Laila Brock is currently the Director of Events and Team
Operations with the Orange Bowl Committee, where she implements nearly 100
annual events in support of the Orange Bowl and the larger objective of
enhancing the image, economy, and culture of South Florida. Laila will be
facilitating a session on "Taking Creative Brainstorming to the Next
Level" in the Workshop Series at BizBash IdeaFest South Florida on
April 10 at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center. (For more information, and
to register for this conference, please visit
www.bizbash.com/ideafestfl)
My interview with Laila Brock:
Q.
Describe
for me how you got involved in planning for the Orange Bowl.
A.
I kind of fell into events, kind of like most
event professionals in my generation you talk to who feel like they just fell
into it. I was a student athlete in college so there was always that connection
to sports and I always wanted to work in sports because I had that positive
experience. When I left grad school I worked for a nonprofit in Boston and moved
on to Florida Atlantic University to work there.
I was fortunate to attend an Orange Bowl
when my alma mater played in 2005. Very shortly thereafter I started dabbling
in events and meeting planning, but didn't really know that what I was doing
was events and meeting planning because it was just part of my job and
something I enjoyed doing.
When I started with Orange Bowl, I really
just started with a stint in logistics geared toward the teams visiting the
Orange Bowl – their transportation, their arrivals, their meals, meeting space
at the hotels,… just straight operations and logistics. As time evolved and the
Orange Bowl evolved, I moved up into the position I’m in now – I oversee the
operations and manage our large scale events portion of the Orange Bowl game.
Q.
What
do most people get wrong when they hear you help plan the Orange Bowl?
A.
They think that it’s all fun and glamorous and
sexy and it is not. There are a lot of late nights and long hours. Most of our
events happen around Orange Bowl so they happen in a concentrated period of
time and we’re planning 50-70 events large and small to happen throughout that
small timeframe. So there are weeks when we’re at work from 7 o’clock in the
morning until 9:30 that night. There are times when I’ve seen my office more
than I’ve seen my house.
I think people kind of get lost in the beauty
of the industry. But the industry is absolutely amazing and you definitely have
the opportunity to use your creativity, use your people skills, and communicate
with people to generate revenue for and organization. But it’s also about
moving boxes around and coming to work in sweatpants some day because you know you’re
going to have to get dirty or you know you’re going to be on your hands and
knees all day putting together registration packets.
Q.
What
kind of creative thinking goes into planning for the Orange Bowl? What’s your
process? What role does brainstorming play?
A.
We’ll have an Orange Bowl gala, which we call
our Orange Bowl Rhapsody, and we’ll do several of the same events year after
year and they have the same audience, so it’s sometimes a little difficult to come
up with creative ways to run the same event.
But what we’ll do is we’ll tap into our
local network, our local community to figure out what it is they want to see –
something that they haven’t seen before or something a little bit
different.
One of the things that with our Orange Bowl
gala is we’ll take a culture and really explore that culture, like last year we
had a Brazilian theme for our Orange Bowl Rhapsody. We brought in Brazilian
dancers, we had Brazilian food, all the things that would make you feel like
you were in a Brazilian Carnivale.
Q.
How
do you recognize a successful idea from a really bad idea?
A.
Let me give you a really great example. We held
a gala at the
Miami Seaquarium – it is on a park and there’s a small island next to the park and we wanted to
use the space on the park and on the island.
Our committee chair was very creative and
wanted to take boats from the island to the park. We had 1,000 people and he
wanted to take 3 or 4 boats, 15 minutes at a time, and do boat tours from the
island to the park.
While in theory that would be great,
logistically and operationally, it wasn’t going to work. We had an issue where
we would have had people who may be drinking, getting on to boats, going to
docks that were too small to handle that many people. It would have been a lot
of fun, it would have been really cool if it could have worked out.
We try to look at good ideas and try to
make them work and if they can’t work, we try to figure out an alternative that
will.
So one of the things that we did is create an
outdoor patio right outside the tent at that outdoor venue so the same idea was
there – people could look at the island and have an outdoor space and really
enjoy our weather here in South Florida in January.
Q.
How
much has your experience as an athlete impacted the way you approach creative
brainstorming and planning?
A.
I come from the background that no one does
anything on their own. There is nothing that I’m going to achieve that I’m
going to achieve by myself. I know that I need help and I know I need to help
others - my feedback, my expertise, my
hands, or my lever. That’s the attitude we all take here [at the Orange Bowl]
so I think that’s why we’ve been successful with the Orange Bowl and the
community.
Apart from that I think my experience as a
student athlete has helped me to improve the student athletes’ experience who
are here for the Orange Bowl. You know, it’s not just about the sponsors and
about our committee members, it’s about the whole community and about the
student athletes who are here to participate.
Q.
What
has been the hardest/most important lesson you’ve learned in your experiences
planning for the Orange Bowl?
A.
I’ve learned patience and I’ve learned how to
work very quickly. The reason I say that I have to be patient because we work
by committee – we have a group of about 300 CEOs, doctors, lawyers, business
leaders in the community that kind of drive the decisions of Orange Bowl and so
you have to be patient because they know what they want and they know when they
want it but then they sometimes change their minds.
But beyond that, because we work with such
a condensed timeframe, everything has to be precise and everything has to be
done very quickly in a very short amount of time.
So we may have everything planned out, but
a team is announced and everything goes out the window so I’ve had to learn how
to adapt very quickly.
Q.
What
does every event planner need in his or her arsenal?
A.
A great network. I don’t think anyone can do
anything on their own. What I’ve learned is it’s great to ask questions and
learn from someone who has done it before. So I would say the best thing for a
novice event planner to a master event planner is just a really great network.
Q. What’s the best perk for doing what you
do?
A.
I’m a sports fan so working in college
football and planning events is like a dream come true for me. Being able to
stand on the field during the national championship games and watch the game
from the field. I don’t get all the fancy trips around the world like some
planners, but I’m able to be in an environment that I love and an environment
that I helped create and there’s so much energy created around that.
Q. Where do you get your best ideas?
A. I use the website and I use the magazine [BizBash]
all the time – I’m always getting ideas from places around town. […] When I’m
out running or when I’m in the shower or traffic, ideas come from everywhere
and if we can, we’ll use them!
