Good Luck!

Hi hope everyone had a wonderful experience throughout your internships and not only had fun but learned something too! I cant believe that it is all over. I wish you all luck in the beginning of youR careers and hope that everyone is successful in everything that they do!

GOOD LUCK!!

Finally Back in Arizona

Hey everyone, hope everything is going great in your last few weeks of being a student! Pretty scary to think about!

I got back from Puerto Rico on Sunday and am soooo happy to finally not be living out of my suitcase. The MoreDirect incentive meeting went great and we have had a lot of positive feedback from the company and also the attendees. This truly was a once in a life time experience and I am so grateful that I was able to jump in to this meeting with both feet and get a lot of first hand experience.

Saturday night was our final bon voyage dinner. The theme was Pirate of the Caribbean! We brought a bunch of Pirate t-shirts and accessories for the attendees to pick from to wear to the party. I took some pictures of the party it was an absolute blast!

This was our centerpieces on the dinner table

This was the entrance in to the party

On top of it we had a tattoo station, a fortune teller and also a live band that played in a pirate ship! The only down fall was that the party was suppose to be on the beach. Since Puerto Rico is in the middle of the Rain forest, we of coarse has steady rain through out the entire day. So we moved the party to a castita that had a roof but was open air. Everyone danced and drank until Midnight and seemed to very much enjoy their selves.

Here are a few more pictures from Puerto Rico!!!

The Fort

The Ocean

The Bacardi Factory

Have a great week!

Old San Juan Tour

My Pureto Rico trip is coming to an end soon and I will be leaving on Sunday. This trip has been an amazing learning experience! Since I also have a background in tourism from school its been very interesting to learn about the different factors that tourism has on Puerto Rico. Today, I was a trip director to a group of 12 on a excersion. The excersion included a stop at the Bacardi Rum Factory, a stop at Fort San Cristobal and then the group had a chance to have lunch and walk around Old San Juan.
The Bacardi Tour was about an hour long and the group was able to see how rum is made also the history behind the Bacardi family. It was very intersting and we also were able to taste the different rums!
Fort San Cristobal was very intersting. The fort was bulit in the 1500's by the Spanish. We were able to walk through the tunnels that the soliders would use to attack. The fort was HUGE! After the fort I walked around Old San Jaun making sure that all attendees were having a good time. All the women seemed to flock to the Coach Outlet, It was pretty funny!
All in all the excursion was a sucess and I was glad that I left with 12 attendees and came back with 12 also. I made me feel really good that I could manage a group in a destination that I had never been in. Hope all is well and I'm looking forward to coming back to Arizona!

Reporting From Beautiful Puerto Rico

I arrived in Pureto Rico yesterdy after a 5am flight out of Phoenix. Our incentive program with MoreDirect is being held at the Gran Melia in Grande Rio, Puerto Rico. The picture below is of the lobby.

The Property is absolutely beautiful and has over 400 rooms. Here is a picture of the room that attendees and also I am staying in.

Also here is a picture of the golf coarses on property

There are ton of awesome water features through out the property as well as 5 pools and a white sandy beach. Today I was busy preparing welcome packets for our 80 attendees that fly in tomorrow. I'm so excited to be a part of this trip and I feel so fortunate that my internship allowed me to come on an all expenses paid trip to learn. I will fill you all in on the rest of the week and how everything goes!

2nd Week Of Conferences

Hey everyone hope everyone is doing great!Well this week was round two of Scottsdale Insurance Company's Meeting. It really was amazing how different the 1st week was from the 2nd week. I really understood this week so much better and reall didnt need to ask where I should be. It was soooo much more smooth. And I actually had some down time and only worked 17 hour days instead of 19 hour days which honestly made a huge difference. I told you all what the plan was of the conference last week so I thought I would share some pictures from it this week!

The Lion we Hired for the cocktail parties

The Casino

This tent was used for Multiple uses. It was a meeting pavillion during the day. Then on Wednesday night it was Oktoberfest and Thursday night it was used as the Grand Baazzar with an oxygen bar!

Our main dinner entrance had the theme of the Orient Express which is a train that runs through Europe. This is a 100 ft poster that stretched down a corridor and we had a real train whistle and CO2 that was relesed and had the effect of steam from a train. It was AMAZING!!!

The Picture below is the setting for dinner, the Grand Corrinado Held 700 for dinner!

This is a picture of our "ice bar" in Prague. The whole room was draped in white cloth with blue under lighting. there also was blue glow sticks on all the tables and blue blinking ice cubes in all the drinks. We also hired a band out of Chicago to play they were so good and that was our busiest attraction throughout the entire meeting!

Hope you all are doing great I'm off to Puerto Rico tomorrow at 5am for a incentive trip for my internship! I'm super excited and will definatley take pictures to share with you all!!! Everyone take care1

1st week of Conferences

Last week I stayed on site at the Scottsdale Resort and Conference Center. Scottsdale Insurance Company held there annual Brokerage and Underwriting meeting from Wednesday to Friday. The meetings theme was Passport to success. So all the different activities were based on different countries. It was an awesome experience and I was able to participate in all the logistics of behind the scenes of the meeting and also was able to attend all the different activities of the meeting. I really learned how valuable sleep is! I worked three 19 hour days!!

