Upon starting a new job in a new country I was thrown into the middle of a project right away. I was given the opportunity to be Conference Manager for a well known alcohol marketing company in Australia. All of the marketing, branding and registration had started but none of the details of planning, implementing and executing had been initiated. For the past 4 months this is what I have been working on and it has been mentally and physically challenging but I’ve loved every minute of it. As Conference Manager I oversaw a 6 day conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (KL). There were also post-conference trips planned to Vietnam, Cambodia and Langkawi.
I took the 8 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur with my boss and his son (who was my apprentice) 3 days before delegates arrived and 4 days before the conference actually began. The rest of our team came up a day later. Let me introduce to the phenomenal group of individuals who consist of our on-site staff:
Maria – A beautiful Italian woman who has 20 years experience in the event industry. She served as the delegate/registration liaison, coordinated accommodation and airport transfers. She is the perfect Italian – she speaks Italian, is very outgoing, hugs everyone, easy to get along with, fun to be around, partier, uses lots of gestures, but speaks with an Australian accent
Chris – Tall, slender European looking man who drinks about 8 espresso shots a day. He was the creative design team of the conference. He designed all the logos, branding, and any other printing collateral. He likes Scotch and dancing with Asian women as they are about half his size so it was quite a funny image. He is very handsome, articulate and probably the most creative/artsy person I have ever met. He also worked the multi-media during the business sessions. One would never guess that he is 34 with 4 kids! He looks 28 and has a lot of energy... maybe it’s all the espresso
Shane – Part retired Shane was the master-mind behind the big trade show we hosted. He used to own an event management company and specialises in designing sets. He is an expert in sound, lighting and AV as well. He is a very kind man, a little soft spoken, but tells dirty jokes all the time. So it takes you for a whirlwind at first! He is very funny and kept our team laughing the whole time.
Nicky – Brisbane Police Academy Cadet trainer by night and jazz singer by night! This incredibly multi-talented, confident, kick-your-ass lady is the best person to have on site at an event. If you need something, she will find it. If someone is bugging you, she will get them to shut up and get out of the way. If there is an accident, she can direct traffic. She is also extremely thoughtful, very articulate, to the point, no non-sense-kind-of-chick. But yet once she puts on a sparkly dress at night for a performance, she is elegant, graceful and has everyone’s attention.
This was our team (plus my boss and his son) for the week. I couldn’t have done this conference without them. I’m sure you can tell they are a solid group of people! My job was to manage the conference, manage food and beverage, coordinate the master timeline so people know what they are supposed to be doing and where they should be at all times, making sure staging/equipment is bumped into venues and bumped out, coordinate with all hotel staff and our client, and most importantly look over all the alcohol that was shipped from Australia to KL. This included alcohol distribution to every event, coordinating transportation of alcohol to each venue and counting all the empties at the conclusion at each event.
For the 3 days leading up to the arrival of delegates I met with key people at the hotel who would be assisting with our event – operations manager, sales manager, rooming managers, the general manager and food and beverage staff. Here is an overview of the week:
Day 1 and 2
200 hoteliers, publicans and alcohol suppliers arrive from Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and in between.
Day 2
3:00 – 6:00 PM Registration
6:30 – 9:30 - Opening Party
Day 3
8:30 – 3:00 PM Business Sessions
7:00 – 10:00 PM Dinner at the Petroleum Club in the Petronas Towers
Day 4 (free day with many different activities)
7:00 AM – 2:00 PM Golf Outing
10:00AM The Royal Selangor Pewter Factory Tour
5:00 – 6:00 PM Wine Tasting
7:00 – 10:00 PM Tastes of the World
Day 5
4:30 – 7:30 Trade Show with a Difference!
8:30PM Chinese night markets
Day 6
8:30 – 3:00 PM Business Sessions
7:00 – 12:00 AM Closing party/gala dinner
Day 7
Departures (yes people missed their flight because they were participating too heavily in the closing party!)
