Shell-shocked: A hard-won success at Rotorua

Two weeks before the 2021 Rotorua GP CME team threw open the doors at the Energy Events Centre, conference organiser Leon Olsen broke out in hives.

That was new.

Knowing it could turn on a dime and we are just playing the odds, is no way to run a business

Stress comes with the territory of conference management but, in the lead-up and return to an in-person conference, this time the stress levels were exceptional, says Leon.

“It’s probably been the most stressful, demanding and traumatic.”

On the last day of the Rotorua meeting, Leon looks a little shell-shocked – seemingly finding it hard to believe the con­ference has come to an end without trouble, let alone that it has gone well.

The conference, with slightly fewer numbers than normal, has been judged a success.

Many exhibitors found delegates chatting at stands for longer, and delegates said the overall conference vibe was more relaxed than in the past, when there was a rush to get through the sessions.

Leon is owner of Confer­ence Matters, which is con­tracted to run the Rotorua and South GP CME conferences. He had been stressing throughout the build-up to opening day.

Some of Rotorua’s mainstay hotels – Sudima, Ibis, Rydges – had been taken over for managed isolation and quarantine. The Millennium had 50 fewer rooms available.

To top it off, he says, three weeks before the conference, the Novotel changed its revenue focus and said it would not take all the bookings heading its way, only the highest-value ones. He was left short of 30 rooms.

Unforeseen changes, both huge and small, have been forced on the conference company in the past 18 months, including the extra work of ensuring everything is covered if a meeting suddenly has to be changed to a virtual one.

When the country went into lockdown in March last year, the Rotorua GP CME was on the calendar for 11 to 14 June. Leon says they held out until April before deciding they couldn’t safely run the conference in person and instead would offer a virtual conference.

Leon took to the internet and, amid the myriad of plat­forms able to support a vitual conference, found the Whova app. He says it has been excellent, and includes the social connection element he was seeking, to go some way towards replacing the in-person experience.

The virtual conference went ahead, a learning experience for speakers, delegates and exhibitors alike. The app proved easy to use.

Come August and the South GP CME was due to open on Thursday the 13th.

On the Tuesday night prior, Leon says he was sitting in bed after spending the day at the Horncastle Arena doing the conference set-up.

“I was going through my email and I got a message through the Whova app and all it said was ‘I feel so sorry for you’, and I thought someone was pulling my leg.”

They weren’t.

Leon checked the news and found COVID-19 alert levels were changing. A meeting of the conference commmittee was called, and the decision was made to switch to virtual; it was not safe to continue with a physical event.

From that night to 5pm on the Friday, Leon had 15 hours’ sleep in three-hour bursts. He ended up passing out in the departure lounge halfway through an important email to the audiovisual team. He never sent it.

The change to the 2020 event early in the pandemic had been received sympathetically but, with the South confer­ence, the last-minute shift to virtual caused some unhappi­ness among delegates.

Venue owners Christchurch City Council were even less sympathetic. Conference Matters had cancelled the confer­ence rather than waiting to be told it could not be held, so the council held out for recompense on the venue hire and food bill.

The ensuing stoush has been settled, but it was costly and Leon is still smarting.

The details are sealed in a confidential agreement.

Conference Matters is a small business working out of Whangārei. In addition to the two GP CMEs, the company has been running the annual conference Phlebology Colora­do in the US, but this has gone by the wayside. It’s easy to see why: extra costs and uncertainties surrounded airfares, the pandemic’s spread in the US and accommodation – and then there was the MIQ requirement back in New Zealand.

It’s no simple matter picking up an extra conference here and there. The creation of a conference, the programme, re­cruiting speakers, registration of exhibitors and delegates, accommodation...the logistics for all these follow a precise calendar of planning with a long lead time.

Peter Chapman-Smith, GP CME academic convenor director, is already planning the programme for next year’s conference events.

The three conferences were 100 per cent of Conference Matters’ income. COVID’s effect on revenues has meant Le­on’s wife, Jennifer, who worked alongside him in their home office, had to get a second job.

“And she is punishing me for it.” He laughs. Sort of.

That means the family duties like meals, school and pets fall back on Leon. The couple have three children – Alyssa (18), Fletch (16) and Tyler (13).

“It was all going well, I was on top of most things,” he says, “and then the pets came along – that was just a step too far for me.” (He mentions something about a replacement dog for the one he ran over two years ago, I leave it at that.)

Leon has previously had a go at running four meetings in a year, but says “it basically killed me”. Although there is risk in only having two or three, he doesn’t want to hire a lot of staff and run a lot of conferences.

Those he runs, he aims to do “really well”.

Last year, in the early days of the pandemic, there was some talk around shifting to more regional meetings to spread the risk a bit. But he says this would reduce value for the exhibi­tors, and these are the people supporting the industry, so it would not be fair.

Conference Matters had another COVID-related hurdle to overcome. The company behind its registration management system, Cvent, is a global operation. It listed on the US Stock Exchange a few years back and was rapidly expanding, with plans to roll out a new platform, until the pandemic struck. It is now retrenching; the new system doesn’t have some fea­tures of the one it replaced, and ultimately doesn’t integrate fully with Whova.

Leon says they will continue to run two systems because the Whova app is so good – Cvent’s version was clunky – and making the technology easy for people is crucial.

Does he have any advice for budding conference managers?

“The stress of not having control over whether an event is going to go ahead or not, and knowing that it could turn on a dime and that we are just playing the odds, that is no way to run a business,” Leon says.

He says he is terrible at a casino, preferring that they just take his money and make it quick and painless.

“This is drawn out and protracted and very very high risk, but at the same time you learn from everything you do, and I have learned something from every conference I have done.”

And, he adds, “The more work you put into it prior, the more people get out of it.”

And, with Leon, you know that is a lot of work and care. He claims anyone can run a conference. I doubt that is true.