I arrived at the resort on Tuesday night where myself and the other 3 meeting planners met and went over the BEO's (Banquet Event Orders) for the entire meeting. This was the only early night in which I was done by 9:30. Wednesday started bright and early at 5am. I set up registration and most of the meetings attendees showed up between the 10am and 4 pm. Wednesday was packed full of classes for the attendees to go to. Also we had a Line of Business cocktail party which was in 4 different locations in the resort. The theme of these cocktail parties was China. So we hired two Chinese dragon's to dance through out the parties and lead people to the general session which was a welcome meeting for all the attendees. Dinner followed with an international buffet.

Wednesday night we had 3 different rooms with activities. One room was a casino in which we hired Casino Arizona to set up different games for them to play. We also had an Oktoberfest Tent (Germany) which had a bar and also a Rock Paper Scissors Contest! It was a blast and people really seemed to enjoy that. Another room contained a Karaoke bar (Japan) and last but not least we had a tourist trap in the courtyard. This contained a lip reader, a graffiti wall that attendees could write on and also a palm reader.

Thursday was VERY busy with all the attendees. A trade show with 15 booths was open as well as 6 regional showcases. After they were able to pick from a variety of activities. These included F1 Race Factory, The Botanical Gardens, Shopping, Casino Arizona, Jeep Tours, a golf tournament or relaxing by the pool. They all said they had a great time enjoying the Arizona sun! Thursday Night was our main sit down dinner with the Theme of the Orient Express. (Europe) We had a 100 ft train poster with a real train whistle and steam. The dinner was 5 courses and really good. This night we also held the raffle that included over 30 different prizes. Thursday night after dinner we had a photo room(Paris), a Grand bazaar tent(Istanbul) with a oxygen bar, a comedy show and also a ice bar(Prague) in which we hired a band out of Chicago to perform.

Friday everyone checked out and I also was able to sit down! All in all I learned so much about meeting planning and it was awesome to see all the work I have done in the last 3 months be executed. So many people had great feedback. So this week I am doing the same conference again with just a different group! I'm glad I now know what I am doing and can be where I need to be with out being told where to help. I will post pictures next week for you guys to see. Hope everyone is doing great!

Scottsdale Insurance Registration Packing

Today, I went up to Scottsdale Insurance Company's Office and started to pack for our Meeting that starts next Tuesday, April 7th. I'm so excited that this meeting in finally approaching and all the work that I have done, I will get to see. Today, we mostly worked on getting registration straightened out. There are 650 attendees and we have the meeting 2 weeks in a row. So each week we have roughly 300 people. All the attendees will receive a gift bag when they check in to the hotel and sign in at registration. Each attendee will receive a padfolio. These padfolios were REALLY nice leather and are also able to hold a laptop.

Today I opened 650 padfolio's and stuffed them with pens. My fingers are sore! We then stuffed all the name badges and also a CD. The CD includes all of the documents for the meeting, they decided to do it this way to be more "green" and save paper. We also had to keep all the name badges in alphabetical order which posed a bit of a challenge with 650 different names.

Over all I truly now do appreciate all the work that everyone puts into these meetings! They work so hard to make sure that everything is perfect and the customer is happy with the overall outcome. The next few weeks will be crazy for me with the following 2 weeks working the Scottsdale Insurance Meeting and then April 20th I'm heading to Puerto Rico to work an incentive meeting!!!! AHHH Hope all is well with everyone!

A Week Of Long Projects!

Well this week has defiantly tested my creativity. My large project this week was making 6 regional maps. These maps were 3' X 4' so they were not small and there were 6 regions I had to do. My job was to use map pins and put all the companies that are attending our meeting in April. For this I had to use a lot of map pins and then use a label maker to list all of the agencies. This was very time consuming to make all of the labels to go with the coordinating pins. I went through 3 rolls of label tape and it took me 3, 6 hour days!
My other job which was very stressful was making sure that we all all the decor for all 15 trade show booths, each trade show booth represents its own country and FINALLY I got them all done (thank you for all that gave me ideas!) I had to make sure that everyone had decor in a box which was then labeled, So that every box we can find in April when the meeting comes and we know exactly where item is!
This week was even more interesting after I had to order more than $4000 worth of 4" X 6" flags online, so i really hope it all come in on time!!! AHHHHHHH
Hope everyone is doing great!

First day back after Spring Break

Well after a week on a cruise this is my first day back and let me tell you it was rough! With a week's worth of work piling up I had my job cut out for me today! Our very large meeting is coming up on April 9th and I feel like I have so much to do. I came back to work today with a pile sky high. I am in charge of decorating all the trade show booths......and oh ya there is 15 of them each mocking a different country.