Before I go into detail about each event let me tell you about Kuala Lumpur. KL is a very unique city. It is truly the crossroads of Asia. It has a fusion feeling to it- a combination of modern architecture with old traditions. It is a Muslim country with a mix of Chinese, Malay, Thai and Indian people. The city is full of more designer shops than I have ever seen. On one street there will be massive shopping malls and the next will be alley way with tiny outdoor restaurants that have play-school looking outdoor furniture. There are people walking around in burkas with Louis Vuitton purses amongst children, men and women begging in the street with missing limbs and other deformities I have never seen before. The amount of women in burkas was a shock to me and my delegates. It really is something very hard to get used to seeing. These women who are fully covered walk with their men (about 3 feet behind them) who are wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sandals. The women in the Tiffany stores and Dolce and Gabbana shops are the women in burkas. One night I was walking through the busy/haggling Chinese markets and a women in a burka nearly knocked me over (accidentally) and this black covered thing startled me so much and it was so strange to hear a voice behind it. It was a very kind and apologetic voice but a very strange experience.
The Malay people are very kind people. They smile a lot and are extremely hospitable. I would say their demeanour is similar to the Caribbean culture, they are always on island time. And in the event industry that can really make my job difficult. This cultural difference brought a few obstacles. For instance, I’d tell people to bump in their equipment at 9:00 AM and they would get there by 11:00 AM. I had to have alcohol delivered to a venue at 2:00 PM but they wouldn’t answer their phones for me to let them know it was going to be late as they pray every Friday between 12 – 2. The King’s birthday happened to be a few days before our conference so of course everything was delayed. And the traffic in KL is insane! It is worse than NYC. If you get in a cab you have to tell them to turn the meter on or you will get screwed. It is a hustle and bustle city.
We stayed at a 5 star hotel, but you still had to be careful about things like drinking the water. Apparently the city is downhill from a sewage plant and hospital and people have gotten different forms of Hepatitis from the water. So, as you can see, the city is truly a mix of modern and old.
Day 2
Opening party – the opening party was designed to introduce and integrate our delegates into the Malaysian culture as this was the first time most of the attendees have been in Malaysia. We had the party at a venue called Feast Village. It is attached to an adjacent hotel and is a massive open space with 11 different themed restaurants – Spanish tapas, Malaysian, Chinese, Korean, Thai, just to name a few. It is literally a village of restaurants all gorgeously and elaborately decorate and themed with the food. It was a very glamorous food court. There was a main stage in the open common area where we had all different kinds of entertainment. We had a colourful Malaysian drum symphony, a Chinese mask changing performance, acrobatic man, a contortionist, and an Indian Bhangra Troupe performance. We wanted to bring all the cultures of Malaysia to our delegates at once. They absolutely loved it! And were very full and thirsts were definitely quenched! It was a fun evening and I had the pleasure of staying late at the event to count all the empty bottles to finalise corkage fees. This is something I had to do after each event.
Day 3
Business Sessions and Petroleum Club VIP Dinner – This day began with rehearsal at 7:00 AM for a day of business sessions and keynote speakers. We opened the sessions with a funny video that Chris and Nicky made. I guess I forgot to mention the video on the pre-conference days. Our client has a really recognizable costume character as a logo. It is a massive foam beer bottle, one that you need another person to help put on over your head and then comes with suspenders and bootys. We wanted to make a funny opening video revolved around this costume man. So my boss and I took the massive costume (in a coffin size box, not kidding) on the plane with us! Nicky offered to be the person in the costume. So for 2 days Nicky, Chris and two of Chris’ camera man professionals hired a car and drove all over KL filming the logo man in all the landmarks in KL. Keep in mind Nicky was wearing this costume for 8 hours and it was 95 degrees and HUMID. Needless to say the video was definitely well worth it. It should be on Youtube soon and I’ll send it out when it is. We showed the opening video, everything from arriving in the airport to arriving at the hotel, and the audience loved it! They did a fantastic job and was a great way to start off the conference.
My client organised the speakers and they were phenomenal! They had speakers discuss entrepreneurship, success, memory training, and of course sessions related to their business specifically. It was a great program that concluded at 3:00 PM that day. After the sessions I rushed around to get things together for the dinner at the Petroleum Club in the famous Petronas Towers. Let me tell you, it was extremely difficult to work with this venue. The Petroleum Club is a member only access club that is run by a handful of conservative traditional men. I believe the club used to only be open to men. I got one of those weenie handshakes when I met the manager and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. It was very frustrating and made m experience planning it extremely challenging as I was responsible for coordinating the food and beverage and planning the night. The club also has a very strict formal dress code that must be met so thankfully none of our delegates got turned away. As my client is involved in the alcohol industry they provided their own alcohol for each event. We had all the alcohol shipped to our hotel and then distributed to our off-site venues. As the Petroleum Club has strict security our hotel representatives has to scan every single case of alcohol (all 79 of them) through the security scanner! So it took a while to get all of that through. Thankfully that was delivered a few days in advance so it would be properly chilled.
