This Year’s Production of The Women’s Conference Conveys Emotional Depth and Clarity

By Guest Blogger, Liese Gardner

There is something special about The Women’s Conference. It’s not just that it’s the nation’s premier forum for women. It’s not that it draws more than 25,000 women from all walks of life to it. It’s not just that it features an amazing group of 100 newsmakers and opinion leaders to speak. And it’s not that it has now grown to encompass an additional day and night, each with its own special properties, stellar lineup and powerful message.

No, what is special about the conference is just one thing and that’s Maria Shriver.

Watching her on stage Tuesday at the lunch session with three other women was a revelation. Not just the topic, which was Grief, Healing and Resilience (highly unusual at a conference that is about inspiration). Not the speakers – Shriver who had just this year lost her mother and uncle, but Lisa Niemi who had just lost her husband, Patrick Swayze, Susan St. James who lost a son five years ago and Elizabeth Edwards who lost a son 15 years ago.

The revelatory part of the session was watching Shriver listen. She does so actively, leaning in so that she is as close to the person as possible. She seems hungry for their words, ideas, and energy. Of course this subject was something she actually said she was there to learn more about, this year especially, but almost every conversation and session at The Women’s Conference is a product of what she is interested in learning more about. And she is interested in a lot of eclectic subjects! It’s why this is a conference that can feature the chairman of the FDIC, the founder of an airline, an actress, a playwright, a yoga instructor, a rock star and even the advisor to the President of the United States.

The fact that all these people come together for Maria Shriver is testimony to her power, which is electric in person, her intelligence and her very correct belief that other women are just as hungry for this wide variety of topics.

But taking all these concepts and making them all work in a two-day event that is cohesive and powerful is not something everyone can do. For this, Shriver turns to a committee of producers who each have their area of expertise but one producer, Carl Bendix, is the one who brings it all together in its three-dimensional glory.

Bendix listens as intently to Shriver’s vision as she listens to others. “It’s all about Maria’s vision,” Bendix said as we walked through the convention center during the new day of the conference, called the Day of Transformation.

But this was a difficult year to define one vision. It was a year in which Shriver lost two of the most important people in her life, yet it was also a year in which she became the most important person in the lives of so many others with the publication of A Woman’s Nation, a report on the state and status of women today. The audience came knowing of both events in her life and they came expecting to mourn with her as well as to celebrate her emergence as a strong voice on the national woman’s front today.

And because the entire conference germinates within Shriver’s intelligence, passion and energy means that as she goes through life changes, so does the conference. It’s up to Bendix and his team to understand those changes and to make them real.

This year they accomplished it beautifully. JupiterPx, in addition to producing and coordinating the logistics for the Day of Transformation and The Night at the Village, produced what amounted to three full-scale live stage shows during the main day of the conference. Each “show” had its own look based on the speakers and topic. And the final set change was an awards show followed by a live concert, this year given by Alicia Keyes, on a completely different stage, pre-set behind the scenes so no time was wasted between the awards show and the concert with sound checks or setup.

The overall stage design, for which JupiterPx brought in longtime collaborator MegaVision Arts, created a feeling that this year was more reflective, quieter and even a little moodier even than last year yet hopeful and celebratory at the same time. The lighting was subtler, the graphics less showy. In fact, the look in the main arena felt less cluttered even though there were individual graphics for each speaker and each conversation that took place on stage.

Truly, the subtext of this conference was respect. Madeline Albright said it best when moderator David Gregory asked her point blank, what do women expect? “They expect to be respected,” Albright said, mincing no words.  And while it was right for Albright to say this, it was the job of JuiterPx to convey it with visual elements, with a professionally run event and with that so important gift of really listening to and acting upon the meaning behind the words.

Carl Bendix and Alice Dubin at The Women's Conference 2009

Carl Bendix, Producer of The Women’s Conference, is interviewed by Alice Dubin, editor of BizBash Los Angeles.

To see the results of that interview, click on the link below:

By Liese Gardner, Guest Blogger

Covering events from the inside is new to me but so much more interesting than how I used to cover them. I was the editor who came in moments before the guests arrived, got a quick look around, talked to the producers, the designers and caterers — who were all on their best behavior — then left to write the story from afar.

