Western States Bar Conference
It’s not often that someone gets to experience their own product first hand and then gets to say “wow”, but that is what happened to me. I am the Public Relations Manager for Turtle Bay Resort. I’m also a licensed attorney in the states of California and Utah. When I saw that the Western States Bar Conference was scheduled to hold meetings at Turtle Bay Resort I wondered whether I could get ‘CLE’ (Continuing Legal Education) credit, which I need to renew my licenses, at Turtle Bay Resort rather than going to Honolulu or elsewhere. The planning organizers were gracious and accommodated my request.
With great anticipation, I arrived early this morning. Along with other early attendees, I was able to meet with Lieutenant Governor James Duke Aiona, Jr. as he prepared for his introduction during the opening ceremonies of the event. I then sat in an ergonomically designed chair to listen to the presentations. The Audio Visual aspects were great. I saw PowerPoint presentations on a large screen that the presenter’s operated from their own personal computers. I had plenty of water and other refreshments immediately available.
The CLE training was done in two sessions with a 20 minute break between. Knowing that I had some deadlines approaching, I had unhooked my office laptop from its cable and took it with me to the meeting. When the first session ended I booted up my computer and was immediately hooked into Turtle Bay Resort’s free WiFI system. I was able to look over my morning’s new emails and respond to those that were critical just as if I had been in the office, finishing just before the next session started.
I personally don’t know of any other method that could have achieved what was accomplished this morning amongst this large, diverse group than a face-to-face meeting. How else can you discuss, converse freely, meet outside the room if you have an additional request and develop contacts? All I can say is I developed more than a dozen relationships just this morning that I could never developed over the phone or over the internet in that small amount of time. They are not internet contacts or phone contacts, rather they are now friends. That face-to-face contact puts everything at a different level. From my personal experience, Turtle Bay Resort’s Pacific Rim Conference Center is a great place to have a meeting that produces business results.
My only regret is that during the afternoon the other attendees were going out to visit the beaches, play golf and participate in community events before the evening meeting and events and I had to go back to my office, plug my computer back into Benchmark’s network and continue my daily work. But for the Western States Bar Conference, which includes states from North Dakota to the Northern Mariana Islands (they are farther west than Hawaii but still under United States jurisdiction), Hawaii is the perfect location. And Benchmark really did “Keep the Business in Meetings”. The meeting was awesome! And I was able to keep up with the office, even though only a floor below, over WiFi without any difficulties.