Anyway, I got to the Petroleum Club two hours before the group to coordinate table place cards and last minute food and beverage coordination. Our attendees arrived at the Petroleum Club and enjoyed cocktails with a jazz pianist for the first 30 minutes. They were then seated at the floor to ceiling window view overlooking KL (the club is on the 42nd floor of the 82 story towers). As a surprise, our team member Nicky, came walking down the large staircase and walked throughout the 12 tables and sang 3 songs. They absolutely loved it! Everyone was eating and then all of the sudden they hear this wonderful voice and when they look up it’s Nicky! Wow! It was great. After dinner we had an Australian comedian do a 20 minute stand up. It definitely pushed the envelope a little bit but thankfully most of the crowd enjoyed it and had a great time.
Day 4
Tastes of the World – during the day of Tastes of the World was pretty hectic as I had my team and I running a golf outing, a tour of the Royal Selangor Pewter Factory and a wine tasting. The day concluded with cocktails in the open atrium of the living room. Then the group was split in half and half of the delegates went to a Chinese restaurant and the other half went to an Italian restaurant which were both in the hotel. After the delegates were in their restaurants Maria told me I was taking a night off to go have fun so Chris, Nicky, my boss’ song and Chris’ two camera pros went out in town. We went to this beautiful bar on top of a 35 story hotel that is wide open and has a pool in the middle of it. There are booths outlining the sides of the bar that are clear boxes that hang over the edge of the hotel so you can see straight down to the street! And you have the best views of The Petronas Tower and the KL Tower. I was still nervous the entire time being out thinking something would go wrong but Maria insisted I go do something to get out of the hotel for once. We then walked the streets found some back packer reggae bar and had a beer. On our way back we scoped out the DVD sellers on the streets and headed back to the hotel to check on the delegates at the third restaurant/bar for the after party. Each night attendees could go down to the Latin American themed bar to mingle and have fun (in the hotel). It is a fantastic bar with cigar lounges on the first floor, full service restaurant, beautifully decorated, with a live Columbian band! We had so much fun dancing with the delegates here! I would dance for a little bit.. run to the kitchen and count some empty bottles.. then run back and dance some more. The band was a ton of fun and they would come out and dance with everyone and it was a blast!
Day 5
Trade show with a difference! This was the capstone event of the conference. Our client came to us in the beginning of the planning stages and said that they needed to do something to spruce up their trade show, to make it fun and interactive and truly create an experience for the suppliers and delegates. Our team came up with the concept of having 4 themed-bars to display all the alcohol products. Shane designed the bars and they looked AWESOME!
The event started with a presentation from the GM of the company... which Maria and I were asked to participate at the last minute. Boy did I not know what I was signing up for! My client has this ongoing joke about fitness that helps promote products. They have a whole program designed around this and the main characters consist of the two main executives and two girls named Push and Pull who are fitness instructors. Our client needed two girls so Maria and I volunteered. Now, I didn’t bring any work out clothes with me and I didn’t have time to get any so I asked Nicky if she could buy me a pair of shorts. She comes back with these teeny tiny biker shorts just before the event begins! We were given an XL shirt by our client to wear and head bands. Once everyone was in the ballroom we had to start the show by running in to Rolling Stones music, running on stage, and lead the crowd in exercises to Olivia Newton John’s song Lets Get Physical. It was hilarious... but I didn’t like how the delegates were looking at me after seeing me in that gear! Especially since I was in blacks all week!
After the 30 minute presentation it was time to reveal the bars! Let me back up a minute... Our set designer Shane created the sets and sent the construction drawings to a local supplier in KL. He was overseeing the construction of the sets this whole week and had to teach the local suppliers how to do a proper curtain reveal – a kabuki drop! The massive bars were covered with beautiful white curtains and were revealed one by one with an amazing multi-media show Chris put together that listed each product and had a sexy video to go with the introduction. The four bars were an ice bar for white wines, sports bar for beers, vineyard for red wines and an art deco Manhattan themed bar for swishy cocktails! The ice bar had actual ice sculptures that were designed to put the wine in to keep it chilled, the sports bar had 2 flat screen TVs, one underneath the glass table, the vineyard had wooden barrels and shelving, and the art deco was just designed beautifully in a black and white checkered them. We had the head chef design a finger food menu that matched each theme. After each bar was revealed we brought the comedian from the Petroleum Club back to the stage along with Nicky. We had live cameras and did interviews around the trade room and made it an interactive event. We also raffled off prizes. It was a very fun event and our client loved it! Score!
