediately set up a COVID test just to make sure that I'm keeping my family safe. And I also know that MPI went through steps that I wouldn't have even thought of to make sure they kept us safe. So it was a great learning experience and we are grateful and I think that's the show I don't have anything else.
Patrick Brochu:Yeah, I think that's it and I think this might be one of our longer episodes. This is an extended special version for you guys. About WEC please write us at wellseasonededucation@gmail.com with any questions-
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:It'll be in the show notes.
Patrick Brochu:-any thoughts about this podcast or maybe future topics that you guys want us to cover. We love to hear from you. Huge shout out to my good friend Fallon for writing the show. We love you dearly and thank you for your thoughts on what we've been doing. We love feedback. Please let us know what you guys think in your feelings on the show. And Gilbert Villard, huge shout out to you big fan of the show as well and Gilbert we're gonna have to have you on this show one of these days pretty soon.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:That's an episode.
Patrick Brochu:Maybe talk about Stacey and I and time about meeting each other because Gilbert was the third wheel on that date. So we'll have to uh, to talk about that.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Man. Allmost killed a child.
Patrick Brochu:Gilbert almost killed a child. And there's the cliffhanger.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:True story.
Patrick Brochu:Alright guys, that's it for today. We love you guys all be safe be kind and we look forward to the next one.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Peace out Cub Scouts.
Patrick Brochu:OUT.
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:BYE! Episode produced by Patrick Brochu and Staceyann Van Horne-Doria. Sound editing by Rocci Doria and song by Dr. Delight. Patrick, are you just gonna move your mouth and not talk? What are you talking about?
Patrick Brochu:What are you talking about?
Staceyann Van Horne-Doria:Oh my god.
Patrick Brochu:Don't pretend like you know me.