If it’s local, we try to share that with our clients.
NCC’s F&B team makes a visit to Linda’s Farm and Mercantile in Winchester, VA
where NCC sources 20% of its produce to support local agribusiness.

Successful Meetings Magazine recently released the Top 10 Restaurant Trends for 2012 based on an OpenTable survey of restaurateurs and VIP diners. In 2011, sourcing locally was a trend. Now in 2012,  this trend extends its’ life further. On the Top 2012 Food Trends #4 is Menu Narratives… “Nearly nine in 10 diners (86 percent) want to hear the backstory on menu items, and almost half of restaurateurs are happy to share.”

What does this mean?  It means that people want to connect with their food and they want to know the story. And well frankly, they’ve just become sentimental. So, if it’s local, that’s great; but share the story with them. Tell them where it came from, if it was easy or difficult to source, how did it arrive, and all the details down to the Chef’s relationship with the farm and farmer.

How to make it happen…

1. Talk to your venue about custom banquet menus. Is it local? Where was it sourced? If it’s not semi-local, is there a story behind the selections? Why were certain items paired? Is it simply because the Chef’s favorite meal growing up was pork chops and apple sauce, a favorite recipe of the adolescent Executive Chef Craig Mason. Remember, 86%
2. Communicating and telling the story to your attendees. If the venue isn’t already, ask them to take the steps to share where the produce, meat or ingredients originated, especially if it’s local; but dig deeper to see if there’s a possible story for the menu. The 2012 summer cocktail menu for the Black Olive sports bar at NCC has menu narration to help guests choose a drink that best pleases their palate, including whether the basil leaves were home grown from NCC’s herb garden.
3. Guest appearance from the Executive Chef. Requesting a guest appearance from the Executive Chef was one idea listed in the article, “Cooking Competitions for a Team-Building Activities”. A short 5-minute appearance and story from the Executive Chef before the meal leaves a lasting impression about the meeting planner’s attention to detail and overall conference and banquet experiences.

From NCC’s dining room to banquet events, guests appreciate menus and tent cards with narration and a small “Locally Grown” logo to indicate it was sourced regionally. Narrative menus can showcase a Chef’s vision for the food he has prepared. Furthermore, if the menu is created specifically for the group, it demonstrates the meeting planner’s ability to the connection attendees want to have with their food.

How are you facilitating the F&B relationship that your attendees’ want?

When it comes to team building exercises and other meeting triumphs, don’t be afraid to throw a parade. The number one thing planners should do after corporate team building is share their success stories.  Host a round-table or fishbowl session at the end of the activity to gather some key ideas on what made the event successful and… 

• Use tools as simple as a flipchart, or as technical as the LearnLab to pose questions and stimulate their thought process; it’s essential to schedule time to reflect upon the results of the team building exercises.
• Display all the ideas around the meeting room and ask the participants to narrow a few pivotal factors that made the activity beneficial and a success!
• Create a few tangible stories from the reflection session that focus on the experiences of team work and collaboration, the employees’ gains and any new ideas.
• Broadcast the success stories both internally and externally, making it part of the company’s B2E marketing! Independent planners should also share stories of successful teambuilding with other clients.
• Capture all the new ideas, ask for a few attendees to be point and share the new ideas with departmental heads. Leaving a meeting with actionable goals is valuable, but implementing those ideas n the office can be translated into easier processes and earned profit for the company – now that’s real meeting ROI.

Team building that involves cross-team collaboration can create great experiences to share B2E. There’s a great example from IML Worldwide, who recently shared the New York Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) team-building success story for the white paper Technology’s Secret Potential to Empower Participants and Make Meetings Better. IML Worldwide, a technology company was a valuable resource when the new CEO of the NYCHA recognized a challenge with employee morale. He held a meeting for all 12,000 employees to improve upon the group’s spirit. Through the use of IML technology, employees anonymously texted in their concerns; their voices were  heard, and their concerns were addressed during the meeting.  As a result, there was a noticeable shift that day in the employees’ mood and morale. NYCHA was able to gather the opinions of 12,000, answer their pleas, and the employees united by expressing their feelings. That’s a story worth tooting your own horn! NYCHA does a great job sharing their B2E success story.

To read about other Team Building Strategies, use the Conference Center Blog a resource for meeting tips and techniques.

