Had a great week working a new client program in Nashville at the world famous Gaylord Opryland Hotel which, if you’ve never been there, is a bit, well, large.  Actually it’s huge.

Think I’m exaggerating?  Here’s my daily mileage assessment as per my actual step counts:

Day 1          D2           D3             D4              D5              D6

5.1 miles     9 miles     9.4miles     7.2 miles     5.9 miles     5.7 miles

Now do you believe me when I say that place is BIG?

So, what was I doing to achieve such high mileage on my two little legs?  Honestly, it was just basic meeting planning stuff – walking all the meeting space to check for chair counts and table settings at sessions and mealtimes, assisting in the exhibit hall with set ups and deliveries, pre-checking on VIP hotel rooms, meet and greet those VIPs at hotel registration and provide escort up to their rooms.  The list goes on and is very familiar to anyone in my line of work, but you can see how the mileage adds up.  Some days I even surprise myself with the totals!

So, what else went on during a week of meeting work in Nashville?

Well, this really happened: our client was giving out bandanas (to go with the cowboy hats, of course!) to attendees and when we started to remove the packaging we realized they smelled. A lot. So what does a good meeting planner do to rid a large bunch of bandanas of their smell?

1] Open up and lay out all 500 bandanas, shaking and spreading as widely as we could on rows of banquet tables in our set up room.
2] Get our hands on some bottles of Febreze and spray away!

Yep, two of us skipped up and down the aisles of tabletops overflowing with bandanas splayed out and overlapping each other while giving strong spritzes of fabric freshener. Our arms were circling wide to spread the scent and we did have just a little fun with the task. And then, after that nice spritzing and having laid out on the tables all night, the end result was fresh smelling giveaways the next morning and no one ever knew that some high level meeting planning skills were involved in that project!

Finally, here are a couple of fun photos I snapped during the week:

And there you have some brief notes from my week working in Nashville!