If you are planning a conference that has been held before, perhaps in a different location or perhaps in many different locations, you may already have an idea of how you need your meeting rooms in Napa set up to make your participants the most comfortable. You may already sort of have an idea of the behavior of your attendees and what they like and what they are used to having. With just a few adjustments for the particular location and the specific schedule, it might be the same thing as you have done in the past.
But if by chance this is the first conference you have ever planned or the first conference that will be held for this group, then you might really be floundering and unsure of how to even begin making decisions that will reverberate for what could be several years of planning and then the conference itself. Never fear. You are not completely alone. The staff of the conference center and meeting rooms in Napa will have lots of really great ideas. They will know a great deal and if you go in with questions and concerns, they will be able to help you. Most planners run into trouble when they do not think of their needs ahead of time and are not willing to listen and communicate with the staff. They either do not make themselves and their needs clear and just assume that things will work the way they want, or they do not listen to the employees at the conference center as they talk about their meeting rooms in Napa and what they can and cannot offer you.
First of all, the staff of the meeting rooms in Napa will be able to tell you the size of each room and how many people can comfortably fit there in different seat arrangements. But you need to be responsible for looking at the room layout and making sure it will actually work. Are there cement pillars that might block a few people’s vision? Would people have to climb over others if they needed to leave? These are the sorts of things you need to ask, that you need to think about. You may even want to sit in the chairs and see how comfortable they actually are for your guests.
You should also walk from room to room, to the restrooms, to the banquet halls, and to the hotel rooms if they are all attached. Ask a lot of questions about time for moving around and what else will be going on in the conference center at the same time that might impinge on your space and flow of people from session to session.
