Some people might think that the events industry is all never ending smiling faces, exotic locations and a well-earned glass of Chablis on a country estate to end the day! I must confess that, very occasionally, we do get treats working in the corporate events world. For example, Chevy Chase once played piano for us in the Beverly Hills Hotel bar. We were also treated by a client to gourmet food at Le Hotel Meurice in Paris, and we were once flown first class to Brunei for a 90-minute team building session.
More often, our days are challenging, and Tuesday was such a day. On Tuesday we ‘gave back’! Most people in the UK were enjoying the scorching sunshine and grabbing any chance to catch the rays beating down.
On such a hot day, we were to deliver one of our core and most powerful events to a conference of over 500 delegates – drumming. Our eight facilitators and two event managers met at the conference venue (Ascot Racecourse) to find the lift that was supposed to take all 500 instruments to the third storey of the building was unusable.
We prized open the doors of the van and just looked at the mountain of very heavy, large drums that needed to be moved. We could almost feel the searing midday sun laughing at us and humming “Mad Dog’s an Englishman” as we all stared up at the twisting fire exit that we would have to climb.
We are well aware that, when some event companies turn up to large events in such situations, they substitute proper drums with boomwhackers or smaller drums, but we don’t!
With herculean effort, every drum was carried up the stairs. In just 30 minutes, all drums had been unpacked and placed on seats in the room. After a quick gulp of water and a mouthful of a sandwich, we were on stage playing everyone in to start a two-hour, non-stop high-energy session.
After a fantastic drumming session, it was time to re-pack the ocean of drums before us and face the stairs again.
I would like to give a huge thank you to all the team for their efforts on that day, and for keeping smiling and being professional.
I can’t wait for autumn for cooler weather!
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