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Meetings Podcast 20 Team Building Ideas

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The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry!
teambuilding meetingspodcast events sales meeting Meetings Podcast 20 Team Building Ideas

Show 20

Introductions-
Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media
Tom Hillmer of Creative Group
Jon Trask introduces his new job with Alliant Event Services!!!

New Sponsors-
Hilton Hotels eEvents- Now featuring green meetings and weddings
BlueSky Factory- Our email service provider choice
Brand Creative- Your source for promotional or marketing products

2:28 Website updates

2:48  Tom discusses a very cool team building event creative group produced with Hands on New Orleans www.handsonneworleans.org/ 
   Painted, built flower boxes and planters which brought life to a school which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.  

12:35 Similar thing Jon did with a group built a park.

13:25 Another team building idea Build a bike and give them to kids-  Team interaction–  Odyssey Life Cycles in the Bay Area   http://odysseyteams.com/

16:50   Skeet shooting team building – “shotgun tournament” Elm Fork Shooting Sports  in Dallas  http://www.elmfork.com/

19:05  Emeetings – Planning an Emeeting still needs planning.  Some tips on how to do them.  Online classes – emeetings, webinars, distance learning is all getting very popular.

24:16  Canada Airlines passenger Bill of Rights or Flight Rights! 

25:58 Emergency exit row on SouthWest Airlines conversation with a flight attendant. 

29:19 Republican Convention Planner stats – Jons friend helping with the first Presidential debate.

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Music by the www.TheDelgadoBrothers.com

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Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media

Copyright 2008 MeetingsPodcast

Transcripts:
Female: You are listening to the Meetings Podcast with Mike McAllen, Jon Trask and Tom Hillmer. The Meeting Planner podcast source for what’s new and exciting in the meetings and events industry. The information and opinions expressed in this podcast are of Mr. McAllen, Mr. Trask and Mr. Hillmer and are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of their past, present or future employers.

Please send in your question and comments to MeetingsPodcast@gmail.com and make sure to visit our website for pictures, video and show notes at www.MeetingsPodcast.com.

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Poscast. It’s our milestone show number 20, Mike MacAllen from Grass Shack Events and Media and as always we have Tom Hillmer, Senior Vice-President and Account Executive at Creative Group Incorporated coming to us from Los Angeles today. Hi, Tom.

Tom Hillmer: Yes, I am.

Mike McAllen: And we have the man wit the big news today, Jon Trask, CMP who has made a move.

Jon Trask: Yes and I’m with Alliant Event Services and I’m not far from Tom right now, since Tom is in LA, I’m in Pomona we’re servicing out of the corporate headquarters here the Southern California area but we are in National Company and were spread out over eight different offices, got a number of locations through the region and across the country and quite a fun place. I’m really excited, I’m really energize and excited to be part of this, so I think I got a lot to talk about in the future on what’s going on around here.

Mike McAllen: That’s great and it’s Alliant Event Services, correct?

Jon Trask: Yes, A-L-L-I -A-N-T, Alliant.

Mike McAllen: Fantastic. So, I guess we have a lot of stuff we have on the – Oh, I should talk about our sponsor. Another thing that we have new is we have a show 20th is now rolling out, we have some new sponsors. We have Hilton Hotels Events which is now featuring a green meetings and weddings. We have Blue Sky Factory which is our e-mail provider of choice and lastly we have Brand Creative who is your source for promotional or marketing products. So, it’s kind of cool to have some sponsors.

Jon Trask: Cool.

Mike McAllen: And of course we have the website it’s been updated and it’s take a look at it, its kind the cool at meetingspodcast.com if you’re probably not – you’re probably listening from the site right now but …

Jon Trask: Or at the gym on your iPod.

Mike McAllen: Right, right. Well take a look at the sites.

Tom Hillmer: This is something we have to talk in rhythm here or something?

Mike McAllen: Right, right, yes … what about what you’re doing down there in New Orleans this week?

Jon Trask: Sure you may dive in to that a little bit.

Mike McAllen: Yes, might as well.

