One Week and Counting
Posted by foodventureforum on October 13, 2010
Well, we’re one week away from the American Food Venture Forum. Several changes have been made to the presenters’ 
line-up, which hasn’t been unusual the last couple of years, as companies strapped for cash decide they can’t afford the trip and others contact us and decide they can’t miss the opportunity. The number of presenters are about the same and the quality has been maintained, but it ends up we have many more Midwestern companies than anticipated, possibly because travel is less expensive for them.
In some ways this week and the next couple of days are the lull before the storm. By Friday we will need to be assembling conference notebooks and on Monday and Tuesday all the logistics must be completed, presentations loaded on computers, presenter tables set up, rehearsals completed and the finishing touches put on the conference. To-do lists will checked and double-checked.
Then the big show; from noon on Tuesday until about 5:00 pm on Wednesday it is just a whirlwind of activity for the board, staff and volunteers of the American Food Venture Forum – Giving directions, putting out fires and greeting and meeting all those at the Forum. Many times after the Forum is over I realize that I only got to listen to one or two of the presentations.
Only after a week or so following the event can we as staff and volunteers take a look at what happened and marvel at how it all came together. Then at the board meeting in the second week of November we begin the process anew. What went right? What went wrong? How do we improve for next year? What dates in 2011 make sense? Where will we hold it? Who will sponsor?
It’s a great deal of work. More than most realize, because when it works it looks easy and we wouldn’t want it to look any other way. Oh, and one thing that continues starting the day after the conference is social media posts and blogs. It is a very effective and inexpensive way to promote the conference but followers expect a continuous stream of content and we certainly don’t want to disappoint, so expect to see a new post on our blog October 27, 2010.
