Successful Meetings - December 2008 - (Page 40)

College University M E E T I N G S A N D FA C I L I T I E S PLANNER & Campus Meetings Compete in the Big Leagues By Melissa Burdick Harmon More than 1,500 talented athletes, aged 12 to 15, zoomed into San Francisco last July to compete with all their hearts. The event was the 42nd International Children’s Games, designed to promote peace and friendship through sports and bearing the high-powered endorsement of the International Olympic Committee. T he young athletes came from more than 50 countries spanning six continents, and the majority of competitors and coaches found a home at San Francisco State University. The kids and coaches were put up in dorm rooms that, in summer, operate like hotels, complete with check-in, concierge services, and housekeeping—and were served three hearty meals a day. Some of the heads of delegations and/or city representatives were accommodated in SFSU’s more upscale apartment units. Taking care of that many people with complex schedules and needs is bound to present a few challenges. One came via the delegation from Greece, which will host the International Children’s Games next year in Athens. They were scheduled to make a major audio-visual presentation, where they would also hand out materials designed to build excitement for next year’s games… and somehow, none of those materials arrived. “We simply outsourced to someone who was able to recreate the entire pres- entation for them,” notes Jim Raney, conference services supervisor at SFSU, making it sound like it was as easy as pie. While hordes of highly competitive kids proved to be good business for SFSU’s Conference Services office, the organization handles more traditional conferences for groups ranging from 15 to 350 attendees, all year round. “The only restriction is that groups using the conference facilities must meet the mission of the university. They must promote educational values,” Raney notes. The university’s Seven Hills Conference Center can accommodate receptions with as many as 350 guests, theater-style meetings for 300, banquets for 170, classroom-style sessions for 80, and boardroom meetings for 50 in its Nob Hill Room, which opens onto an outdoor patio. Four smaller boardrooms are available for meetings with up to 10 attendees, and the Coit Lounge can host groups to 100 for receptions or 40 for banquets. The Towers The Conference Center at Bentley in Waltham, Massachusetts Conference Center’s three meeting rooms can each seat 35 banquet-style or 60 auditorium-style, and the rooms can be combined for larger groups. Conferences bring dollars into university coffers, but they also provide significant benefits for students, says Dustin Fabian, the university’s events coordinator. “SFSU helps develop and train people going into the hospitality world,” he notes. SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS Campus meetings are proving to be very good for groups on several fronts. “One of the big things that university properties have going for them is the ability to tap into programming much more easily, because they have people on staff who specialize in training,” notes 40 Supplier information at InfoNow on mimegasite.com I DECEMBER 2008 I SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS http://www.mimegasite.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Successful Meetings - December 2008

Successful Meetings - December 2008 Contents Editor's Note Corporate Events On the Record Calendar Research Planner Spotlight Personal Success Technology Talk Food & Beverage Professional Development Quick Tip Tools of the Trade On Site: Retire Those Tired Power-Point Slides On Site: 12 Tips for Thriving on a South African Safari Deep Impact Recession-Friendly Speakers Showing Off Hawaii Insert Places & Spaces Mississippi Gulf Coast Fort Worth South Florida Beijing Gurus

Successful Meetings - December 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.