Tom Hillmer: Well, you know the ongoing topic we’re going is fall back on here we’re not sure what else, somehow I’m talking is team building events because it just always so hot for people right now and everyday is looking for something new and different and I know that the whole, you know the community give back thing is pretty popular now. It’s not a new concept by any means but I think the way and watching people are doing it and or perhaps now more than anything the individual experiences that people are having with it is what can really continue to you know drive fewer behind.

The impact those projects can have, I was just down in New Orleans this last few days and we’re down there with one of our pharmaceutical clients doing a sales meeting and we just did a really, really cool event yesterday with about a 130 people and we took them over to, we work we a really great organization called Hands on New Orleans, so if anybody is down in New Orleans and they’re looking to do any kind of a community give back and help the local New Orleans community rebuild their, you know, their world down there by Hands on New Orleans is a great one to turn too.

They did a great job but they help us organize and coordinate bringing a whole lot to life to a temporary school facility down there for children, it’s serve K through kindergarten through 10th grade and it was just really powerful to see this, it was on a large, you know piece of property that – what is now the school are the series of this mobile units, you know, sort of this mobile office units that had been brought in and position in place for, you know, kind of the long term more the effect they’re talking they could be there at least five years with this facility.

So, they poured sidewalks between this, you know, this mobile, I mean they’ve made them look nice and what not but when we got, I mean this whole sites sits next to right, sits right one the property next to what use to be the school and the school is just a pile of rabble, I mean I just broke your heart to see the, you know, to see what’s left or what really was their school and so now they’ve got all this kids organize and all this different pods and so we came in and organize through Hands on New Orleans, full afternoon yesterday with our group to really brings some life to that school. You kind the walk in and I hate to say it but it’s just look almost prison like, I mean it was, you know, white buildings with aluminum, you know fencing and aluminum, you know, over hangs with aluminum beams and you know, it just had no color and no life to it at all had we came in yesterday.

We painted the whole place, we painted it reds and blues which were their color, school color. We painted half scotch cords. We painted you know we had people making this really neat like garbage can holder, you know, and out picket sensing and painted them different colors and built flower boxes and put flower boxes in front of the school for them to plant flowers and plants to give some life out there. They have one room and one of the buildings, that’s like general assembly hall and I mean it was white linoleum flooring with white, you know, kind of this horrible halls and we painted it this bright colors and built movable wall panels for them, now they can put chord and off the room for you know, use the room different purposes and what not.

I mean our gang just went to town and we even built belchers, they had, we had brought on belchers, we donated funds to the project to do of course and then with that fund, with that funding they bought this aluminum belchers and we put, you know put the belchers together out under slab a concrete that’s now their basketball court and I mean just in one afternoon change the whole, just change the whole scope of this place and they were bringing kids around and – again kindergarten through 10. So, you had young children, you had older children there and you know, the older kids got to after lunch, they got to break from their classes and come and help us pain, so they were interacting with us which was really cool.

The teachers where up and interacting with us which they just were like all just so grateful for everything we were doing and then they were bringing throughout the course of the day they were bringing the classes of the little kids around all the different group working around the property to thank us, you know, so you’d come out and all the sudden it’s little group of children would come out and yield, “Thank you”, you know and just really, you know just put it all, you know, just gave it all meaning and you know, just really a great day and back at one point they walk into the general assembly when we were in there and they had – a bunch of them had made a thank you card and the one little boy could have been five years old handed me a thank you card that he had written and, you know, you’ll open it up and it read. “Thank you for giving our school, you know, thank you for helping make our school better or something like” and oh you just couldn’t help it, I mean as anybody is got heart, you just ended up at chock button you know, you really and it was great, I mean really, really great.

Mike McAllen: That’s great.

Tom Hillmer: And then we came back to the hotel and we were actually staying at the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans and great hotel and they do an awesome job and they are so tied to the community there as a hotel, Ritz-Carlton is an organization is anyway but each of their hotels have this alignments with this different organizations and whether you work with one of their or you work with the different one whatever you’re doing, if you’re there with them and you’re helping rebuild the community then. What they do for you is we cam back with three bus loads of people and at the front entrance of the Ritz-Carlton yesterday when we got back last yester afternoon, they had, Oh god they must to had 40 or 50 employees line add double sided like forming an entry line into the front entrance of the hotel and out people got off, they’re people just applauded and gave our people a standing ovation, thank everybody as our, 130 people walking by and all of their employees, thank you so much, thank you for helping rebuild our, you know our community.

