The Financial & Insurance Conference Professionals association is holding its 2018 annual conference in Orlando this week, a showcase of incentive-level food and beverage, compelling keynotes, and industry education, being orchestrated at the JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes. While every FICP conference tries something a little new, this year’s annual conference design team, led by Joe Scully, senior director, meeting & event management, John Hancock Financial Services, set its sights on making sure that meeting professionals and suppliers had every opportunity to connect with several new strategies.
Easy to Meet. The association changed things up this year by dropping its The Network-Live hours, a time when suppliers manned tables in a ballroom and meeting professionals could stop by to talk. Instead, this year’s event has the Meeting Zone, a ballroom space set up specifically for impromptu or scheduled meet-ups. Attendees can drop into the room and grab a table or request meetings with one another through the conference app and then make a plan to connect in the space. The Meeting Zone is open throughout the conference except during the general sessions. Meeting professionals at the conference have no required meetings with suppliers, but the new space gave them a quiet, focused environment for business conversations.
Teambuilding or CSR? Definitely both. Also new this year, FICP dedicated two and a half hours on Monday afternoon to a CSR/teambuilding game-show-style event. The 750-plus attendees were broken into mixed, supplier–meeting professional teams of 10 in the JW Marriott’s Coquina Ballroom to work together on toy-themed challenges. From building and decorating a red wagon to a name-that-tune game to a trivia contest (“What game’s name comes from the Swahili word meaning ‘to build’?” Answer: Jenga), winning teams earned toys and games that were ultimately donated to three organizations—United Against Poverty, Orlando Health, and the Boys, and Girls Clubs of Central Florida. Even with speakers from each of the recipient organizations getting time on the stage to thank FICP and underscore the needs they have for community support, the event at its heart is a rollicking teambuilding experience, complete with colored bandanas, team captains, and lots of selfies and cheers. Over the years, FICP’s events have raised approximately $700,000 for local charities, and that total will continue to grow with this year’s CSR event plus the proceeds of the annual conference silent auction.
Lunch with (New) Friends. FICP had another simple, good idea for making sure attendees connected with a range of people: assigned seating at lunch. At Monday’s lunch, set up outside on the JW Marriott’s Valencia Patio, tables had places marked “meeting professional” in every other spot, a way to break up attendees’ normal inclination to sit down next to colleagues and old friends.
FICP’s annual conference continues through midday, Wednesday, November 7,
The Meeting Zone is open throughout the conference except during the general sessions.
