When NAFCU picked the site for this year's Annual Conference& Exhibition at the Gaylord National on the Potomac in NationalHarbor, Md., the facility hadn't even been built yet.

NAFCU President/CEO Fred Becker and his staff chose the siteafter walking the construction grounds and looking at models.Becker also said he had been impressed with other Gaylordproperties.

“Because of our size, we can only go to tier-one cities, and wehave to lock in a place three years out,” Becker said. “While wewere taking something of a chance, we weren't going to be holdingit during the facility's first year and we weren't guineapigs.”

In putting together such an event, the organization's firstannual meeting in the Washington area, NAFCU attempted to leavenothing to chance.

About a month after last year's meeting in San Diego, NAFCUExecutive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer Pat Morris,Director of Events and Education Alyssa Kolat and other staffmembers did the first of many walk-throughs in the rooms that willhouse the exhibition hall and the main sessions and breakouts. Theassociation is expecting about 1,300 attendees, guests andexhibitors.

“We start visualizing how the empty room will look as anexhibition hall, and what it will take to transform some of themeeting rooms quickly. You might have very little time to changethe set up from accommodating a meeting, and then soon after that,a reception,” said Morris.

Kolat has a core planning staff of seven, although almost allNAFCU staff members become involved in the conference in some wayon tasks ranging from helping to recruit speakers to packing up theconference on the final day.

She said the planning, including making contingency arrangementsin case speakers are late or electronic equipment fails, involvesthousands of moving parts and staff members who are often doingseveral tasks simultaneously. “There's a lot that keeps me up attimes because the process is so complicated,” said Kolat, acertified meeting professional who has planned events during muchof her 20-year career.

During the first walk-through and in subsequent sessions, NAFCUofficials met with Gaylord officials and contractors for lightingand set-up in the exhibit hall.

At that time, the NAFCU staff begins in earnest to focus on theselection of speakers. While some of the big names, such as singerKenny Rogers, who is scheduled to perform Friday night, arewell-known and picked more than a year before the conference, theprocess for choosing others is more complicated.

Morris, Kolat and members of her core team watch DVDs ofprospective speakers and determine whose presentations would bemost relevant. For those who make the first cut, NAFCU's staff willcall other trade associations and find out how effective thepresentations were and whether the speaker interacted well with theaudience.

Once the speakers are picked, the NAFCU staff will talk to themabout the conference and tell them what subjects attendees are mostinterested in and will make suggestions on how to tailor thepresentation to the audience.

“We work with them to be sure that attendees don't hear a cannedspeech that they have heard before,” Morris said.

And that goes for NAFCU staffers as well.

Becker writes his own speech but practices it several times infront of staff members. When asked what it's like to evaluate thework of the man who signs his paycheck, Morris replieddiplomatically, “We don't critique it-we're contributing toit.”

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