Mike McAllen: Wow.

Tom Hillmer: It was really cool so.

Mike McAllen: That is really cool.

Tom Hillmer: It was a very powerful and impact whole day, people were still, you know, they were talking about it last night and in fact I run in this morning, early this morning when I left I saw the president of the client organization and you know, he was just as peace that everybody was just grant and raven all night long about how awesome it was right on – they’re coming back and being greeted that way by the hotel. I mean it was executive management of the hotel and you know, as well as you know front desk people, I mean everybody, you know, that they could get without their and it was just – it was great. I was a really, really cool day.

Mike McAllen: To those Hands on New Orleans people so that they have a different thing that you can do when you go into town, I mean how does work?

Tom Hillmer: Yes, they kind scope out the different opportunities and get a sense of where the different needs are and you know and a lot of it is base on you know, there’s a lot of factors to it, one I think is, one is certainly how many people you can provide, you know, provide a project within one day.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Tom Hillmer: So the scope of project will be married to the amount of, you know, manpower able to be deployed to it, you know, financial resources, what an organization can donate to it because we have, we certainly did donate for it, so it wasn’t the …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Tom Hillmer: It wasn’t a few things other than, you know, it was more then just donating the labor but you know, I mean you’ve got a group that you could either spend an afternoon giving people, you know, letting people go play golf or you know, go to the spa or you know, do whatever I mean it was, you know, it’s just money so much, you just feel like it’s money so much better spent and everybody is walking around yesterday, how they proud they were with their company and that they did this and you know.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Tom Hillmer: And it wasn’t like going into an empty building on a Saturday and doing all the work, it was doing it while the kids where there which I thought just really added a whole and other dimension to, you know, to the project but just you know, you just – if you will, your end user customer was right there with you all day along.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Tom Hillmer: Business prospective, you know, if you want to think it of that way and how, you know, how impactful is that, I mean it was just so great, so.

Jon Trask: Oh, that’s the thing, you know, you send the 130 off to play golf, it’s not going to stand out in their mind, it’s not really going to make an impact.

Tom Hillmer: Right.

Jon Trask: Because they all could play golf, a dozen or a hundred times before but you send them off to do something like this that actually brings in together into a group, I mean what a great team building thing to do.

Tom Hillmer: Right.

Mike McAllen: Yes, plus when you play golf, you’re only with those people that you’re on around with

Jon Trask: Sure, right.

Mike McAllen: You’re not interacting and plus what – in the build relationships that way, I mean – what an experience too come away with. That’s great.

Tom Hillmer: It was, so you know I know there’s a lot of that going out there and I don’t certainly profess to sound like over the first one that I’ve ever done this and you know we’re the first one to experience what a great thing it is do it. It’s just, you know, it was just yet another experience and I got tell you New Orleans is a town boy, they just, you know, there’s just so much needs for that down there and the city was great, the program, you know, I had to leave today, I’m sure I’ve got my team down, they’re running it but program is operating great and you know, certainly the French quarter and that area downtown, you know, certain able to – capable of a accommodating you know, groups and guests and restaurants and dine around and all that, I mean you know, but you get outside the city is – I’m sure many people know and that’s where the help is still needed and so there’s a lot of opportunity to give back down there.

Mike McAllen: How, many folks do they have with Hands on New Orleans, how many suppose to they have there or would they …

Tom Hillmer: That’s a good question, I mean going to …

Mike McAllen: I mean did they have a like good – with there somebody with each group of people or …

Tom Hillmer: Yes, there was somebody with each group of people, so each group got an assignment of two or three projects that they had to do and then there was one person that coordinated that groups, I want to say we probably had, they had be at least six or eight hands on people there and that was helping those kind of general oversee guy and then you know, and then all their individual team leader if you will that help, help manage the people doing the projects and they were managing the supplies and they were managing, you know, somebody run out of paint or you run out or you’d didn’t have enough rollers, they actually even made because we were right down the road from one of like lows or home depot or whatever it was and they actually made two or three runs back and forth to the course of the after to pick more supplies and bring them back. So, you know they’re kind your runners and what not …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Tom Hillmer: … but so, yes.