Today and tomorrow I am here at The Women’s Conference, literally behind the scenes, “embedded” as it were with the production team behind the main stage. The energy is high as women and men work on putting the final details on the lineup tomorrow — “Can Alicia Keyes share a dressing room?” “Where is Sam?” “And what is the layout of the tables?” The chatter is constant, yet very calm. Everyone has a job to do; everyone is making it happen.

Producer Carl Bendix moves in and out of the room, checking on the sound checks on main stage, taking a call from Maria Shriver about one of the author’s who will be speaking at the Village (the 160,000-square-foot tradeshow) in a half hour and checking in with his team members.

Amber Bollinger, Rundown Coordinator, and Cliff Miracle, Miracle Productions

 

By popular demand, the Women’s Conference has added a second day. Called The Day of Transformation, it is the sister day to tomorrow. While tomorrow will feature speakers who will inspire the audience to action or change, today is the day that enables and teaches them how to be architects of the change in their lives and in the world.

 A few images from setup:

Sound checks, visual checks at main stage

The Speaker Ready Room. Rentals by Town & Country.

Maria Shriver Tours the Village earlier in the day

The Target booth on the Village floor is cool -- they give manicures!

Note: This blog post was written during the 2008 Women’s Conference.

At this moment Carl Bendix and his JupiterPx team are working on the 2009 Women’s Conference which will take place Monday, October 26 and Tuesday, October 27.
For the first time organizers have added a second day, The Day of Transformation, on Monday. This additional day is also filled with seminars designed to give women the insight they need to become their own architects of change. On Tuesday, an amazing lineup of speakers continues with people such as Sir Richard Branson, Geena Davis, playwright Eve Ensler, Katie Couric, Madeline Albright, Valerie Jarrett, Carolyn Kennedy and Alicia Keyes taking the stage and sharing their stories with an audience of 14,000 women.

Stop back next week for behind-the-scenes blogs from the event!

Guest blog by Liese Gardner

Carl Bendix is moving through The Village. Although it sounds small and quaint, this village is anything but. Located in the160,000-square-foot Long Beach Convention Center, The Village is the bustling, interactive tradeshow portion of The California Women’s Conference, an event that, under the leadership of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver, has grown from a small government initiative for working professionals into the nation’s premier women’s forum.

Schwarzenegger and Shriver accomplished this by infusing the conference with the energy and knowledge of a team of professionals assembled from their respective past professions. As an event producer who has worked with both of them during the past 25 years, Bendix easily parlayed his experience producing large film premieres and private events into creating live political and media events such as this conference as well as the Border Governor’s Summit and the Governors’ Summit for Climate Control. And Bendix is in the unique position to take on more elements of these events. While his live stage and production company, JupiterPx, handles the overall concept, design and logistics, Ambrosia, his special events company, produces the related hospitality events such as welcome nights, awards shows and VIP receptions.

To coordinate the logistically complex and ever-growing Women’s Conference Bendix works with a team of veteran producers to handle the event’s many facets. This year his co-producers included Conference Executive Director Erin Mulcahy Stein, Julia Paige, Karen Skelton from Dewey Square Group and Alexandra Gleysteen. With Bendix, the collective experience of this power team includes TV production, politics and large-scale productions.

“We all work side-by-side with Maria to understand and interpret her vision,” Bendix says. “Each year we’ve implemented higher and higher production values, and expanded national and international involvement. The results are a memorable event that even with its greater world view still has the ability to be intimate and touch your heart.” And Shriver’s reputation as a journalist and author had also helped the conference has achieved the relevancy to attract world-class speakers such as Tony Blair, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, Condoleeza Rice and Madeleine Albright among many others.

But tonight, Bendix appears to be the Village’s unnamed mayor – accessible, genial and humble. He continues to move through the throngs of people waiting in line to have Shriver, Dr. Mehmet Oz, or Madeleine Albright sign their books and into the maze of booths he’s walked a hundred times so far this week taking care of every last detail.