After the 3.5 hour show Maria and Nicky took a group of people to the haggling Chinese markets and got lots of cute hand bags and accessories and had fun bargaining. I was assisting with concluding the event and doing the bottle counts! Man, there were a TON of empty bottles!!! And of course, after all that everyone ended up at the Latin American themed bar for some fun dancing!
Day 6
Final day of events! Wow I could not believe how fast everything was going. We had another full day of business sessions – 7:00 AM rehearsal – 3:00 PM. Our final event was the gala dinner which was held at the adjacent hotel. In retrospect, I’m really glad we decided to switch venues, get out of our current hotel, and display this amazing ballroom! A little strange that the two hotels are competing properties, but oh well.
This whole day was just crazy because I was running around the different venues, securing final payments, corkage, bills, tidying up loose ends before everyone left the next day, and checking on the musicians rehearsal/sound check for the gala dinner. Well, when I went over to check on the equipment at first (10:00 AM which was 30 minutes after equipment was supposed to be bumped in) nothing was there! So I immediately called our AV contact and had him get his people there ASAP. I went to check on them an hour later and half of the equipment we requested was not there, the lighting guy disappeared somewhere, only 1 person spoke English, and things just were not looking good at all. Thank God we had Shane and Vanitha there. I forgot to talk about Vanitha! She is a KL local and a friend of Robert’s so she was a gem to have on site and help us with communication problems as she speaks multiple languages. The kerfuffle pushed back rehearsal by 2 hours but the musicians were able to finish in a hour. They were even able to enjoy the sit down dinner I arranged for them!
The other aspect of this event is that the headline artists were all a surprise to the delegates so we had to keep them artists hidden!
Jason arrived just before the dinner began so I was happy that I could bring him to the final event. We had all the delegates congregate in the hotel lobby and we had a human tunnel of staff from the other hotel leading the guests through the other hotel lobby down a set of stairs and down two really long escalators. They were each given a drink at the top of the escalators so it was a fun site to watch all the smiling faces go down with drink in hand! After some pre-cocktails we opened the gala doors and everyone found their seats. It was a nice relaxing event and I got to enjoy it while Maria and Shane kindly offered to stage manage. Nicky did some singing in the beginning and after dinner the main event began! We had 3 huge Australian rock stars.. one of which was part of INXS. You probably wouldn’t recognise the names but let’s put it this way... everyone was on the dance floor once the music started! It was a great site. At midnight the event concluded and of course everyone ended up at the bar in our hotel dancing and smoking cigars. It was a wonderful night.
Overall, it was a very very successful event and I am so fortunate to have been managing this international conference. The delegates were so much fun, our client executives were wonderful, we worked our butt off but it was fun. I worked 20 hour days for 10 days straight but it was definitely worth it... especially for the next three days....
The next day, Friday was departures. I had some de briefing meetings the next day and things to finalise with our client but I was checked out of my hotel at 3:00 PM with Jason. My boss met me in the lobby to wish us well and he handed me a sock.. yes a sock... that had a bottle of Dom Perignon in it! It was nice enough that he was sending me to Langkawi with Jason to oversee 26 other delegates in case they would need any assistance. I made so many good friends from the conference that Jason and I ended up sharing the bottle with one of the delegates. Langkawi was superb, the resort was amazing, Jason haggled the price of a ring he got me from a department store, we ate great Malaysian seafood, and had drinks by the pool. Yea.. definitely worth working 20 hour days!
On Monday, Jason and I said our goodbyes and I headed off to Shanghai for a site inspection for another client. Not too much to report there as I was working the entire time. I got to see the World Expo though! Which was amazing. The pavilions were incredible. Morocco was my favourite. The Saudi Arabia pavilion was a 9 hour wait! I said no thank you! Shanghai is an amazing city. Lots of smog though... kind of irritated my eyes after a few days. The city is massive, people have no sense of personal space, the streets are wide, and nobody speaks English! Crazy city. But that is for another blog post as I hope to be back there in the near future.
