Once a year I meet most of the European Wall Street Journal distributors in Paris. Typically we'll see each other at the 'Journees de la Presse', an organization of NMPP, the most important French press wholesaler-retailer, a mammoth company impregnated with a French chauvinism bigger than the Eiffel tower. It is this chauvinism I guess that caused them to coldly refuse the international publishers the access to their yearly convention this year. Apparently the international publishers were taking too much time from the French publishers and distributors. So this year only the French press distributors could meet with the French publishers in the comfortable super size conference room of the Meridien hotel in Montmartre.
We - an international publisher, ie. DowJones-
were left to organize our meetings in the lobby of the hotel, outside the conference room. I have never ever participated in a more inconvenient conference than the one this year. Imagine 150 managers, directors and supervisors improvising a conference in the lobby of a hotel, ultimately all of them wanting to individually set up or participate in 12 meetings of 30 minutes between two different parties per day. Imagine the dance with chairs, tables and half full cups of coffee every 30 minutes when parties change party and thus table. Reality beats imagination.
On top of that, imagine all sorts of hotel guests looking to sit down at the same tables and chairs while waiting for friends, taxi's, check-in or check-out.
Fellini could have made a film here.
See also post about this event: Speeddating for Managers:
IMPACTROOM for managers, marketeers and mothers*: Speeddating for Managers
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