Mike McAllen: And you know certainly we’re talking specifically about New Orleans and the help that they need there but you can certainly translate that in the other community, I’ve seen a similar thing done and in just a low income community where I ended up doing audio visual to support, this – it was actually British Airways, a few years ago and they just simply found – they were meeting in La Costa which is a very nice area as people will probably know who’d been to San Diego but they found a lower income area of the San Diego greater market and they took all there people over and built a playground and that was the first time I’d ever seen this sort of thing happen but it still made an impression, I mean it’s probably been 15 years since that meeting, maybe 10 but still – so you can certainly look for other places that you can make an impact within a community or a community near where your meeting.

Tom Hillmer: Oh, absolutely. The other one is popular out there now two – and a lot of, you know, a lot of organization have done it, they have, they can appreciate the impact of it and this people haven’t, you know, just because it’s been around awhile, it doesn’t mean it any less, you know, effective but it’s – to build the bike, Build a bike program that they do with kids and you hirer this guys and there’s couple of an organization had do it. We’ve work for the company called Odyssey out of California, the Bay Area, they’re actually Mike and they do a great job and you know, and they bring it out.
I mean they spend a whole afternoon, they can spend a whole afternoon – it’s not just about we’re going to build bikes and give them to kids, it’s about – they start out, there’s a good couple too in a half hours worth of exercises and interaction with, you know, team that they facilitate that’s all about business, it’s all about you know working a cohesive unit. It’s all about trusting each other. It’s all about all this things. I mean we do this, you know and I’m not talking like ropes courses and doing crazy exercises, I mean it’s all interaction and you know and discussion and, you know, sort of, oh you know the bringing up different scenarios and what would you do in different scenarios kind of a things and then they build up and then ultimately they bring in into this place in the program where, okay and we did this – I’ve this done with a 150 people and did it last year with 14 people actually for own organization and you know, we broke in to 14 – four small teams and you know, built four bikes but I mean you know, four bikes is four bikes and four …

Mike McAllen: Sure.

Tom Hillmer: … kids they want to get bike that you know would not have one otherwise, you know, you don’t have to be 300 people in do it for 50 kids, so and then you know, and they bring it all around about you’re building a product, you’re building, you know, think about your end user but they don’t tell them that the end user customer and under privilege children, they tell the audience, you know, thinking about it in terms of your audience, the buyer and – it was funny actually a lot of people were thinking of it in term of, “Oh, I’m building this for a bike distributor company” and then they’ll send it, some sell it to the end – or retailer, they sell to the end user customer and so the guy, we finish all this bikes and everything and then you know, they open the door and the guys like, oh, this is a rare day for you as manufacture because you’re going to meet your end user customer in an income, you know, four or five little underprivileged, you know, children from a facility down the road that you know, they hardly have anything to their name and they’re going to be getting brand new bikes today and I mean you just – again another on of those moment for your like, if anybody even half human, you know, you cants help but just become emotionally involve with what you’ve just did for this people and their community. We did that in Boston, I mean downtown Boston, you know, and – Jon, I mean any community have those opportunities and them so.

Mike McAllen: Yes, you do – you make a great point there, like all the stuff goes across the board for me if they want to provide some sort of, you know, an experience, so they’ll remember it. They’re spending all this money to bring people to this places doing this great things plus then they go talk about business, they should be doing the same thing, you know.

Tom Hillmer: Right.

Jon Trask: Right.

Mike McAllen: Really grand – you know, making it an experience, you can always go play golf.

