Planning the Bizies is harder than you may think.
Everybody has a time of the year they love. For some, it’s the holidays with all the parties and presents. Others favor a particular season, like the display of blooms and the feel of renewal that spring offers. For me, it’s opening day, when baseball becomes a daily celebration and the long days of summer are in the offing.
And to be fair about it, most of us have a time of year we’d just as soon skip. For me, that little slice is when the Best Of the North Bay party is on tap. It isn’t that I’m opposed to primo locations like the Santa Rosa Golf and Country Club. The grounds are impeccable and the golf course a study in deep green and sand traps I spend enough time in to be mistaken for Jimmy Buffet on spring break: “Dude, play Margaritaville for us.” I’ve also managed to get past the fact that each year, I’m stopped at the front door of the party and forced to stand for a “security check” that would make TSA green with jealousy (“I’m sorry sir, but seriously, would you let you in?”).
And the food and drink? Please, where else do I get to ask amazing chefs and caterers how they prepare dishes that I’ll later ruin at home? When vintners begin to talk about the Pinot Noir with a hint of chicory and a smooth finish, let’s just say they had me at, “Would you like a glass?”
I also think the idea of businesses honoring businesses is pretty worthwhile, which is exactly what the Bizies are all about.
No, the reason the Bizies are a sore spot is that, each year, the party takes a certain degree of planning. Actually, it takes lots of planning and, sometimes, Norm Rosinski, the Chicago transplant who runs as much of the show as his wife, Joni, and her brother, John, allow, calls upon the staff to sit down in a series of meetings and contribute time, energy and ideas to the annual extravaganza. Experience has taught me that my gifts don’t lie in this particular area. Actually, I’m still looking for some of my gifts along with my car keys. I could have sworn they were in the garage next to the leaf blower and the 10-year-old computer I keep meaning to put in my neighbor’s yard.
So my heart sinks when Norm announces in a voice full of gravel one February morning, “We’ll meet in Duncan’s studio at 2 p.m. to talk about this year’s Best Of party. Your presence is not only requested, but required.”
Duncan Garrett is our ace photographer who’s a not only a gifted lens man and an old world gent, but a saint for putting up with all of the odd photo requests. Our meeting room also doubles as his studio, and given the level of productivity of our meetings, it’s a great photo studio.
I bring a certain brand of skepticism to meetings, having participated in so many that accomplished so little. To steal from the very funny folks at Despair.com, “None of us are as dumb as all of us.”
So at the appointed hour, we take seats and do our best to appear eager to help and so chock full of creativity and the spirit of synergy that we look like we’ve all filled up on 5-Hour Energy vials. I’m not even daunted by the fact that Norm hasn’t followed the long-honored idea of providing meeting captives with snacks. After all, I haven’t brought a note pad, nor a laptop, nor half a dozen other electronic gizmos on which I might take notes or connect with the outside world if I was looking for party wisdom—or a strategy to break out of the meeting.
Norm clears his throat a couple times in the subtle way that asks for silence and attention. When this fails to bring the proper amount of order to the room, he looks at Joni. She stands up and the room is instantly a garden of silence. She shrugs, says, “It’s a gift” and sits back down.
“I know many of you feel that planning our annual Best Of party is difficult and time consuming or somehow beneath you,” Norm says, pausing on the last phrase to let his gaze land upon me like a sledgehammer. This would hurt worse if it wasn’t true.
“I’d like to remind you that the Bizies aren’t only an important event for us, but something our readers look forward to each year. With that in mind, the fact that we need to make it the best event possible shouldn’t be a problem for anybody in this room,” he continues. “But we also have a lot of other projects going on right now—and the magazine to put out—so I’ve decided to hire an event planner to take over some of the logistics and details so we can keep our eye on the ball a little more.”
To say there was a sigh of relief in that room is like saying Mitt Romney only has a little cash. The reprieve is short-lived, however. “With that in mind, I’m putting a committee together to hire the event planner and I’d like some volunteers.”
While it was quiet when Joni stood up before, now it was so stone silent that I wished I knew sign language so I could say, “Are you kidding me?”
The intern, Roger, who’s hoping he can overcome a total lack of news sense, an inability to use punctuation and an annoying habit of coming up from behind while you’re on the computer to ask, “What are you writing?” to seize a nonexistent staff position, breaks the silence. “Norm, I’d be happy to help out.”
Norm, relieved to have a hand shoot into the air says, “Welcome aboard kid, thanks for being a part of the team.”
A number of other staffers now begin to offer remarkably well thought out responses as to why they can’t serve on the committee and Norm nods, seemingly buying the excuses wholesale. He looks around the room, and says he understands we’re all busy and it’s hard to find extra time for such an assignment. He then says, “Roger and I can handle it, along with Bill, who I know is anxious to be a part of this, but too shy to come forward. Thanks Bill, why don’t the rest of you head back out and we’ll get started.”
