Our LAM 2020 Panama City reunion was deemed a great success by all attendees!
The Welcome Reception at sunset was on a terrace overlooking the bay and Pacific Ocean. Next day a tour of the Panama Canal and Gatun Lake, with lunchtime folkloric dancers, followed by the Gala Dinner. Day 3 morning presentations, then a tour of the ruins of the original Old Panama and on to Colonial Casco Viejo, with a rooftop evening event. Finally Day 4 saw a few morning “golfers” then a sunset Catamaran sail around Panama Bay. Here are links to:
The Post Reunion Survey of Participants and message from our Organizers:
Dear friends,
The post reunion survey results are in! You can view them here. Before commenting on these results we would like to thank you one more time for having attended our Panama reunion. We had a great time organising it but more importantly looking at your smiles, your happiness at meeting long-time friends, your energy on the dance floor, your enthusiastic participation in the proposed activities and your direct feedback to us during the 4 days of the reunion, clearly you all enjoyed yourselves very much. Goal reached!
Still, in the Schlumberger spirit of continuous improvement and comparing our notes to the survey results, here are our lessons learned from this reunion, which will help us better deliver the next one:
– on Saturday the visit to the Miraflores locks deserved an hour more than we had allocated, and the lunch break was too long, even though the folkloric dance show was a lot of fun; we should have sought more input from Allegro Tours in order to optimize the day’s timings
– the guides provided by Allegro Tours were definitely sub-standard, as you all noticed; that frustrated us a lot, as the service of five professional English-speaking guides was an important point in our contract with Allegro; so, next time around we will be a lot more demanding from our selected tour operator!
– in retrospect, on Sunday afternoon we should have let you tour around Casco Antiguo on your own – which quite a few of you did! – with a sightseeing cheat sheet in hand and instructions to meet at CasaCasco by 6pm; we will keep that in mind as a good option for visits to old historical town centres
– the HR session during the Sunday morning Alliance SLB meeting did not provide answers to many retirees questions; we will discuss at the Alliance board level a better way to handle this matter
One last thing, as a well-known CEO used to say… During our reunion debriefing a couple of days ago we realized that there is no valid reason to wait two years for our next Americas reunion! And there is consensus between you and us for Cartagena as a top location. So, without making any promises at this stage we are going to run a few internal checks and conduct on-the-ground reviews, and see if we can get a program together for Cartagena in early February 2021, just before the Carnival in Barranquilla. Stay tuned!
With warmest regards,
The Panama Alliance team