Jon Trask: Yes, I mean this – the people who go through a program like that are doing to be talking about it for a long time and the messages of it are going to stick with them much more like I remember this British Airways meeting out of, you know, the hundreds of things I have done, that one still sticks in my mind because it just – it has a different resonance to it, it’s not just another meeting at that point.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: So, well very cool, very, very cool.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Tom Hillmer: And then the team building event, I was going to talk about it’s not anything to do helping people with shotguns, so – because I went down to Dallas and for this – I was actually an attendee of an event and it was really fun shooting guns, we saw a shotguns and they add it like a – but it was and it was a fun experience but it did nothing to help anybody, [00:16:55] talk about it but …

Mike McAllen: What was it like each shooting or something or what was it?

Tom Hillmer: Yes, it was totally skeet shooting and they …

Mike McAllen: … just shooting guns at least you have some …

Tom Hillmer: Yes, yes, it was skeet shooting – they had and setup like a golf course like a you know, a shotgun golf tournament basically, you know, we all went out to the different holes and we shoot shotguns and they keep moving around and we all played against each other, you know, in the end, they tallied everything up and it was pretty funny because I was with four other women and they were all had to be like five feet tall and like, you know, the hundred pounds and then and you know I’m big giant large like kind of a guy, so we were all shooting the guns and they were funny that, you know, but they all beat me, everyone of them but they –

Jon Trask: That’s just put a whole different spin on the term shotgun start, doesn’t it?

Tom Hillmer: I know, I know it really did, yes I was try to – I wanted to turn it into something funny but could just went with it but …Thank you very much Mike. But we have golf cards and they had things setup at the different station

Mike McAllen: (After are we 00:17:52)
Tom Hillmer: It was called Elm Folk Shooting Sports and they do which a lot to a charity stuff there I guess to for, you know, you go in and, I don’t know – for charity tournaments instead I go golf – they go shoot shotguns since kind of a Dallas things I guess but anyway it was rally good experience and you’re actually pretty close to all other people, so you’d really do get a lot to interaction with the other shooters.

Jon Trask: And certainly if you want to get people the flavor of a place, I mean you go to Dallas instead of playing golf, you choice shotguns that just seems right. Having family in Dallas, you know, I really understand that whole thing.

Tom Hillmer: Yes, yes, it was really fun and the people were great there too, so that the people that you know, I’ve never shut a shotgun before, so it was pretty fun. Anyway, so that’s my little team building event, if you go to Dallas go check out the Elm Fork Shooting Sports.

Jon Trask: Well, I’ve just been running in the million directions with changing positions in a number of things going but I did come across an article in a pharmaceutical executive, I’ll put the link up for that but it’s just talked about Emeetings and I thought it was some pretty timely tips, there’s a (June named Bill Coney 00:19:11) from Midpoint Communication who wrote the article and his point is sometime people sort of confuse the convenience with the ease of doing something and planning in an emeeting made out involve of the travel logistics but it doesn’t lessen the fact that you still have a message and you still have important thing that you have plan for and some people are sort of forgetting to do that.

So some of this major points were, don’t be boring and I won’t go into all the detail of what each of points mean but don’t be boring, edit your PowerPoint slide, one part of that is give about a third less time that they might normally take, just because, you know, the only thing worse than a long PowerPoint presentation is a long remote PowerPoint presentation of what you’re setting somewhere else. Slowdown and talk more clearly, get everyone involve, get your audience engage, just like in a meeting or in this team building that we’re talking about.

Make sure that your audience is activity participating and they’re not just sitting there listening, dash them with some brilliant employee live video, use some different things like that. I’m actually taking a college class, interestingly enough, I just started last week to – I obtain a degree program a couple decades ago and I decided to wrap it up and I’m now taking classes online in this very sort of emeeting thing which I guess is one of the reason it was in my head and I set two class last night, watching a teacher who’s 50 miles away from me on a streaming web, talking to the other students on a conversation board asking the teacher questions on other window and everything is done electronically. So there are a lot of different ways you can hold your audiences attention and so bring a little brilliant into it.