Some were very easy to decorate but I have already searched the web for a posters to hang on each trade show booths back wall. I have learned a lot about piping and draping which is what they do in each booth. I have 2 booth's that are 10 x 2o and 13 booths that are 10 x 15. These booths all need decor and I'm have a really hard time with what I can decorate New Zealand, Germany and Samoa with! So if anyone has any idea please let me know asap.

I feel that I have had to be very creative and learn how to find decorations and order them online in a timely manner. Today I worked on ordering props for the booths and also for the entire meeting. We are hiring a Chinese dragon that will run around the resort so today I put together all of the companies written fortunes and ordered fortune cookies on line! The hardest part was editing all the fortunes and making sure they were all under 70 characters. However It was actually really fun!

I hope everyone else is keeping busy and also having fun at the same time!

Packing Day

Today was VVERRYYY long and stress full! Today I went to Western Heritage Insurance Company to Pack for their Partner's Meeting in New Port Beach, CA at the Pelican Hill Resort. This is a major client for my company, Strategic Meetings. I was in charge of packing all of the gift bags that each attendee will receive when they arrive at the resort. It was a very long tedious process. Yet, it really helps me learn what all is incorporated when planning a meeting.

I packed different bags for both the women at the men. This is what the bag looked like

Both the Women's and Men's material was packed into these very nice leather bags. They both received different gifts.

The Women Received:

-A pair of Coach Shoes

-A zip up sweater

-A golf polo

- A Video Camera

The Men Received:

-A black leather jacket

-A golf polo in different colors(picture)

- A video camera

I learned how important VIP gift bags are!!! It was amazing to see all of these expensive presents! It takes a lot of work but it really makes me feel great that someone who has worked really hard at their job receives this gift. I realized today its not how fast you can put together all of the gift bags but to make sure each one looks perfect!

All in all it was a great learning experience and I really enjoyed meeting all the staff from Western Heritage Insurance Company!

Hope everyone is doing well and I look forward to hearing from you all.

Another busy week!

Hey everyone!

This week has sent me into a tail spin! Its been very busy and i've had my hands in many different projects. I have been working at the Strategic Meetings and Incentive's office putting together welcome packs for our multiple different incentive trips. I have learned alot about incentive trips and how our biggest clients are insurance companies. These companies send their biggest sales people on very exclusive, all expensies paid trips. They are called "winners" and these are the people who sold enough insurance to win a trip and then they are allowed to invite one guest to go with them. The trips I have been working on are going to the Bahamas, Maui, Puerto Rico and also Greece. To make sure all these trip run smoothly, there are multiple different steps to go through. We first print out all the documents that the attendees will need such as the program itenerary that the trip will follow, what activities they will be doing, tip sheets for the destinations they will be visiting as well as their plane tickets and brochures.

I also have been in charge of making luggage tags for the trip as well as magnets to send to the insurance company winners and guests. All these documents are then placed into nice portfolios which are then mailed to their house. We gather as a team and use an assembly line to make sure every document is in each pouch and then mailed to the correct address. These last few days have been very high stress!!!! Its been a blast to get to see the behind the scenes production line and be a part of all that goes into these trips! To get a better idea of how we work with our customers the Strategic Meetings and Incentive's website is great! http://www.strategicmeetings.com/

Hope everyone has been keeping busy and enjoying their internship too! Look forward to hearing from you guys!

Site Visits

Today was an awesome day for me at work. I'm currently working on Scottsdale Insurance Company's Underwriters conference. We are planning a trip for them to go to F1 Race Factory for an off site team building activity. Today I was fortunate enough to get to go on a site visit to the Race Factory. We sat down with Group Sales manager and talked about how they could customize a package specifically for out Scottsdale group. We were able to get to race to go karts and also participate in a segway course that was really fun, to see exactly what our group will be participating in. I really found today really helpful to see how meeting planners work with other companies to produce these large activities for groups. It was also really neat to see how they were able to find 3 different activities at the race factory to make sure that everyone in the group is included. I find it very helpful to get to shadow my managers on all of these off site events to really get a sense of the many different aspects that are part of the job. It also was nice to get out of the office and have a change of scenery! Hope all is going well for everyone else!!!

The Internship Begins

I have been interning at a third party meeting and incentive planning company called Strategic Meeting and Incentives. It is small company that is owned by 3 women partners. I have learned so much in the past 3 weeks about meeting planning. I have really been focused in on a large meeting coming up in April with Scottsdale Insurance Company with over 1000 attendees. I am currently working very hard on SPECS which are sent to the hotel to make sure all the rooms are set up correctly, the proper AV equipment is in place and also the correct Food and Beverage are in the room. This has really opened my eyes to all of the small important details that can easily make or break and conference/meeting.

I am very fortuate that my company has offered to take me on an incentive trip to Puerto Rico in April. I'm so excited to learn about the incentive side of corporate meetings and all of the fun activites that are planned with the trip. Also the elaborate gift bags that each attendee is able to take home. I've been working on these gift bags which include flat screen TV's and other modern technologies!