After recently overhearing a discussion between our reservations and sales team about creating separate registration pages for international attendees, I began brainstorming some of the best ways to be the most hospitable host. Hospitable, defined as “friendly and welcoming to strangers or guests,” should have deeper intentions with international attendees than just being friendly. International attendees should feel the environment is pleasant and favorable. Don’t go overboard to single out the international attendees, but planners should start with the basics of learning how to cater to international attendees:

• Create separate registration pages in different languages - Consult with someone who knows the language of the attendees. Don’t translate directly using a free translator; the results will be the wrong use of words and gender style. Translating the site makes registration for the attendee smooth sailing, which is a positive impression of the conference and your work as the planner.

• Kind gestures such as break station items – Italians eat light lunches, typically later in the day so if lunch is at noon, an afternoon break station with light refreshments and snacks is a nice gesture. Japanese typically enjoy a tea and small snack around 3:00 PM so ensure that green tea is available on the break stations and even suggest a break around then.

• Speakers with diverse cultural backgrounds – If you’re hiring a speakers bureau or individual hiring speakers, look at your prospect list and make sure that the speakers are more diversified than just by gender. Experience, relevancy and content are all key to speaker selection, but also think about generational differences and cultural differences when planning your speaker line-up.

Take the time to study the different cultures attending your meeting. Meeting planners who are great at their jobs are the ones who are always ensuring the needs and comfort of others first. Adding multicultural details to cater to attendees helps add to the planner’s goal of  having participants feel welcome. What makes you feel comfortable and at home? Where have you felt the most welcomed?

The Washington DC area is equipped with every billionaire’s dream home such as this $22 million
house in Georgetown; sightseeing the DC mansions is one unique way to explore the city.

There’s the traditional way to explore DC with all the monuments on the to-do list; and then there’s the nontraditional way, like house hunting. You don’t need money or a real estate agent. In fact, with each of these ideas, we’re giving you an opportunity to have an adventure in The Nation’s Capital and sightsee the city with a unique approach. In your downtime from meetings, be a tourist in DC and have a bonding experience with your colleagues by:

• Househunting – Washingtonian magazine recently released a list of DC’s “50 Most Expensive Homes,” the chart-topping house is valued at $45.5 million. The 3 most expensive houses are all in McLean, Virginia, a short drive from The National Conference Center. Editor of DC’s award-winning newspaper Politico owns the most expensive home in DC at $19.7 million.  The houses are scattered through the DMV in areas such as: McLean, VA; Potomac, MD; Bethesda, MD; and Washington, DC. No addresses are listed, but walk down Massachusetts Avenue and Georgetown, and you’ll be sure to find gaze-worthy DC mansions.
• Seeing city sights on segway – One of our initiatives is to support and foster camaraderie among colleagues – whether it be in the dining room, jogging trails or exploring DC. The new hip way to see more, in less time, is by segway – perfect for those breaks from business. City Segway Tours in Washington, DC has a corporate package for company outings. Planners utilize this as an opportunity to allow their attendees to sightsee and build team-building skills. The segway website even read our mind, “Give your colleagues an opportunity to get out of the conference room and into the driver’s seat of a Segway!”
• Kayaking for a different view – Take a kayak out on the Potomac River as a corporate bonding activity. Kayak to Mount Vernon and see George Washington’s house from the water. Or, paddle along the downtown Georgetown waterfront and view sites like the Watergate, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and the Memorial Bridge. The two-person kayak or canoe that holds up to three people both offer a great opportunity to enhance team-building skills.

Shuttles are offered by The National Conference Center to see DC’s monuments and statues (I highly recommend signing up), but if you find yourself in the city or with a Hertz rental car (available at the front desk in the NCC lobby), we encourage you to see DC in a new way! If your group is limited on time or wants to explore the historic district of Loudoun County, please view our destination guide on the website.

Then, there are articles such as Beware of Children At Meetings on Meetings&Conventions, listing all the obstacles a planner faces when choosing a destination where attendees want to invite their children along. Reading all of their listed challenges is enough to make you never want to host a meeting at a venue where it’s not dedicated to meetings. Charlie, a business man who attends a few too many bad meetings is ruined by the environments at the meeting venue such as bad A/V, bad seats and now – distractions. Follow Charlie as he uses his smartphone to share his most awful meeting experiences. In this video, he’s at a resort where he and his colleagues are continuously interrupted by distractions.

