LA- RIMS 13'

This past week has been a whirlwind. Asher's birthday came and went before I knew it and then I was off to LA for 6 days for the RIMS Conference. Every year, countless months, days, and hours are spent prepping and planning for every last detail of this conference, then just like everything else, it is over in a blink of an eye (good thing because I missed my boys terribly).

I have not been to the conference in the last 2 years (the 1st year I had JUST had Asher, and last year it was his 1st birthday so I begged and pleaded to stay home and be the "point" person at corporate). This year was a totally different experience for me. Of course our company has grown by leaps and bounds since 2010 when I last attended in Boston. We had 16 people from the company with us and lucky for me, one of them was my friend Jordan. Jordan joined the marketing department in December and we instantly clicked and are amazed at all the similarities between us. She is like my work sister!

Having Jordan at the conference was a game changer for me. She has a great positive attitude (which I need to rub off on me) and it took all the stress that I usually experience and split it between the two of us. Not to mention it was like I was in LA (or at least a 1 mile radius of LA) with a friend and not just all of my co-workers!!

The conference was a great success for us, We had early mornings, late nights and busy,busy days. 

Here is a photo recap of my trip!

Happy and rested on our way to LA with John!

First stop in LA...IKEA, on a mission to get bar stools for our booth.  Of course the ones we wanted were not stocked on the shelf so we had a little fun in the marketplace waiting for the guys to stock them.

Followed by a trip to Wal-Mart to stock up on food, water, beer and wine for our suite and meeting rooms.  John was all too happy to be pushing our cart!

The next couple of days we spent  unpacking, putting together bar stools, assembling and wiring monitors, and testing all of our technology to make sure we were ready to go!  I do not have any photos of the in-progress look, but here is a look at our booth all put together and during the show...still not the best photos ever, but you get the idea.  The whole thing really came to life when we had all the monitors running with our system showing on the internal monitors, and our new video playing on the external monitors.  Planning, prepping and shooting this video was another big part of prep for the conference!  (no I did not shoot or edit the video just helped with the direction of it)  You can check out the video here.  It is 8 minutes long.  You can find me around the 5:24, 6:26 and 7:36 marks, along with a couple of other cameo's mixed in throughout.

Saturday night we had our staff kickoff dinner at Katsuya at LA Live.  One of my top 3 sushi restaurants ever! We sat outside on comfy sofas and had a great view and some fantastic people watching at LA Live...and the watermelon cucumber mojitos 

Here is the Riskonnect RIMS '13 Team (minus 3)

After dinner we went back to the bar in our hotel lobby.  We knew that something pretty big was going on in the hotel and after a google searched figured out that it was the GLAAD Media Awards.  A little bit of liquid courage (thanks to the mojitos) and Jordan and I snuck in!  We fully expected to get stopped at the door but lucky for us we just walked right in as if we were supposed to be there (even though everyone else was formally dressed and we were in jeans).  We caught the tale end of the awards, heard Bill and Chelsea Clinton speak and saw Kelly Rowland perform.  When the awards were over, we hung out in the ballroom where we met Cloris Leachman.  I told her that she looked beautiful and she responded with "Oh!!! I KNOW!!!".  We then proceeded downstairs to the after party where we mixed and mingled with the attendees and picked up our swag bags.  I also got the chance to meet and have my picture taken with Ellen Pompeo (Grey from Greys Anatomy).  It was an exciting LA evening for sure.  The next morning we found out that there were a TON of other famous people there including Drew Barrymore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence, Betty White, Kirsten Dunst and Toby McGuire.  There were lots of others that were listed and honored but these are the peeps that I would have loved to have seen/met.

Sunday night was the Opening Reception before the conference.  They held this at Nokia Plaza at LA Live. This is the same place where a lot of the red carpet walks and award shows are held.  Nothing too exciting about this event, other than the fact that the marketing team all represented in Riskonnect colors (completely unplanned) 

Monday morning came around and it was show time.  The was over just as quickly as it started.  We were constantly kept busy with a stead flow of traffic and tons of demos of our system.  We anticipated our booth being busy, and also anticipated the sales people being tied up in meetings and demos, so since it was LA we hired some celebrity look-a-likes to draw in traffic and more importantly keep them in our booth until a sales person was available to talk to them.  We went with Oprah and Joan Rivers.  They both were great and Joan really played the part of Joan.  She never broke character (even when she was in line for lunch and absolutely outraged that SHE, JOAN RIVERS had to wait).  By the end of the week we had ALL had enough of her, but they served the  purpose they were intended for.  The booth right next to us was a property restoration company who hired professional sandcastle builders to build the castle.  It was fun to watch the progress from start to finish.  This thing was incredible! I even got to participate in smashing it at the end of the show (see photos further below!)

Another HUGE part of the planning process is our annual Tuesday night event.  Years ago this was just a small intiment client only appreciation event, but the last two years we have opened it up to the entire risk management community.  This year, we bought out LA Market, at the JW Marriott for our Tuesday night Riskonnect Happy Hour.  The best part about this event is that it is immediately after the exhibit hall closes and is over by 7:30, so we still have the rest of the night to go to other parties. 

After our Happy Hour, we headed up to our suite for a quick de-brief that actually turned into the Riskonnect After Party.  We hung out in the suite and partied for a couple of hours.  I work with a great group of people and they really are like another family.  Its easy to forget the bond that we have in the midst of the busy fast paced environment that I work in and all the high stress, high priority projects that we are constantly working on, so nights like these are great and re-establish the bond between co-workers.  It was this night that I was introduced to gallon smashing.  If you do not know what gallon smashing is...check it out.

Finally on Wednesday afternoon the show was over.  The exhibit hall was once again empty and Jordan and I were left to break down and pack everything up to be sent back to headquarters.  The ONLY benefit to this task, was being next to the sandcastle and getting to demolish it!

Jumping for joy that the conference is OVER!

 After the conference we had some time to kill before catching our flight, so we induldged in one last Sushi dinner, complete with mojitos to help sleep on the plane.  We safely made it to the airport (no thanks to our taxi drive that was drinking brown liquor while driving) and here we are on our way home on the red eye flight from LA to ATL.  Looks like we are leaving Vegas, but rest assured it was just a super busy and eventful week.  Our flight left at 11pm LA time and arrived in Atlanta at 7am the next morning.

go back and look at the picture of us on the way to RIMS.  Quite a different picture

This was my first and LAST red eye flight...especially a red eye crossing the country.  I may not be old, but I am not young either and it takes my body much longer to bounce back.  I still dont feel 100%.  It was a great conference, very successful, exciting and tiring.  Hard to believe that in just two weeks we head to denver to scout out and start planning next years conference.