For the last ten years, approximately a third of my work year has been dedicated to party and event planning. This week is the first time since 2014 that the annual big show is set to start and my fingerprints aren’t all over it. My feelings are unexpectedly mixed.

I’m absolutely thrilled that I haven’t needed to convince dozens of presenters that they need to do things my way. I’m ecstatic that I haven’t had to deal with months of schedule changes and wanna be primadonnas making absurd demands over every detail. I’m incredibly grateful that I haven’t had to spend time discussing the best way to lay out tens of thousands of square feet of circus tents, how best to remove light poles from the parking lot, what live bands we can get for three consecutive nights of social extravaganzas, or whether it’s strictly legal for the US Government to host a whiskey tasting and cigar bar as part of an industry engagement event. 

I won’t need to figure out the inevitable chaos of registration and check in. The moment something goes wonky with the live stream won’t be my problem. I won’t be fielding complaints from people in the audience who have an outsized sense of their own importance because they’re an Executive Vice President of Who Cares. 

I’m not going to get a panicked Teams message that the bathroom is flooding. I won’t spend the night dreading the possibility that the whole tent complex could blow down if a reasonably strong thunderstorm happens to pass through the area. 

There’s nothing about that that doesn’t feel good. 

There is, however, a small part of me that will miss being a minor shot caller this week (Mostly because number of bosses who wanted their name associated with this mess was always very limited). I’ll miss working closely with some of the key players without whom the whole effort would collapse. I might even miss the sense of barely hidden mayhem and chaos that could break out at any second during a live event.

It’s just as well that this experience has passed to others this year. I’m not at all sure I’d have been in the mental or physical headspace to give it the level of attention it needs way back when planning kicked off in the fall.

I wish the team leading this ongoing, multi-year hot mess the very best of successes. I hope they knock it out of the park… if only so people will stop thinking my name is somehow inextricably linked with this particular Big Show. This week is going to feel just a little bit weird, but then I guarantee I’ll be 100% pleased as punch to have the thing be someone else’s problem.