Watch all of Charlie’s experiences on Disasterproofevents.com. Planners, beware of distractions at meetings, including all the factors of attendees bringing their children. Make sure your events are distraction-free at a conference center.

Executive Chef Craig Mason demonstrated how to
make soft-shell crab legs at a tasting last summer.

Clients are often asking for team-building ideas. They want to incorporate team building into their meeting on an afternoon, but aren’t sure what that activity will or should be. The conference planning team starts by asking curious questions such as what they hope to achieve from the team building activity. From there, the conference planning manager can help determine the most fitting activity based on their desired outcome.

A cooking competition is another idea for team-building. Planners can coordinate with the venue to utilize portable stove tops or hot plates to host a team-building cooking competition. A safety lesson sounds like the first step to a successful event, but here are some ideas on how a cooking competition can relate to company team-building meetings:

• Focusing on corporate wellness, teach attendees aboutthe science of Food for Thought and how it affects their work performance. Using the lesson plan, group attendees to create several smart food for thought meals and snacks for health and awareness as well as brain-friendly options to increase work productivity.
• Create teams and give each team random, rare ingredients to use. Challenge attendees to a fast-paced Top Chef competition to motivate each team to work together and prepare an edible meal with unusual ingredients.
• Speak to the venue contact on the Executive Chef’s availability on the day of your meeting. See if he or she will offer a cooking lesson on a rather difficult dish. Pair attendees in groups of 2 to work together and at the end of the class, ask each pair to vote on the best replica of the dish. Last year, Executive Chef Craig Mason of The National Conference Center had many requested guest appearances for meetings at NCC – he spoke at over 15 events on food for thought, farm to table and more. Email your conference planning manager if you’d like Executive Chef Mason to speak to your group!
  

The best team-building activities give the attendees actionable intelligence and goals. As a planners, the most important thing you can do following a team-building event is to reflect on what was learned and how it can be applied into the day-to-day workings of the office. To find out about other deliciously fun corporate team building events, ask your personal conference planning manager. Why do you think cooking competitions become the new popular team-building activity? How do you incorporate team-building into your meetings?

Want to see more videos from the series, When Bad Things Happen to Good Planners? Make sure you disaster-proof all of your events by booking at a conference center that invests in great seats so this doesn’t happen to you!

Originally written by NCC and published for Meetings Focus. To read the full post visit the article on Meetings Focus, “Myths about Meeting at Large Venues: True or False?”

When it comes to booking meetings at large venues, some planners have a slight apprehension. He or she can become overwhelmed with its size. Whether it is an emotional apprehension for their attendees or thoughts about service, I set out on a mission to find the answers to the most common concerns. Our conference planning team at The National Conference Center, not only has experience in accommodating thousands of clients but have poise in doing so. I confided in them on how to best answer these meeting questions. Their advice proved applicable for both venues and planners.

•  “My group is just a number at a big property.”
  True or False? FALSE

  According to NCC’s conference planning team, if you build healthy relationships with your sales manager at the venue, no group of yours will ever feel like a number. However, the venue should provide a needs-based customer service approach. Selecting venues with this approach is a key indicator of the experience your group will receive before, during and after the meeting; in essence, your group’s experience will be catered to meet your requirements.

• “This large venue will be overwhelming to my small group.”
  True or False? FALSE

  Planners, do not feel shy about addressing concerns to your sales manager. Let them know what makes you feel uncomfortable and be specific; see if their answers improve your qualms. For instance, is it the distance from guest rooms to meeting space? Or, the distance from outlets to other utilized space or just the general flow? Bear in mind that dependent upon space and dates, venues inherently have flexibility of the meeting space and type.
  
  

• “There isn’t a warm and cozy feeling at large venues.”
  True or False? FALSE

  At a large venue, you can emphasize areas that have a more intimate feeling. Nooks, crannies, small lounge areas for informal meetings, areas outside of meeting rooms and guest rooms can all be made use of to create the desired atmosphere. Lay out your expectations to the sales manager. If you’re meeting at an IACC certified conference center, you’ll also have the pleasure of having a personal conference planning manager for your group; outline those same expectations to your personal conference planning manager.

As a planner, use these busted myths to find a venue, large or small, who can guide you to make the best decisions for your program and provide the right kind of hospitality. Remember to emphasize the desired atmosphere for your meeting, address concerns about size or property layout and find out if the packages are customizable. To read the full post visit the article on Meetings Focus, “Myths about Meeting at Large Venues: True or False?”