Have some nice introductory remarks, make sure you’re setting the stage or introducing everybody realize that you’re not in a physical room, so that you’ve kind the got a make sure you’re doing some of this housekeeping so people knows who, who were who and what’s going on in things that they can always see. Try and kill the glitches, watch out for the technical problems. Do a lot of researches on your systems before you just throw something out there, I’ve seen people have net meeting just completely fail where they try and put something together and they find out all of this technical glitches are going on and they finally just have to bug it and reschedule, I’ve actually seen that happen recently. So, basically that’s from pharmaceutically executive, it’s just some tips when you’re sitting down to look at this sort of emeeting to remember that it’s – it is an actual meeting, it’s not just kind the getting together casually and some ways to keep that in mind.

Mike McAllen: So, it’s like a Webinar kind of thing, it what it is?

Jon Trask: My college class I’m taking, yes, it really fascinate me when I found the program because obviously we all traveling, we’re because and we have all these stuff going on in ourselves, so it’s really difficult to carve out and say for a whole semester I’m going to sit in classroom even one night a week but this program that I found it actually a Cal State University program, it’s Dominguez Hills which is very far from me but we have student in my class as faraway as North Carolina and we basically all log on at 7:00 on Tuesday night and a live video feed comes up of the teacher and we interact with the teacher, we can phone in on an 800 number or we can talk to her through typing in messages and questions and she bring guest lectures, she shows videos as if like a regular class.

Mike McAllen: Can you look at it later or do you have to be, it is like …

Jon Trask: It’s archive online, I can download it, I can stream it later or I can download the actual video file and watch it on windows media player whenever I want, so if I missed the class, let’s say I’m doing a show on a Tuesday night and I obviously can’t sit down and do that then I can ask my questions in advance like kind the get credit for participating and I download the video file after the meeting is over and watch it later.

Mike McAllen: And what do they call that class? What is that – is there a name …

Jon Trask: I think they’re calling it Distance Learning.

Mike McAllen: Interesting.

Jon Trask:: And – but yes, I mean I’m brand new to it, it’s very odd to you know be having homework when you’re in this age, really a strange thing but it is sort of accelerating to be able to go back to school and be able to do this without the same sort of commitment you have to make to going to a physical location.

Mike McAllen: Interesting.

Jon Trask: So, yes – lots of stuff going on for me, school, work all kind of things.

Mike McAllen: Yes, you’re a busy, busy guy.

Jon Trask: I had one other little thing back on airlines side because you know, we’ve sort of establish the rule in the first 20 shows we always have to talk about the airlines at some point.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: Canada passed just in the past few days a Airlines passenger Bill of Rights that’s actually a bit more comprehensive than even the European union regulations which are more comprehensive than the American ones under the new law Canadian airlines have to provide stranded travelers with updated flight delay and schedule change information, they have to give the meal and hotel vouchers for delays over 4 hours and 8 hours respectively, they’re calling it Flight Rights.

So, that’s just a something going on to the north of this but can in kind of affect us down here as far airline Bill of Rights and sending people off to Canada which can be a popular meeting destination. There was also an UK holiday company cashed in the last few days and went bankrupt and stranded – about 30,000 people apparently were on their vacations, so the UK civil aviation authority has been arranging reparation flights, so far they’ve flown over 22,000 people home where they were stranded on oversees vacation. So, the airline industry just remind so volatile and the travel part of the industry and everything is still such a challenge for people, it’s got to be real element in all of our thinking and planning when we’re going to send a group of people somewhere else.

Mike McAllen: Yes, you know, I had a interesting experience my flight recently I got the exit, emergency exit row which hasn’t happen in years, I was sitting here talking to the flight attendant, it was on Southwest and he was telling me, he said, “Oh, you know – he said had ask the questions what about – am I able to open the door for whoever and stuff …

Jon Trask: Right.

Mike McAllen: … yes, yes and then we landed, it was a connecting flight and I was staying on my seat then he had to say it again, I said, “Oh yes” I said and he you know, and you had to say, I remember what he had to say, “Willing and able” to him and I thought it was interesting that he – I said, “Yes, I can do this”, he said, “No you have to say willing and able, that’s the rule” you know, and I said. “Oh, why is that?” because he said that they have a lot of people that are from other country that seat there and they just say, “Yes, yes” they don’t always say, thought that would interesting.

Jon Trask: Wow.

