Meeting News - October 20, 2008 - (Page 30)

Destination Insider: Florida Coast to Coast Event Report Boca Raton Event Avoids a Backbreaker Annual meeting of osteopathic surgeons succeeds after missing Hurricane Ike While planners are always looking for an element to make their events memorable, this year’s annual conference of the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons (ACOS), held Sept. 7-13 in Boca Raton, had a ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA at the NEW Renaissance Resort at World Golf Village Meet in the middle of it all – with 301 stunning all-new guest rooms and suites, unique settings for meetings and events indoors and out, an attentive staff, and the ﬁnest outdoor pursuits Florida has to offer in every direction. • 86,000 sq. ft. of ﬂexible function space • Two golf courses • PGA TOUR Spa Laterra • Events at the exclusive Serenata Beach Club on Ponte Vedra Beach • Chartered ﬁshing trips, among many team-building opportunities • World Golf Hall of Fame • St. Augustine, America’s oldest city For 2008 Value Dates, Call 1-904-940-8635 worldgolfrenaissance.com Another Exceptional Resort by John Q. Hammons Hotels surprise element planner that Cynthia L. Smith, CMP, would never have asked for—Hurricane Ike. “The planning for the 2008 conference started in 2004,” said Smith, director of continuing education. “We have hundreds of surgeons from all over the country attending not just for the meetings but for the training sessions, and it’s very hard for them to adjust their schedules on short notice. If we had needed to postpone, it would have caused a logistical nightmare. “Yet on Sept. 6—the day before the conference was to start—we were having a conference call to decide whether we were going to have the annual conference.” But good news came just hours before the “go/no-go” conference call. Hurricane Ike was moving westward toward the Gulf of Mexico and clearly would not affect Boca Raton, which is on the Atlantic coast of Florida. Instead, Ike hit Texas. Ultimately, the annual conference, held jointly with the American Osteopathic Academy of Orthopedics and the American Osteopathic College of Proctology, turned out to be quite successful. It attracted 1,559 attendees, a jump from the 1,151 that went to last year’s conference in San Francisco—one of the group’s most successful conferences in years. The key to making the event a reality and success was communication and constant updates from the conference support staff at the host hotel, the Boca Raton Resort & Club, Smith said. “They gave us their cell phone numbers, and we were able to keep in touch from hour to hour in the days just before our conference start date and make informed decisions.” continued on page 32 www.meetingnews.com 30 MeetingNews October 20, 2008 http://www.worldgolfrenaissance.com http://www.worldgolfrenaissance.com http://www.meetingnews.com

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Meeting News - October 20, 2008

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