Posts Tagged ‘#broadsummit09’
Broad Summit Recap
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Like I mentioned last week, I was part of the team that worked very hard to put together an event for a small group of people.
One of the ideas behind it was that there weren’t enough events for smart women to get together and feel cared for.
Women can be quite good at good at caring for each other.
This isn’t often celebrated.
We are so often only set up as consumers.
We are set up to take each other down.
We are set up to compete, judge and gossip.
Conferences had become this blinky fritz of overwhelm, pushy sponsors and handshakes. When all the networking happens in the quiet times in between conferencing, that’s when we wanted to be.
And I think we succeeded.
It was a wonderful weekend of calm, of mellow happiness, of sharing.
It seems like some of that got lost in the sad feeling people felt by not being invited.
That’s too bad, because this could be a new model for retreats and conferences. Smallish events where the guests feel cared for and appreciated? Where the small number of guests are carefully chosen because they may click well? Where the pace of the weekend is slow and relaxing and everyone goes home with a little extra energy?
Friday we welcomed our guests with a taco truck and a milk and cookies party. My favorite part was seeing Jordan Ferney, another pregnant mama, asking, “We can just order whatever we want and they give it to us?”
Yep, and who knew renting a taco truck was so easy?
Easy and fun!
Saturday was a day for wine education and tasting.
One of my clients, the Wine Sisterhood, had Leslie Sbrocco out to teach us all about the basics of wine tasting. We learned about looking at the wine, aerating it, sniffing it and tasting it, and man, it was fun.
We hopped in the Toyota loaners we’d received for the weekend and took our knowledge to Moshin Vineyards, Arista Winery and Hop Kiln Winery.
Natalie and I led a Cheesewhizzes tasting at Hop Kiln where the overwhelming winner was the Rogue River Blue Cheese from Oregon. Go get thee some right now.
Sunday was spa day and yoga day. We had massages and a light yoga session led by the flexible Gwen Bell. It was calm and lovely.
We chose some select sponsors to cover our costs.
We carefully chose gifts for our guests from friends that could use the exposure and items we thought useful.
We care about smart women.
It was fun, but it was a lot of work and we’re still recovering. I don’t know what the future holds for this specific event — but in the meantime, I encourage you to throw your own mini-retreat with a small group of friends – or people you’d like to know better.
I encourage us to support each other.