Chocolate Conference

I’m at a conference for work this week – one I’m helping to carry out rather than one I’m attending. We’ve had 34 hours of classroom time  in 3 1/2 days.

In preparation for the conference, we bought chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Expensive chocolate. Small chocolate treats. Large chocolate treats. Multiple boxes of truffles wherein I individually selected each truffle for a pleasing assortment by color, flavor and type of decoration. Multiple boxes of rum chocolate covered cherries with the stems still on.  Dark chocolate covered animal crackers in cellophane bags with turquoise ribbon. Chocolate sticks. Chocolatier-quality peppermint patties.

And for my sessions, chocolate peanut butter stegasaurases on bicycles.

Those were for my sessions. No one else got to give those out.

In addition, two of our presenters brought chocolate of their own. One brought the conference planners several dozen cookies PLUS FIVE POUNDS of chocolate for the attendees. Once, when that presenter  was running a library conference, she got back an evaluation of the conference as a whole with no questions answered. Just one comment: “You had a room full of middle-aged women. Where was the chocolate?” She doesn’t present without her own stash now.

All of the chocolate was given out at regular intervals in a variety of entertaining and fetching ways. At one point I asked, “Who can tell me what was on my last slide?” The person who knew? they got chocolate. The person who drove the farthest. The person who asked a unique question. The person who noted that I said that both RSS and Blogs were “the coolest thing since sliced bread.” The person who paid the most attention. With almost a dozen presenters I tried to jolly them up and get their energy level up so they would meet that “entertaining and fetching” threshold for passing out candy.

Plus we had sugar from the conference facilities at every meal and every break – that’s a total of 5 times a day aside from what we gave out. Brownies, pudding, cheesecake, cookies, doughnuts. Not to mention cases of pop.

AND

AND

AND SOMEBODY WENT DOWN TO THE VENDING MACHINE AND BOUGHT M&Ms.  I was personally insulted. I ranted, I admit it.

A. says I have “control issues.”