Skip navigation
face2face

Anxiety dreaming

OK, now that we pulled off the 1st Annual Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, which Medical Meetings cosponsored with The Center for Business Intelligence (see post below), I'll admit that I was a little worried about how it would all work out. OK, a lot worried.

When we originally outgrew our hotel (I know, a good problem to have, but anxiety producing for sure!), we joked about how we might have to set up a tent to handle the overflow if we couldn't find another hotel that could accommodate our group, which had grown from the expected 200 or so to almost 500. Philadelphia, where the meeting was held, had a citywide going on that had sucked up every available room in town. Fortunately, we found the Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue, just six miles from downtown, and they did an excellent job working last-minute with our group. Not having set eyes on it myself other than looking at the Web site, even our official CBI meeting planner's assurances that it would be a perfect fit--she had done a site--didn't calm my nerves. And our last day was April fools day, no less--what were we thinking?

Anyway, in the nights leading up to the conference, I started having these weird anxiety dreams. In one, the entire hotel consisted of a giant tent. There were workers everywhere constructing a ballroom, breakout rooms, and exhibit space out of blocks of ice, like giant igloos inside this giant tent. And I ran from igloo room to igloo room plugging in space heaters, because if there's one thing attendees always gripe about, it's the temperature! Then I'd wake up in a cold sweat.

Other than one conference long ago that I was involved in arranging the content for, this was my first big meeting as a pseudo planner, and I have to say, even my subconscious realizes I'd better stick to my day job! Or maybe it's normal to have anxiety dreams before a show?

I don't know, but I guess I'll find out next year when we do our 2nd annual. I guess everything gets easier with time, and we learned a lot about things we can do to make it even more successful in '06. But something tells me that I'll still be dreaming weirdly come next March...

OK, now that we pulled off the 1st Annual Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, which Medical Meetings cosponsored with The Center for Business Intelligence (see post below), I'll admit that I was a little worried about how it would all work out. OK, a lot worried.

When we originally outgrew our hotel (I know, a good problem to have, but anxiety producing for sure!), we joked about how we might have to set up a tent to handle the overflow if we couldn't find another hotel that could accommodate our group, which had grown from the expected 200 or so to almost 500. Philadelphia, where the meeting was held, had a citywide going on that had sucked up every available room in town. Fortunately, we found the Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue, just six miles from downtown, and they did an excellent job working last-minute with our group. Not having set eyes on it myself other than looking at the Web site, even our official CBI meeting planner's assurances that it would be a perfect fit--she had done a site--didn't calm my nerves. And our last day was April fools day, no less--what were we thinking?

Anyway, in the nights leading up to the conference, I started having these weird anxiety dreams. In one, the entire hotel consisted of a giant tent. There were workers everywhere constructing a ballroom, breakout rooms, and exhibit space out of blocks of ice, like giant igloos inside this giant tent. And I ran from igloo room to igloo room plugging in space heaters, because if there's one thing attendees always gripe about, it's the temperature! Then I'd wake up in a cold sweat.

Other than one conference long ago that I was involved in arranging the content for, this was my first big meeting as a pseudo planner, and I have to say, even my subconscious realizes I'd better stick to my day job! Or maybe it's normal to have anxiety dreams before a show?

I don't know, but I guess I'll find out next year when we do our 2nd annual. I guess everything gets easier with time, and we learned a lot about things we can do to make it even more successful in '06. But something tells me that I'll still be dreaming weirdly come next March...

Hide comments

Comments

  • Allowed HTML tags: <em> <strong> <blockquote> <br> <p>

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Publish