A woman says hello and Bendix stops to chat. On the move again, he runs into Shriver’s sons who are selling bracelets that say “Empower” and that will help the Battered Women’s Shelter. Bendix buys another and puts it on his wrist which already sports several of the black and white bands. Walking again, he takes a call from a colleague who has a question on logistics. And at one point, he holds an informal meeting about a security issue with five people who have found him amid the crowd of thousands.

Crises averted, pleasantries over, Bendix continues to walk toward his central command post, a route that takes him through the arena floor where Shriver is rehearsing her speech for the morning. Around her, cherry pickers beep and whirl, putting the finishing touches on the scoreboard, the proscenium and the stage. Bendix stops to listen to Shriver, weighs in on an issue concerning the prompter and her sightlines then is off again.

Through black curtains guarded by large security men who have now seen Bendix so often they barely look his way, he hurries through the labyrinth of speaker ready rooms that have been created from nothing near the stage. Plush as they can be for being in a convention center with white carpets, lounge furniture and organza drapes as room dividers, they soon will house an eclectic group of people. “If these walls could talk,” Bendix thinks out loud, referring perhaps to what a conversation between Jennifer Lopez and Condoleeza Rice might entail.

But this passing thought soon leaves as Bendix goes outside the back door of the center and moves toward a production truck outfitted with state-of-the art audio and visual equipment. Inside, the show’s director and his team watch a row of TV monitors and put the final touches on the script, assigning one of the seven cameras to certain shots and going over the graphics and video elements of the complex show.

In the truck Bendix confers with David Corwin, a long-time collaborator. Bendix and Corwin founded Ambrosia together in the eighties and laid the foundation for the company’s reputation then and now as a well-regarded innovator in the industry. Corwin now owns MegaVision Arts and produces large-scale projection art for events. For the past five years, he and Bendix have conceptualized the stage design and projection graphics of The Women’s Conference and Corwin has overseen the digital, live and recorded media portions of the show, which are numerous.

Tonight, he and Bendix have a final conference on the many video elements of the show and how to handle some of those graphics that were to be provided by the myriad speakers. “At this stage of the game, there is no worrying about this or that,” Bendix says as he and Corwin watch a test run of the graphics. “There is no last-minute guessing now. It’s in motion.”

In motion is right. And yet, as the energy back in The Village begins to ramp up, Bendix grows even calmer, a gift that is part nature and part a product of the many years that he spent behind-the-scenes of events such as this where there is no room for a misstep. For as much as Bendix sees the big picture, no detail goes unnoticed either.

In addition to the main stage and Village, he has had a hand in the details that have gone into the creation of an elegant Speaker Ready Area, a tent equipped with a makeup salon by Armani and decorated with chandeliers, carpeting, French windows and lounge furniture; the installation of a press room with Wi-Fi, plasma TVs, gourmet coffee and all types of snacks; and last but not least, the foresight to make all restrooms accessible to the 14,000 women.

THE DAY OF

The morning of the Women’s Conference, Bendix and his team hit the ground running. They are even more organized this year because all the details associated with the tradeshow (The Village) were attended to yesterday. Bendix is on site early, looking refreshed and smart in a dark blue suit.

As women begin to enter the arena, armed with coffees, Blackberrys (and some industrious ones even have brought laptops), they are ready for anything. The program, however, is designed to build excitement slowly over the course of the day. It begins with an opening prayer and meditation and continues on to a warm, sister-to-sister talk from actress Jennifer Lopez. It’s all building toward the moment women have been talking about all morning – a “once-in-a-lifetime conversation” between Arnold Schwarzenegger and financial guru Warren Buffett moderated by Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball. The timing of this conversation could not have been better — the economy was melting down, the presidential elections were just around the corner and Buffett had just come out with his autobiography. The conference was off to a running start, as was Bendix and his team.

Satisfied with a morning filled with insight, laughs and personal moments, the women leave the arena to attend breakout sessions for a few hours before returning to the main stage. As they do, Bendix and Corwin huddle to review how the stage they designed functioned. The consensus is that it fulfilled every need, starting with the fact that it was designed for the televised event with seven cameras and an HD production truck that fed satellite transmission as well as a live webcast. During the show, the stage was accessed from three different entrances and speakers used a traditional podium and the central lounge area for the conversation. Later, the stage will be reset for an awards presentation then reset again for a concert reveal of a performance by Bonnie Raitt.

