| Corporate Events |  | Embarrassing Conference Stories |
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We're compiling a list of embarrassing conference stories and corporate event disasters. These stories are cringeworthy enough but they also serve a practical purpose, as event organisers can read them and look out for the risks in the future.
Jacky writes: "In my corporate life, I organised a conference for 200 senior managers at a hotel in Euston. As well as video and slide presentations, it included a fashion show on roller-skates, and a 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' quiz.
Everything was rehearsed and went beautifully, except for one session, where the board of directors were on stage as a 'live' Q&A panel. One of the directors turned out to have a nervous habit, that of bouncing his hand up and down in his lap.
Because of the angle he was sitting, half the audience could see it was entirely innocent, but it looked completely different to the other half! There was a lot of giggling but nothing at all I could do except let him know afterwards."
Jacky again: "On one of my training courses, I had to borrow a hotel laptop because there was some incompatibility between their projection system and my Macbook. The screensaver that was displayed to my delegates on the big screen once we'd finally set it all up, was a somewhat shocking Goth photo."
A Google search gives a few examples of delegates getting drunk and trashing their hotel. One such occasion made national headlines when a group staying at a four star hotel in the New Forest went hell raising after dinner, swinging from the chandelier in the hotel lounge and smashing up an antique chair and using it as fire wood.
The Railtrack incident stays in the memory as an example of the drunken rampage story but has the added element of bad timing, coming shortly after the opening of an inquest into a major rail crash. There are certain times when delegates need to be very circumspect about their behaviour and the organiser can bring this to everyone's attention. It may help to divert an incident.
Again, there are countless examples of this problem, not least the famous Gordon Brown incident. Mollie gives a good example with this:
'A meeting between two offices followed months of unspoken tension between the two regarding who was causing the most customer complaints for the company overall. Finished an engineering meeting regarding some projects and said goodbyes. Teleconference video screen went dark and my friend Chris (in charge of the CAD/CAM and engineering drawings) said, "Yeah, well they'll probably XXXX up the Chrysler stuff next week, too."
The conference room audio speakers on our table and overhead suddenly broadcast "We're still here ..." as the transmission hadn't completely gone dead, only the screen was turned off.
A very red-faced Chris then quickly added, "I realize that, we were just testing to see if we can maybe do audio meetings only and save on the telecom costs maybe next month."
Obviously nobody bought the excuse and he was teased about it for years.'
One of our favourite stories is sadly unattributable. A senior manager enjoyed lavish entertainment one evening and decided to skinny dip in the pool on the way back to his room.
The story goes that he fell asleep by the pool after his swim. The next morning the occupants of the rooms surrounding the pool (it was that sort of design) stretching on their balconies were rewarded with a view of their manager stretched out naked on a sunlounger next to the pool.
Whether this one is true or an urban legend it makes a great story.
