Salvador Farfan is an owner and photographer at Caught in the Moment Photography
The Los Angeles Coliseum was a terrific venue and host for MPISCC’s State of the Industry 2022 on Thursday January 13th. The weather was overcast and the temperature just enough under 70 degrees to remind us that, although still in the “middle of winter,” we live in paradise. In true Meeting Professionals fashion, tray-passed champagne welcomed the nearly 80 attendees even before they reached the COVID-19 protocol table (more on that later…). And once we were beyond the velvet ropes, warm freshly baked cookies from our generous sponsor ensured that the warm-fuzzies we were experiencing were not just from seeing and reconnecting with friends we hadn’t physically seen in “awhile.”
Michael Dominguez did not disappoint in his keynote address; he succinctly laid out where we have been as an industry in the last several months but perhaps more importantly what we can expect in the near and mid-future. He began his remarks by saying how great it was to be among a bunch of negative people; a tongue-in-cheek reference to the strict protocols for admission to the event. All attendees had to undergo a rapid Covid-19 test and have a negative result in order to attend the event, an action that he applauded and emphasized was key in having events that minimized the risk of transmission. Perhaps the most optimistic note to his remarks was the “decoupling” of hospitalizations and deaths from the rate of infections, he showed numerous graphs that pointed to the expected crest and fall of the Omicron Variant wave and what that would mean for events.
We were also treated to a brief history of the Coliseum including an abbreviated list of the VIPs that have walked the grounds, and we too were made to feel as VIPs in walking through the historic Peristyle arches for an in-depth tour of the Coliseum. The evening concluded with a networking reception on the 7th floor of the Scholarship Club Tower that offered an iconic panorama of LA’s city lights framed with a sea of red seats and the flaming torch.
