You guys have good questions and rightfully so! “I thought you were traveling less?” Well since I am up at 5 AM and am riding the sweet $15 airport shuttle with internet access (my favorite way to get to the airport) I have a few minutes to respond.

I didn’t get a new job, I am just taking on additional responsibilities at work, that I requested. It was someone’s full-time job but she left to teach full time- we have a few “transient teachers” at my work since we are an educational publishing company.  It was a big undertaking last year because it was the very first year and she built the event.  Anyway, I am managing authorspeak (updating and improving from the inaugural year) along with my current job. So, more responsibility has allowed me to travel less.

ANYWAY, so I am choosing less conferences to attend this year. However I am still the one responsible to traveling for emergency type situations.  Caesar’s Palace has chosen to put us in an extreme emergency. Many of you may know that we kick off our summer events with the Las Vegas conference. Some of you close friends and family have stayed with me in Vegas during that week…and have gone to bed later than I get up to go to work at this conference! 😉 Well our sales manager has proposed giving another larger event our meeting space during our week! They are giving us other meeting space which is significantly smaller than our contract states. We are less than 3 months out!

This has happened before and even though we have contracts that protect us from this, Vegas is Vegas and when a huge business opportunity presents itself, they are going to “trump” us!  Our meeting of 1800 attendees is just a small fish in this big pond called Las Vegas. They want to give their customers with “city-wide” events (typically 5,000+ attendees) whatever they want to encourage more hotel rooms utilized and more F&B (Food and Beverage) spent.  So, I get it.

My boss- our President and the event coordinator and I are taking the Monday morning 6:55 AM direct flight to Vegas to negotiate this proposal and the contract we signed in December 2010.  Wish us the best of luck! I’m flying uncomfortably in my black suit, wrinkle free button down baby blue shirt and my big girl heels. We land at 8:30 AM Vegas time and are prepared for a day’s worth of meetings with the Director of Sales and our event manager. Wish I could have slept better last night but there is a lot on the line here.

This is the first time that I am going somewhere and my return is “TBD”. We know that we have to leave Vegas with a signed addendum with Caesar’s Palace, so however long it takes them to provide sufficient concessions and “mutually agreed upon space” I am at their mercy but I am sure it should just take a couple of days.

Hopefully at Caesar’s I can get a sig on my beep… 😉 Looking out for Carlos! (The Hangover reference, sorry couldn’t resist.)

(Sorry for any typing errors, it’s early friends!) More soon!

More soon!