a day with...
the meeting staff

A Year-Long Encounter
The countdown has begun: just a few weeks until the most important cultural event of Europe (and maybe the world) opens its doors. But what goes on behind all that we’ll find in the halls of the Rimini Expo Center in Italy?
In the midst of unforeseen circumstances, VIPs, and “people who beg you to work for free,” we’ve snuck in behind the scenes to tell you about it.

by Roberto Perrone

Piergiorgio is on the third floor. He’s pushing 76, but moves a lot better than most of us younger folks. As a train station manager, he worked all over northern Italy’s Padana plains. When he finally got stationed practically at his front door, he left his job running trains. Now he directs the video archives, types up the audio transcripts of the encounters, and manages the press office for the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples. “I received the invitation to work here and I accepted it. In this way, I can do my part for something important. Here, you experience with clarity the beauty of a true friendship.” Piergiorgio is a volunteer, that is, one of the building blocks of this story. But the volunteers’ office is open only in the afternoon, because the Director, Donatella Magnani, “Dodi,” works mornings as a nursery school teacher.
We’re in Rimini, Via Flaminia, not far from the soccer stadium, whose team–and it’s a sore point–has just been demoted to a lower league. A road, a bicycle lane, trees, townhouses… The one hosting the offices of the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples Foundation has three floors and white walls. Up a few stairs, and the adventure before the adventure starts, a day in the workshop of the Meeting, a day that lasts a year with the platoon behind the scenes of the event: 14 employees, 4 girls doing “civil service” (volunteer work opportunities offered by the State), a girl on temporary contract, and 4 or 5 volunteers like Piergiorgio. Here, but not only here, the late August kit and kaboodle is born. Not only here, because along with the occupants of the white building, there are scores of people throughout Italy and the world who begin thinking about and discussing next year’s title even before the current year’s Meeting has begun. It’s hard to give you an idea of the scope of the undertaking, because you begin with these three floors and you end with a skyscraper, layer on layer, with 4,000 volunteers, 8 to 10 exhibits, performances, 6 restaurants featuring typical cuisines of various Italian regions, 8 bars, a fast-food court, the talks, round table discussions, and presentations, children, the famous and not-so-famous guests, and 700,000 people who flow into Rimini at the end of August, not to mention a 10-million euro budget. On the eve of the event, one of the most important cultural meetings in Europe, if not the most important, the building will be emptied completely and its inhabitants and all their paraphernalia will move into the hangars of the Expo Center, ready for the final and most difficult challenge: working for the thousands of visitors, the guests–from Nobel Prize winners to former-Prime Minister Tony Blair–to make sure that everything goes as it always has.
Normal office hours–9:00-1:30; 2:30-6:30–are no longer in effect.  In June, during the day I spent here–with a break for grilled seafood with Matteo Lessi, the head of the press office, and his family–the “defcon 1” period was already beginning, when closing time stretches to 8:30 pm, soon to be followed by the period when there’s no closing time. “The Meeting is a big blender,” says President Emilia Guarnieri, who has always been here and who is the memory of the Meeting, the memory not just in the historical sense, but also in terms of its meaning. The others look to her and recognize this. “I think they love me, because they acknowledge that we’re trying together. One person makes a mistake, and another does, too, but we’re all trying.”
The first to arrive on the day of my visit was Marco Pacelli, nicknamed “Pacio.” He was a systems planner in computerized cartography, but he didn’t like his work. He started out as a “simple” volunteer for the Meeting and now here he is, responsible for everything. During the year it’s called “normal maintenance.” “I am responsible for everything inside here and outside. If President Emilia’s home computer isn’t working on a Saturday, I’m off to fix it.” During the Meeting, the maintenance is non-stop: from writers whose servers don’t work to Nobel Prize winners hunting for fast Internet connections, Pacio comes to the aid of all. At the moment, his desk is piled with phone cards and cell phones that would be the envy of any phone-freak: he’s got 150. “Every year, each person has a phone card with all the numbers they use memorized. I re-assign the same phone card to the same person so they recover all the information they stored.”  Pacio’s office is a wonderworld where you can find almost everything, but he’s particularly proud of his online system for volunteer sign-ups.
Marco, Matteo, and Lucia are at the meetings. Marco Aluigi is the man who speaks with the “protagonists,” and he can tell you hair-raising stories, like when he was waiting in fear and trembling for a guest who’d vanished into thin air (Valentino Rossi, a motorcycle racer), or funny stories, like some of the unexpected phone calls he’s gotten, no filter. “Mr. Aluigi? This is [Prime Minister] Silvio Berlusconi.” Behind him in his office you see photos of the people who, with the “come and see” method, have discovered not only the Meeting but a friendship. “Those who have this experience then become its best promoters, like the American legal scholar, Mary Ann Glendon. When we had the 30th-anniversary celebration of the Meeting in Washington, DC, she used the word ‘encounter,’ not meeting, because for Americans a ‘meeting’ is something formal.”

