It’s going to be a little difficult describing how my week has gone without blowing the thin veneer of anonymity that exists here, but I’m certainly going to try . . .
The conference seems to have been a rousing success in the eyes of our attendees. There seemed to be great excitement within the field about the renewed attention that we are putting towards them, and about the increased possibilities for networking and technical assistance. All of the plenaries and workshops seemed to be spot on, and the awards ceremonies, dinners, and other fun events were very well received.
This is bad. Very bad.
Huh? What? . . . Well, let me explain . . .
The person who was in charge of putting together the conference this year was someone who antagonized the entire staff with pointless meetings, outrageous and ever-changing demands, more pointless meetings, and still left a lot of details to the very last minute, stressing out an already stressed out staff ten times more than was necessary. To have the conference be such a success means that his methods and madness will be considered to be entirely justified. Our meeting planning staff has vowed not to go through such an ordeal again, and we may lose more than a few hard-working staff members because of it. Now it wasn’t just this one person – there have been some new hires lately who have been most jerky to their staffs and this conference preparation just made an already bad situation worse. It has been dismaying to see so many of my friends go through such a horrible experience, and I don’t think they will take much more mistreatment . . .
That being said, I cannot personally complain too much. Well, I can, but for different reasons. My role in this conference was expanded from my usual role in past years, requiring so much more preparation and face time with attendees. Our first day, pre-conference meeting was well attended and highly thought of, even though my boss did not follow the agenda as she should have, which made the proceedings a bit hard to follow and feel a bit “clique-y” for those who were new to the field. (I know this because I tabulate the evaluation forms.) My boss is not big on lots of “planning” and tends to let things sort of be a lot more free form than I would like. Some people like that type of lack of structure, but most people don’t – if the agenda says something, people tend to want to learn exactly what is advertised . . .
The whole conference was so draining, especially since I had to be “on” for four days straight, from 7 AM through 9 PM each day. I am NOT really a people person . . . now while I enjoy helping people out, and answering questions, and getting to see people from the field that I usually only talk to by phone or e-mail, I can only stand to deal with people in person for so long. I am lousy at small talk. By Saturday afternoon, I was just about to lose it . . . I had to go sit in an empty workshop room for a half-hour, just to try to calm myself down and center myself a bit . . .
The last night’s dinner was both an awards dinner and a big send off for the past chair of our board of directors. It is an evening when we recognize some of the youth leaders in the field and get to hear about some of the amazing things that these 13-25 year olds are doing in their communities. I have always found it to be the most inspiring part of our conference. One high school kid wrote and starred in a 15 minute documentary that is now being adopted in all of the local schools in the area as a teaching aid. Another young woman started a program at her high school to help other kids be heard and be more accepting of differences. You can’t help but wonder if you could have done anything so amazing when you were in high school – I know that I was pretty clueless at that age . . .
This is all I can write for now. It isn’t as comprehensive as I had hoped, but I keep getting distracted with other stuff (such as the US’s lousy 0-3 loss to the Czech Republic today at the World Cup – well, I’m guessing they aren’t going to make it out of the first round if they keep playing so suckily . . . and their next opponents are Italy and Ghana, so unless a miracle happens, I wouldn’t place any bets on the US . . .)
It’s back to my normal randomness tomorrow!
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1 comment:
Your post has become like a riddle to me, I am trying to figure out who or what the conference was about....hmm...something in DC, must put my thinking cap on.
It is amazing to me how many poor managers there are out there, I think the largest problem is these people, put in charge, never want to hear from anyone else nor are they open to constructive critisicm.
And tell me again how treating your staff badly is a good thing? Stupid managers, I never believed those dilbert comics were accurate till I started working in an office.
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