FEATURE
importance requires serious advance
planning, starting with choosing the
location. The ASH annual meeting brings
more than 25,000 people to its host city,
which means the city must have an entire
convention center available and enough
hotels to house all of us. Basically, we need
to buy out the whole town. If portions
of that city are unavailable – if another
organization has booked a meeting at the
same time, for example – it’s not feasible for
us to meet there.
Can you give readers an idea of an
individual annual meeting cycle?
Each cycle of an annual meeting is dictated
by a timeline contained in a thousand-page
document outlining a couple thousand
milestones and a million details. The trick
is to tackle the tasks that can be crossed off
the list early in the cycle to avoid everything
stacking up in November.
It all happens in a disciplined, orderly
fashion; there are certain intervals of
organized chaos, but that’s what makes it fun.
How many people are working on the
annual meeting at any given time?
The ASH meetings department comprises
five people, but we hire consultants (as many
as 300) who work under our direction.
Outsourcing portions of the workload lets
us expand and contract our labor force as
needed throughout the year.
ASH staff closely manages the quality
of the annual meeting to ensure that what
is being arranged is going to work for our
audience of hematologists.
What is the most exciting part of
planning the annual meeting?
By far, it’s the opening day of registration
and housing. It’s great to see the enthusiasm
in attendees of our meeting. I have spoken
with hematologists who arrange their
schedules so they are at their computer at
exactly 11:00 a.m. (Eastern time) on the day
in July when registration opens to register
and book a hotel as close to the convention
center as possible.
We want it to be a smooth, positive
experience for everyone, so opening day is
an ‘all hands on deck’ scenario. People are on
the front lines handling phone calls and our
IT, communications, and meetings teams are
glued to their computer screens to monitor
the registration process in real time.
We want to know how many people are
coming to the site, where they are in their
progress, and the time they are spending at
each step of the process, so that we can ask
ourselves, Is that an acceptable amount of
time? Are people bogged down at a certain
step? Can we tweak something to improve the
performance of the site?
Some people stress out in that situation.
Maybe I’m an adrenaline junkie, but it’s
exciting for me to watch the numbers of
registrants climb.
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What do you wish people knew about
planning the annual meeting?
I wish our attendees could see everything
that goes on behind the curtain at the
annual meeting, particularly in the general
session room, where the plenary sessions
are held. There is a fascinating, miniature
city of technicians, lighting specialists, and
audio engineers back there. The amount of
equipment and effort that goes into just that
one session room is pretty impressive.
ASH staff arrive at the meeting long
before attendees, in time to watch the
convention center go from a cement-floor
warehouse to a decorated convention and
exhibition space. The loading dock alone
is a logistical masterpiece: 150 semi-trucks
deliver 1.25 million pounds of freight, audio-
visual equipment, furniture, and more, on a
precisely orchestrated schedule.
“Some people
stress out in
that situation.
Maybe I’m an
adrenaline junkie,
but it’s exciting
for me to watch
the numbers of
registrants climb.”
—WILLIAM REED, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF
MEETINGS AND COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT AT ASH
During your tenure in the ASH meetings
department, have there been any
narrowly avoided, logistical disasters?
It is our duty to protect the safety and
wellness of 25,000 people over a five-day
period, so we have a complete emergency-
preparedness and crisis-management
plan that we review and update every year
according to the meeting location. We
continuously do scenario planning so that, if
a crisis occurs, we already know what to do.
Our job is to fix anything that comes up
before it affects the experience of an attendee.
Usually that means dealing with unexpected
travel changes. We can have a great meeting
planned, but if people can