One of the fun parts of being an event planner includes conducting site visits for meetings/events being planned outside of our market. For the third year, we're involved in a national academic conference (USASBE) in Nashville in January and spent Friday and Saturday in Nashville doing our research (and having some fun along the way). I'll spend the next couple of days blogging about the visit...
We flew in on Friday and toured the host property, Renaissance Nashville Hotel. The hotel had gone through a renovation since my last tour 3 years ago (we had another group in Nashville in 2006) and I was pleasantly surprised by the updates and changes. The hotel has 673 sleeping rooms of which USASBE attendees will use the majority and all meeting spaces will be used by the group giving us "run of house." This allows us to pretty much take over the hotel and bring the conference branding and sponsor recognition throughout the common areas. The hotel is also just 2 blocks away from the "honky tonk" bars and great event venues.
After the tour, we met with our client to share some of our thoughts on how to best utilize the space, branding elements that will give maximum impact and minimum drain on the budget. She liked our ideas and mirrored our excitement for really adding the "wow" to the conference. Sure, the conference content is important but it's the memorable moments and connections that keep attendees wanting to return year after year. Our client had attended the USASBE conference as an attendee in San Antonio and what she remembered most from that conference was the long-horn steer we had greeting guests at one of the evening receptions. That's what I mean by "WOW!."
Our next order of business was checking out the night life in Nashville. Our 'night' started around 5:30p at Tootsie's, one of the most famous of the honky tonk bars. These bars are where hopeful musicians/bands play for tips with the hopes that they will be 'discovered' and make it to the big time. The 4 piece group playing on Friday had the place packed. The lead guitar/vocal appealed to the women in the crowd and his fiddler appealed to the men in the room. During "sweet home alabama" the bar was cleared for women to get on and start dancing. Being a good sport, I hopped from a barstool onto the bar and joined in.
It was a lovely evening, warm with a breeze and no humidity. As you walk along Honky Tonk Row, the music wafts onto the street and you decide which places appeal to you without having to step foot inside. Now, most of the musicians are amateurs and some better than others, which is also indicative of the size of the crowd inside. The allure is that you never know when a 'star' will come in and jam during the evening.
Our next stop was BBKing's, which has various spaces for events. I like using off-premise venues for the evening functions as it offers a taste of the local scene and built in ambience that you can't truly duplicate in a hotel ballroom. At BBKing's there was a great blues band playing(http://www.bartwalkermusic.com/) that we enjoyed with our "porktato" appetizer. This is an extremely large baked potato topped with barbcued pull pork, chopped tomatoes, and chives. Yummy. Watch for both at next year's NYS Blues Festival...
We continued to walk around and explored the river front, which was getting ready for a jazz and blues festival. We finished the evening at a dueling pianos bar where patrons write a request on a piece of paper and place on the top of the piano (with $). It's amazing the depth and breadth of music these musicians know and the speed with which they transition from song to song and with humor thrown in. A bit of college rivalry ensued with the first points were scored by Tennesee State (2 points = $2). Followed by 5 ($5) points from Virginia. We New Yorkers stepped right up with a 10 points rooting for SU. Chicago jumped in with 11 points, but we won out with another 20 points, which allowed the 'Rockettes' to come up and do a kick line to New York,New York led by yours truly.
watch for Day 2 highlights...
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