When Ed Woltmann, head of public use and the outreach section for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Bureau of Fisheries, held a meeting in Lake Placid, N.Y., he and his group got more than they bargained for—and they used it to maximum effect.
Being a large and very complex meeting—the September 2006 American Fisheries Annual Conference brought in nearly 2,000 people from 30 countries—Woltmann’s confab typically demands the resources of a large city, but the majority of attendees desired more of a rural setting.
“Lake Placid has all the benefits of a big city, but none of the drawbacks and complications,” Woltmann says. “We had 18 seminars going concurrently, and we needed a lot of meeting space. We also had lots of social events and a ‘Spawning Run,’ which is a mini-marathon.”
Woltmann says that when the meeting was booked four years prior to the event, it was hoped a new large meeting facility would take care of the demand.
“We had hoped to have a brand-new convention center in place for the meeting, but that never occurred,” he says. “So we had to have space to run these 18 sessions concurrently. It was really amazing how everyone in town worked together to have us be able to do this.
“We transformed the Olympic Center into a convention center and utilized the ice rink as actual meeting rooms by putting frame tents inside the thing itself, so we had eight rooms there,” Woltmann continues. “It couldn’t have worked any better. The cost of everything is much cheaper in town, and you don’t have the union complications and permit requirements.”
Components of the four-day meeting included a “Taste of New York” opening night event at the Speed Skating Oval and a fireworks show sponsored by the Lake Placid CVB (www.lakeplacid.com) to close the “Fishtoberfest” social night at the North Elba Show Grounds, just outside of Lake Placid proper.
Any group coming to Lake Placid, of course, should leverage the historic site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics for an event theme, which Woltmann did to great success.
“We wanted to have a connection with the Olympics and the rural Adirondacks character,” he says. “We had a flag ceremony and a torch ceremony, so we had all of the countries represented hold a flag and had the torch lit by the chairman. And we had an actual medal ceremony for the Spawning Run, with gold, silver and bronze medals provided by the CVB. I don’t think you can do that anywhere else.”
Woltmann also used the 1980 Olympic Ice Rink for a trade show, featuring Olympics-style events such as a curling area and a puck shooting contest.
Once again, only in Lake Placid.
“If you can think of it, it can probably happen,” Woltmann says. “The following year the meeting was held in San Francisco, and the people in San Francisco said they didn’t know how they could top our meeting because they only had the city of San Francisco.”