Bendix brought in Concept Designs to provide the primary scenic element — a series of curved translucent panels that were disguised as stage entrances. They allowed for lighting changes and obscured a complete band setup that, when was moved at the end of the program, revealed a performance-ready stage. As this was a nonprofit event, the budget did not allow for motorized scenery, yet the program necessitated a professional stage for the event’s roster of high-profile speakers. The use of ingenuity, stock rental scenic elements and an ever-changing landscape of lighting, graphics and branding elements created a stage that met and exceeded each objective.

Above the stage large video screens designed for branding, messaging, speaker support, playback of video packages, and I-MAG created a dramatic focal point in the large arena.  The 18-by-32-foot High Definition center screen allowed for playback of HD content (motion graphics, speaker support, packages) while the side screens were used primarily for I-MAG. Bendix subcontracted Touring Video to provide an HD production truck, cameras, and projectors. MegaVision Arts designed graphical content for all screens and two plasma monitors displaying motion graphics were used as background for the cross-shot during the conversations.

In addition to these screens, a 30-foot-high-by-60-foot-wide proscenium projection cyc was employed for branding, thematic and masking purposes. Two PIGI projectors were blended together to create the powerful images. For example, for one of the show’s sponsors, Target, the company’s red and white logo was manipulated into a dramatic visual as it multiplied and moved across the multiple screens. For this and all the graphics, Bendix and Corwin worked closely with conference producers and the production team to develop looks that changed throughout the day and supported the program.

The floor of the arena was set with round tables to accommodate 3,500 attendees who paid a higher ticket price. The rest of attendees were seated in the next two tiers of seating and a central scoreboard was equipped with video for better viewing. This format worked well for morning sessions and for the delivery of the box lunches to all the seats. The conference continued during lunch with a moving speech by Shriver and a conversation between Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. After the lunch sessions, the attendees either attended more sessions in break out rooms or visited The Village. During that time, the room was completely changed over to theater style for the Minerva Awards followed by a musical performance. This style of seating created a more energetic atmosphere as well as extra seating as this portion of the event was available as a separate ticket.

For Bendix and Corwin, the Minerva Awards, created in 2004 by Shriver to honor remarkable women and their accomplishments, is almost an event within the event. Winners now enter the stage from a center area and the videos that accompany each winner’s award were pre-shot months ago. This year Shriver presented to such well-known women as Louise Hay, Billie Jean King and Gloria Steinem but also to women working tirelessly within smaller realms such as Betty Chinn who feeds the homeless in her small city and Ivelise Markovits who runs a family preservation home.

WHEN THE DAY IS DONE

With the awards over, Bendix is on the move again, checking in with Bono and making last-minute calls for the upcoming performance by Bonnie Raitt. The arrival of Bono from U2 is creating a buzz among the attendees and although he doesn’t perform, his funny, irreverent plea to the audience to help him end world poverty doesn’t disappoint.

As Bono leaves the stage, the design that Bendix and Corwin created so many months ago now goes through its final motion. As it opens from the center, the lights change, the house begins to rock and Raitt and her band are revealed. A total performance-ready set had been waiting behind the wings the entire day.

No one seems happier to be an attendee now than Maria Shriver, a self-professed fan of Raitt. She has earned this moment of entertainment and takes it. As for Bendix, he’s backstage, still talking to people, still answering this or that question, but with an eye toward Shriver, happy that she is happy. For Bendix, this moment is the best compliment she can give him. He gives a silent nod to himself and begins to attend to the myriad details that come now – those involved with loading out the show.

The entire event, which took three days to set up, will be torn down during the night. But for Bendix, the event officially becomes over when the first of the cherry pickers begin to roll back into the now empty arena. For attendees, the first sign that the event is officially over is no less meaningful – the staff begins to re-open the men’s restrooms. A day that was completely for and about women is now over but in no way forgotten. In fact, in many separate conversations, it would appear that Bendix, Shriver, their teams, and the 14,000 attendees are already discussing how they will top this next year.