The Cardinal’s swimsuit. There are moving boxes everywhere, the last phone calls to make, lives intertwining more tightly... Nicoletta Rastelli is responsible for public relations, together with Alessia Lachi. She worked on the exhibits and the encounters before taking this position and has changed her office three times–one change for every daughter she has had during these years. She works on the presentations in Italy and abroad and relations with institutions and guests. This can mean ensuring that certain guests meet other guests, or making sure that certain guests don’t cross paths with certain other guests. This is where the work of the hostesses is organized. Here someone counts the steps from the lounge to the bathroom for important guests, because this is something the staff accompanying a VIP should know. Here, as much as humanly possible, they try to respond to the most varied needs–such as buying a (suitable!) swimsuit for a Cardinal. Since his hotel room wasn’t ready, he said, looking out over the inviting beaches of Rimini, “Well, then, I wouldn’t mind at all going for a swim.” The staffmembers try to tailor their assistance to the character of the guest, but sometimes it happens that they book a meal at an elegant restaurant and, instead, the guest wants to eat a piadina with normal folks. Or it may happen that a guest arrives and makes it immediately clear that he wants to limit his involvement to giving his talk and leaving, but then–as was the case with renowned author Giampaolo Pansa a year ago–he ends up asking to stay longer.

D’Artagnan and the computers. The Meeting is an unpredictable enterprise; it may send you back to school. This happened to Alessandra Vitez of the exhibits office. She has a degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, but has found herself studying art, science, and… everything. At her desk with a false Greek vase and a real radio from Prague, left over from an exhibit on the Prague uprising, she has to sort through 50 exhibit proposals a year, whittling them down to 8 or 10. They call her “Mrs. No.” She tries to understand the nexus between the title of the Meeting and the exhibit, and if she doesn’t find one, it goes into the “No” file. The day before the inauguration of the Meeting, she goes through the exhibits with Windex and rags, getting rid of smears or packing material and dust. She finally relaxes when the Meeting begins. The Meeting brings out the yen to use your hands; it’s the paradise of manual labor, according to Sandro Ricci, in the last office to the left on the ground floor. Watching over him is his assistant, Maria Angela Matteoni, the first employee of the Meeting–hired 30 years ago. “Many of those working on the Meeting today weren’t even born then. This experience is a way of clarifying my vocation.” Ricci coordinates the various departments, each with a budget and its own autonomy. “In the beginning, the General Director did everything, and I miss this aspect a bit, because I’m a jack of all trades. Now I’m dealing with the national railway system to schedule special train stops at the Rimini Expo Center, but if something doesn’t work, like the air-conditioning system, I take care of that as well.”
Marco Maresi is the business manager. He has a law degree, but then he put his goatee, which, together with his haircut, gives him the air of a musketeer, at the service of the causes of contributors and sponsors. He works with co-sponsors and sees after the restaurants and advertising. This year has not been easy. “Because of the recession, the numbers are lower, but not to the extent of the negative numbers in other realities.” Marco “D’Artagnan” has been part of the transformation of the Meeting over many years. “When I came on board in December of ’95, there were two desktop computers, one in the business office, that we called “portable,” and the other at the receptionist’s desk, which people had to wait in line to use.” Now, people wait in line to see Roberto Gambuti, who, since 2005, has represented the “cash register.” “I arrived in early August of 2005, with everything in full swing–I almost had a heart attack.” He’s the administrator; at the end of every year he signs the balance sheet, and at the end of every day of the Meeting he closes out the accounts. He instructs the cashiers about attempted theft and fraud, and he deals with accidents. “Our Lady has always kept her hand over our heads, especially those of the forklift drivers.”

Understanding destiny. None of this would work without the last two offices I visit, as evening sets in. At door number 1, the Volunteer’s Office, “Dodi” has finally arrived. “I say that the volunteers are the heart of the Meeting.” Donatella Magnani has been here since 1980, not always in this role, but with the same ideal. “I perceived that a leap was asked of me, like the willingness to go on mission.” You need humanity in this sector, the ability to encounter people, to put 4,000 lives in the right place, making their service something that is good for them. “The one thing I’ll never get used to is saying ‘No’ to people pleading to come work for free.”
Door number 2: “From here, I see the whole Meeting; the people pass by and look in. I observe with a lot of curiosity the movement of the work of those who are here and who, in many cases, aren’t the same as those who began it. A work isn’t the fruit of the project; it’s the fruit of those who do it, and those who do it pursue the objectivity of a task. I like seeing this.” Emilia Guarnieri, the President, insists that she isn’t made to be a manager. She’s made to be a teacher. We began with her, so we’ll end with her. The walls of the President’s office are bare, except for a small frame in front of her desk. “It was a gift from my husband.” There’s one sentence: “Through what I do now I understand what destiny is.” – L. Giussani