The room empties so quickly you’d have thought a bomb threat had been phoned in. And there I am, sitting with Roger, who looks like he’s just won the lottery, and Norm, wearing a smile that is equal parts self-satisfaction and pure evil.
Roger immediately plunges in, offering ideas on what kind of planner would be best, the types of qualities that will work well and a timeline. I’m somewhat impressed by his suggestions, despite the fact he’s violated the cardinal rule of allowing the person who called the meeting, in this case Norm, to establish his Alpha dogness. Norm nods like the understanding father, then says, “That’s exactly the kind of input I knew you’d bring to the table, Roger. But here’s the thing, I’ve done some work on this, and what’s going to be critical for us is to go through the preliminary list of candidates and get it down to a workable number and then bring in the finalists for an interview.”
In other words, dog and pony show, which is fine by me. But Roger is crushed. I make a mental note to tell him that I too was deeply disappointed with Norm, but it’s best to not argue too vigorously with the guy who controls your byline or paycheck in front of others.
“I have a wide variety of firms that are anxious to work on the project, some I asked to bid, while others heard through the grapevine that we were in the market. I’ll shoot you a list and we can meet again tomorrow to debate some of the choices,” Norm says.
True enough, Norm emails a list that has perhaps 15 or 20 different firms listed, along with a variety of links to websites and letters of interest. Some of them are clearly pipedreams, as they’re doing events like the Rose Parade. Some of them eliminate themselves, asking for a king’s ransom. I dump one firm simply because they haven’t done enough due diligence to find out what a Bizy is. Hey, it ain’t the Oscars, but it’s ours.
The next day, Roger stops by my desk with a Starbucks and a bear claw and I begin to warm to the idea of the committee. But then I take a sip of coffee and realize it’s missing the customary dram of Jameson’s, setting a tone for the meeting ahead.
We gather in Duncan’s studio and get right to work. Norm starts at the top of the list and says there are a few firms that seem to be automatics for the interviews. They include local companies whose work I know. He also shaves five or six companies from consideration based on price, terms and what he calls “my gut that they just aren’t right for us.”
Roger says that he burned the midnight oil last night, creating a spreadsheet that compared experience, geographic locations, possible scheduling conflicts, price structures and the quality of the website/brochure. “Based on this exhaustive study, I created a finalist list of five companies,” he says, his voice quivering a bit, “But you’ve already said that four of the companies are eliminated.”
The kid was obviously a little down and I felt bad. I reached over and clapped him on the shoulder. “Roger, if I had a $50 bill for every time Norm has chucked my dreams to the curb, well, I could buy you a much better car than that thing you have out in the parking lot.”
“My dad bought me that Kia when I graduated from high school. What’s the matter with my car?” he said in a voice that left no doubt I’d made things worse.
“OK, it isn’t the car Roger, it’s your dad,” I said.
Norm observed we were off-subject.
After another half hour of debate, Norm announced we were down to the three firms who would be asked to interview. One was Dickenson, Lucas & Ruffins, a Kansas City outfit that played a role in the annual GOP convention. It had won a coveted spot because Norm liked the cut of its political gib. Another firm was a division of Martha Stewart Omnimedia. Roger reasoned that you couldn’t go wrong with Martha; I tried to gently remind him that she was an ex-con. The final company was a local firm, Superior Events.
Norm contacted all the firms and set up a one-day marathon of interviews. On the appointed day, Dickenson Lucas led things off. After Norm and the principal bonded over politics and fascinating tales of what Newt Gingrich was like off-camera (hint: It’s worse than you might imagine), we got down to business. The firm wanted to throw the event open to any and all wineries, restaurants and caterers “because that’s how the free market operates.” It also thought a theme that would “celebrate America” was a good idea.
Next, one of Martha’s minions blew in, with a multimedia presentation that included a 30-second greeting from the empress of entertainment herself. I lost track of the whole thing after all of the various tie-ins with various Omnimedia sponsors began to pile up. Macy’s and Martha Stewart Living would be players. I kept trying to make eye contact with Norm that said “next.”
We broke for lunch. As Roger went back to his desk, I walked Norm into his office and said, “Your thoughts?”
He rolled his eyes and said the morning was a waste of time. I suggested that if we could break even, we should hire Superior Events and get back to work. He took a deep breath and said that was the only worthwhile suggestion I’d had during the whole process. “And I won’t forget the way you treated that poor guy from Dickenson Lucas. Calling the Republican primary a race to the bottom to elect the tallest of the seven dwarfs was out of line.”
“Really? I thought my idea for an ice sculpture of Mitt Romney’s old station wagon with the dog carrier strapped to the roof was the real low point,” I said.
Norm threw a paperweight shaped like a Bizy at me and I went back to work.
Bill Meagher is contributing editor at NorthBay biz. He works for a national business investment news organization and recently teamed with J.Dietrich Stroeh to write Three Months: A Caregiving Journey from Heartbreak to Healing, available at Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com and FolkHeart Press.