When Carl Bendix, Creative Director of the international event planning and design firm, JupiterPx, begins the process of producing a multi-day, mega event, he starts by aligning the planets – that is, the team that encircles JupiterPx.

“This is a group of people with whom I’ve worked for years, who understand my vision, and who are best at what they do,” Bendix says. “Because the events we produce, such as this weeks Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles, feature speakers and attendees who are politicians, heads of states, foreign dignitaries and VIPs, there is no room for error. It’s all about precision timing.”

Precision timing is one thing when you are in control of all aspects of a program; another when the speakers and events become more technology-intensive and content for the program arrives in a variety of formats and sometimes just moments before the actual session. But Bendix and his team are no strangers to this sort of pressure having produced the first Governors’ Global Climate Summit in 2008 and many other high-profile political events like it.

To ensure precision timing, Bendix turns to David Corwin and his firm, Megavision Arts, to produce the technological and electronic aspects of the sessions. As Visual Producer of the program, Corwin consults with Bendix and the entire team on all audio-visual systems from details such as projectors to big picture issues such as obtaining and creating content as well as designing the graphics that will illustrate sometimes intangible messages.

“For the Governor Global Climate Summit we had to repurpose content for 200 panelists that arrived in a variety of formats so that it all dovetailed cohesively during the three days of events,” Corwin says. “And during the two weeks before the program we were creating from 30 to 40 graphics to support each speaker and topic and visually interpret their message.”

For instance, Kate Johnson, a visual designer at Megavision, had to take messages such as “A Call to Action” from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and create a meaningful graphic. “I created a graph with a dynamic arrow pointed down to represent the lessening of greenhouse gases,” Johnson says.

“We do everything from that to producing a live satellite feed for a JPL scientist from multiple satellites to show climate change,” Corwin says. “It’s about receiving raw footage such as this and turning on a dime to create a high-quality video working with little budget and time.”

As Corwin and Johnson worked through the night the first day of the program, making sure that first a huge video uploaded correctly from a New York Governor and then that it was repurposed into the format they were using before his morning session, they found humor as Johnson sung the praises of Rescue Remedy. Touted as “yoga in a bottle,” she laughed that this was her secret for getting through the event.

“Yes, what we do is stressful at times,” Johnson says. “But working on an event like this that has such an important impact makes me feel like I’m making my own small contribution.”

Corwin agrees and adds, “We are such a visual society now that creating memorable visuals is yet another piece of the puzzle that might inspire people to action as we work to reduce the harmful aspects of climate change.”

In preparation of the Governors’ Global Climate Summit 2, which was held in Los Angeles, September 29 – October 2, Carl Bendix, Director of JupiterPx, the event production firm in charge of the Summit, and his team flew to London to secure Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair as a speaker at this important event leading up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009.

“With events such as this, JupiterPx conceptualizes much of the content and then works with the office of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California EPA to make it happen,” says Bendix. In this case, the session that JupiterPx created was called Breaking the Climate Deadlock and for it Blair would be joined by Governor Schwarzenegger and Dr. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. This session was one of the last during the four-day event that featured more than 200 panel members and attended by more than 1,000 global environmental representatives.

“In the week before the Summit, Tony Blair traveled from New York to Saudi Arabia to Singapore to be here. That’s how important this Summit and this subject are to him,” Bendix says.

This interview (see below) of Tony Blair by environmental journalist and host of G Living, Sarah Backhouse was produced on site at the summit by HubCulture, a private social media network contracted by JupiterPx to create a “hub” which was formally called The Global Pavilion. The Pavilion, sponsored by Aga Kahn Development and decorated in earth-friendly tones of blue and green, was both a stage on which more than 70 interviews took place, a meeting area, and a bridge between on- and off-line social media that helped lay a foundation for the road to Copenhagen.

Tony Blair At GGCS2

Event planners are asking themselves every day what they can do to make their events as environmentally friendly as possible. There are many little things, but when you are the organizer of the Governors’ Global Climate Summit 2 in Los Angeles, September 29 – October 2 you don’t just make a statement, you need to write a paragraph!

