Ken Pellman: TEA Party 2012 Takes over Disneyland Hotel
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Summit Day One, on Thursday, March 15 was for executives and senior management, with keynote presentations from Joel Manby, CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment, and Phil Glosserman, business coach and author of Sell the Feeling. Economics specialists Ray Braun, Christian Aaen and Matt Earnest of Entertainment + Culture Advisors spoke on “Economies and Emerging Markets”, and Brent Young of Super 78, Chris Conte of Electrosonic, and Brad Merriman of ProFun, and Rick Poulos spoke about international contracts. The biggest projects under development are happening overseas, after all.
It was capped off with a no-host informal evening open-bar gathering open to all ticketholders and participants in the Summit and Thea Awards Gala, and all TEA association members, regardless of attendance during the day.
Summit Day Two, on Friday March 16, kicked off at 9am after a Continental breakfast with case study after case study presented by the award recipients. Each presentation was 30-35 minutes, with short breaks between and a buffet lunch break. If the presentations ended before the time limit, there was a question and answer session. Otherwise, those in attendance with further questions could ask them outside of the presentations.
This publication, provided to Day Two attendees, is chock full of great information, including interesting articles.
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Joe Rohde's presentation was the first of the day, at 9:00 a.m. Joe has over 30 years with Imagineering, having started out with model-building and scenic painting in the creation of EPCOT Center. He credits fellow Imagineer Tony Baxter with keeping him on-board with Disney after EPCOT Center opened, and Joe worked on the 1983 renovation of Fantasyland at Disneyland, Captain EO, the Norway pavilion for World Showcase, and Pleasure Island, especially the sorely missed Adventurers Club, led the design of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Expedition Everest, and more recently, the Disney’s Aulani in O’ahu.
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His family was in the arts and entertainment; he grew up around it in Hawaii and designed sets in high school. He doesn’t consider himself a great illustrator, and claims to be a “terrible model builder”. What he does do well is lead design teams and think through the meaning of projects. Determining meaning is an important part of his design philosophy.
He pointed out that the Adventurers Club had unpredictability and that things happened TO guests, with the story never resolved but rather ongoing. This made it different from what people were finding at theme parks, resorts, and nighttime entertainment venues.