A Closer Look: Garland Preddy

Name Garland Preddy
Job: Special Events Consultant
Organization: U.S. Marshals Service

Meeting or Event: I coordinate trade shows, management training conferences and ceremonies

Favorite planning tool or resource: We don’t use too much technology with ours, so Excel spreadsheets. I use them for lists — room lists, attendee lists.

Best advice for fellow planners: Have a good sense of humor.

When have you needed a good sense of humor? At one of my very first events I threw away the BEOs because I didn’t even know what they were.

Unusual fact: I was previously a X-ray technician and a school bus driver.

What did you learn from those careers that has helped you with meeting planning? Getting along with people

How did you become a meeting planner? I was the secretary for one of our assistant directors and he was tasked with putting together a training conference and it fell to me. I kept doing it more and more until it was all I was doing.

Best advice you have received as a meeting planner: Lots can go wrong that you as the meeting planner are the only one that knows about it. I have a new index to decide how bad something is: Did anybody die? If no one died, whatever it is, I can deal with.

Garland Preddy taught an educational session about Ethics and Etiquette when dealing with the U.S. government and in other sensitive situations at the 2009 Connect Marketplace.