JupiterPx, the event producer of the Global Climate Summit, took on the massive overall logistics of content, staging, multi-media, design and production, and brought in Genesis Creative Group to work in tandem putting into place the details of the meetings, attendee registration and environmental efforts before, during and after the Summit. Laura Bell Way, Managing Director of Genesis, took the lead on greening the summit. “Carl [Bendix, Executive Director of Jupiterpx] knows my history with sustainability initiatives for conferences. He trusted me to lead this effort.”

Partnering as well with CalEpa, an Event Environmental Impact Reduction and Reporting Team (or “Green Team”) was formed to analyze every aspect of the event for its overall carbon footprint: from paper usage in the planning process, to collecting attendee travel data and using green purchasing standards for all conference items and giveaways.

One of the largest on-site elements to the green effort was the venue, the Century Plaza Hotel. Bell Way approached the hotel with a long laundry list of environmental items the hotel had to meet even before the contract for the four-day event that would bring in thousands of attendees, media and VIPs would be signed.

“It was vitally important that the hotel could do everything we asked,” Bell Way, who is also an active member of the Green Meetings Industry Council, says. “We knew we were under a lot of scrutiny from the environmental press and community. There could be no slip ups. I was given the green light – so to speak – for going father than I usually am able to do with corporate clients on their environmental policies.”
Once the contract was underway, Bell Way continued to meet with the hotel’s Director of Engineering and Head Chef as well as California EPA to make sure everything was moving ahead as planned. “We had put into the contract an aggressive performance clause on sustainability initiatives, enacting penalties if they were not met. Happily, the hotel was great and the event was a huge environmental success. Even National Public Radio (NPR) noticed all our efforts from the recycle bins to the edible apple décor.”

One thing they might not have seen or known about was the fact that the hotel had installed an organic waste disposal system before the event – one of the stipulations of the contract’s environmental performance clause. “Knowing there was nothing in place at the time of the agreement, wee demanded that there be a food waste diversion process of some sort during our event. Although we typically encourage composting, we were pleased with the comprehensive process that Chef Lassen and his stewarding staff put in place to recover food waste throughout the hotel.  The hotel installed a Bio-Ez decomposer, which breaks down proteins and puts it back out as liquid sewage. In less than a week, their typical land fill load dropped nearly three tons, a huge decrease and it keeps on reducing.”

Here are some additional steps the organizers took…

1. Paperless registration and communication was used with attendees

2. Teleconferencing was utilized for all planning meetings while at the actual summit all content was available on the internet, Live and post-event web casts by Green Street Scene allowed people to attend for free and without traveling.

3. Limited paper handouts were used onsite in sessions and in Expo.

4. Attendees were provided with public transportation and shuttle options for getting to conference

5. Attendees’ travel distances, methods, and ridesharing was recorded for overall carbon footprint measurement and offsetting

6. All leftover items from conference including banquet food were donated

7. Badges, lanyards, and badge holders were made of recyclable and compostable materials

8. Staff uniforms were made of bamboo fiber and were donated post event

9. Energy, water, waste, drayage, and other metrics of the event were tracked and recorded

10. All print material including signs were produced with plant based dyes using green printing processes using post-consumer content paper whenever possible

11. All print materials were recycled at the end of the Summit

12. All food service was prepared using sustainable, organic food wherever possible

13. No disposable service ware was utilized for food functions – no plastic forks, plates, no bottled water (bubblers were used instead and reusable water bottles were given to attendees in the gift bags), no throwaway items of any kind. Porcelain coffee cups were used and sugar was offered in bulk form, no packets.

14. A comprehensive waste management process was in place to reduce overall waste going to landfill.

15. Recycling bins were placed everywhere. The hotel limited light use, radio and TVs in the rooms when not occupied.

16. Edible centerpieces were created with local, donated food items such as apples, almonds, pistachios and figs which attendees enjoyed throughout the day

To get those donations, Sandra Lady took the lead. She was hired by JupiterPx to carry out the list of stipulations that Bell Way had put in place. In addition, she worked with the Director of Catering to ensure that the food that was served at lunches, and how it was served, took into consideration sustainable practices.

“This event and ones like it will go a long way in making the event and meeting industry aware of what it can do,” Bell Way says. “There are so many ways we can lessen our carbon footprint from travel to technology.”