Mike McAllen: Yes and then he was say – I’m interesting – along with line of airlines, he was saying how angry everybody is on the plane these days on Southwest were you know it’s kind of more were friendly kind of flights.

Jon Trask: Sure.

Mike McAllen: But he said people are just really angry all the time now and he was saying, has just gotten into a fight with the guy who had come on, you know, they let the pre-boarders on and then the businessman on but they keep the, I can’t remember the businessman up in front – if he have children or they put – and you want put you back after eight rows, so that they don’t put them near the businessman.

Jon Trask: Right.

Mike McAllen: Which I didn’t know that but he saying that, that was – but one of the people came on with somebody who was handicapped and they brought on four other people with the handicapped person and they all of jump to the exit rows except for the handicapped person and then he had to kick them all out and he got a huge argument with them because a lot of people are doing that now, trying to get the exist rows, interesting when there are brick coming on with …

Tom Hillmer: Unbelievable.

Mike McAllen: … somebody who is handicap, anyway a pre-boarders, so it’s kind of interesting and I’d never knew any of these was going on.

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: But I feel really bad for him because he was really having a hard time with – he said people are really angry now on the flights and …

Jon Trask: Oh, you know, we’ve probably be remise we didn’t mention, you know, just the volatility not just in the airlines but in the, the whole financial markets and all the things that are going on, I really think that people are kind of edge right now.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Jon Trask: And just sort of waiting to see what happen, I mean I have personal friends who plan meeting for financial companies that have been affected by all of these stuff going on and I didn’t even know what’s going to happen to them and you know, there’s a huge component within the Wall Street financial sector of people who’s jobs are endanger right now, within our industry, with the meetings industry.

Mike McAllen: Yes. Well, I mean we’re all kind of affected by this if you look at your portfolio which I’m not looking at mine because it’s too depressing but anyway, sorry.

Jon Trask: Well, that was what I had for this week but it sure good to be back for a number 20.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, it really was good, I had one other thing too which I thought it was kind of interesting. I was looking into the – because we had been talking about the democratic and the republican conventions.

Jon Trask: Right.

Mike McAllen: And I was trying to find somebody there to interview them, to see if they, you know, talk about how they run it and I just came across this that the planning teams for the republican conference who made a stuff of a hundred people and they had 10,000 volunteers.

Jon Trask: Wow.

Mike McAllen: They had 40,000 attendees, they had – and 15,000 of those were member to the media and they reserved around 16,000 hotel rooms for it, so kind the interesting.

Jon Trask: I was talking to a producer early this week who I have known for a number of years and it turns out his doing the first presidential debate down in Mississippi.

Mike McAllen: Oh, really.

Jon Trask: And, yes, his on site for a really long time for one event, you know, his already down there now in the debate is until the 26, so his on site for weeks and weeks just putting this one event together.

Mike McAllen: Really? Wow.

Jon Trask: Yes, I mean it’s huge, well and you think, you know, the world is watching on something like this, there’s a huge amount of eyes on it and a huge amount of interest and just no room for any errors, so really got to have the best of best doing those kinds of things.

Mike McAllen: Wow, interesting.

Jon Trask: So, well you had a new phone number to give out right?

Mike McAllen: Yes, we have a new phone number of course we still have the same e-mail it’s meetingsposcast@gmail.com and the new number is 510-735-9690 and I think that’s it, so shall we close this show out?

Jon Trask: I think we’ll call that number 20.

Tom Hillmer: There you go.

Mike McAllen: All right guys, I guess I will talk to you next week and thank you again for taking the time out.

Jon Trask: Looking forward to it. Thank you. Bye.

Tom Hillmer: Bye-bye.

Mike McAllen: Bye-bye.

Female: We appreciate and thank you for listening to the Meetings Podcast. You can find Mike McAllen at d72.c4e.myftpupload.com, Jon Trask at alliantevents.com and Tom Hillmer at creativegroupinc.com. The Meetings Podcast theme music comes from the Delgado Brothers which can be found at delgadobrothers.com. Special thanks to riptidegraphics.com for the audio editing of this podcast.

 Meetings Podcast 20 Team Building Ideas


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