Have another myth I should bust? Tell me below or send an email: svining@conferenceecenter.com

Check out more episodes of when bad things happen to good planners. Disaster proof all of your events so this never happens to your meetings.

What is the different between a hotel and a conference center? The white paper “Why Conference Centers Are More Conducive for Learning than Hotels” received quite the kickback. In fact, it was renamed shortly after being published, eliminating “than hotels” from the title. The difference with hotel and conference centers is very relevant to organizations and meeting planners in a time of scrutinized budgets, training results and ROI. Innately, human behaviors and interactions are optimal in a focused setting, where furnishings, temperature, and lighting are comfortable and where there are no interruptions.

According to David Smith, founder of Conference Center Group Consulting, no venue can focus solely on the outcome of your meeting like a conference center. By nature, hotels are structured to optimize financial yield on space. As Smith explains, “It’s virtually impossible to take public space and outfit it for a specific purpose like meetings; social events would not find the meeting environment conducive and vice versa.”

Smith makes a convincing argument for conference centers in this analogy: “Human interaction requires tools; some are appropriate for the action, some are inappropriate. If you want [your group] to think and collaborate, you need the tools, such as access to technology, tables, chairs and white boards that promote learning.”

1.     In-house experts, at the drop of a hat

Planners know audio-visual can be a big issue. However, Smith explains that conference centers took the leadership role in hiring their own audio-visual teams in-house and installing their meeting equipment within the walls and ceiling to eliminate distractions. In-house audiovisual makes conference centers proficient and allows them to offer reliable services at reasonable rates, whereas hotels outsource that expertise. “On a purely functional level,” he adds, “planners will have more peace of mind at conference centers because they aren’t having an audio-visual team set up a campsite as in a hotel meeting room.”

2.     Size and shape, down to the building blocks of the venue

The shapes and dimensions of meeting rooms also play a role in performance. Adam Smith, an associate director for DEGW examines how an environment promotes or inhibits behavior. Smith and Stoltz agree that workspaces in general are being reshaped to fit work patterns. Smith explains it as “working together alone—individuals want collegial interaction and alone time.” As Stoltz points out, space needs to create the right balance to foster concentration and focus. People naturally want to use space where they can see others and others can see them, and conference centers are designed to satisfy these needs. Smith points out that square and rectangular rooms no longer need to predominate. At The National Conference Center, octagonal classrooms were designed because there is “no identifiable ‘front;’ the octagon dispels the traditional image of the instructor standing at the ‘head of the class’ as the authority figure.” The journal article also explains that as employees’ productivity and job knowledge increases, so does their job satisfaction—yet another reason to maximize the productivity of offsite meetings.

3.     Constructed with meetings in mind, not all the meeting distractions

Panels, ceilings and walls with the clarity of voice and audio messages are essential. Conference centers are constructed with this in mind, so speakers aren’t too loud or too soft. For planners who believe meeting rooms should be silent, think again. “It’s not the presence of noise that keeps people from focusing—it’s the spikes or variations of noise in the workplace or conference space,” explains Stoltz. “If a place were silent, any pin drop would be a distraction.” On the topic of basic meeting acoustics, both Stoltz and Smith agree doors should be located at the back of the room and be free of noise. Seating and lighting also play key roles because, as Smith stated, human interaction requires appropriate tools. DEGW also places an importance on alignment of seating and presentations to offer both physical comfort and practicality for viewing. At conference centers, seating is comfortable because it takes full advantage of the millions that have been spent on office ergonomics. DEGW has found that lighting has changed in the meeting place; Stoltz predicts planners will see more task-based lighting for individuals to control the environment around them. Natural light is no longer considered a distraction; in fact, Smith regards it as a human need that enhances the meeting experience.

As explained by Smith, you can measure results on two levels: a) The facility result – did the venue do what it was supposed to do? Were the meeting rooms and elements supportive? b) Meeting content delivery. While venues have no control over content, the more positive a meeting venue experience, the more positive the outcome regarding content. When you choose a dedicated venue, like a conference center, you can expect the right tools and higher results. In fact, Smith points out that the International Association of Conference Centers (IACC) commissioned a study with Cornell University that showed the criteria established by training facilitators was exceeded at conference centers.