A Different View of AIFD Symposium Emerge
Driving home from Orlando after ten days at AIFD Symposium, Vonda recorded this episode from the car — and it's a view of symposium almost nobody gets. She didn't sit in a single program. Instead, she and her longtime friend Julie Poeltler ran the flower room: the behind-the-scenes engine that processes three semi-loads of flowers, supplies every designer on stage, and somehow has to feel calm while doing it.
Two and a half years before the first bucket
Vonda and Julie have done every job a symposium flower room has to offer — designer assistants, bucket sloppers, cleanup crew, designers. So about two and a half years ago they approached Jody McLeod, the incoming symposium coordinator, and volunteered to run the whole room. The planning that followed is a masterclass in logistics: Vonda spent four hours walking the Orlando facility, photographing and measuring every space, because "knowledge is key" when the plan has to be right the first time.
From there came the floor plan — drawn to scale, submitted to the hotel, and approved by the fire marshal. Workstations for every designer, shared space for drop-in designing, staging areas for procurement, and a Rubik's Cube of scheduling so that when early presenters moved out at noon, designers with bigger programs could expand into their space.
Know your people, not just your square footage
One planning detail most of us would never think of: the seating chart had to account for personalities. Put a chatty designer next to someone who works in silence and you've created a problem before the first stem is cut. Vonda handled the logistics and square footage; Julie, who knew the designers best, placed the people. That division of labor — each partner owning what she's genuinely better at — is a big part of why the room ran so smoothly.
Three semis, 26 pallets each, and a lot of pallet jacks
When setup week arrived, so did the flowers: three semi-loads from Armellini plus two trucks from Mayesh, unloaded over two and a half days. Vonda's favorite discovery? Ninety percent of the people running pallet jacks were women, many of whom had never touched one before. Trish Reppert earned the hardest-worker award, running her pallet jack until she bruised the palms of her hands. Buckets were filled in the parking garage (nobody wants water sloshing across a ballroom floor), trash and cardboard were separated to the letter, and Vonda's Apple Watch told the story of the week: an average of 24,792 steps a day — nearly 11 miles.
Why the room felt peaceful: kindness as a system
All week, people kept asking Vonda and Julie the same question: why does this room feel so unstressed? Their answer was simple — kindness. Be kind to people and they're kind back; help others and they help you. The AIFD Ambassadors took out trash, hauled buckets, and assisted designers without a single complaint. And when leftover flowers piled up at the end, the room turned them into joy: over a hundred hand-tied bouquets for hotel staff in two hours, and more than 1,700 bouquets from the Blooms volunteers delivered to veterans, shut-ins, and assisted living residents. Flowers really do make people happier.
An award she never saw coming
The week held one more surprise. After an emotional morning representing Marie Ackerman's award-winning program "Shine" on stage, Vonda was talked into attending the awards ceremony by Julie — who, it turns out, was in on a secret. Vonda received AIFD's Award of Distinguished Service to the Floral Industry, presented by Tim Farrell, with her whole family flown in behind her back. "This is just what I do," she said — giving back with kindness to the industry she loves.
Vonda's parting invitation: if you're not an AIFD member, aspire to be one. And mark your calendar — she and Randy Wooten will co-chair Symposium 2026 in Orlando.
Key takeaways
- Big events are won in the planning: walk the space, measure everything, and map your floor plan to scale before the first flower arrives.
- Partner with someone who shares your work ethic, then divide the work by strengths — logistics to one, people to the other.
- Kindness isn't soft; it's an operating system. It's why a high-pressure room can feel peaceful.
- Volunteering behind the scenes is some of the best education in the industry — say yes to slopping buckets.
- Don't let leftover flowers go to waste; turn them into goodwill for the people around you.