SMPS offers tour to The President's House

GVF belongs to the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS), which is a national association where marketing and business development professionals work to secure profitable business relationships for their companies. SMPS offers their members professional development, leadership and networking opportunities, as well as marketing resources.

Offered by the SMPS Philadelphia Chapter, I recently attended a behind the scences tour and sneak preview of The President's House: Freedom and Slavery in Making a New Nation (above) located at Independence National Historical Park.

During the tour, project manager Troy Leonard (left), Kelly/Maiello Architects & Planners, discussed the project and its various challenges such as, how the concept design changed in 2007 when archaeologists discovered fragments of the foundation of the original house, as well as the challenges to the artists and scriptwriters to portray the relationship between the presidents and the nine enslaved Africans (picture below) accurately when there were few records of their interaction.

GVF belongs to the local Philadelphia Chapter of SMPS and along with the networking and marketing resources SMPS offers, we have found their national conferences to be very beneficial. In July, I attended their Build Business: Reinvent - Retool - Rebound conference and from this program, along with the first conference I attended in 2008, I have been able to gain more information on the benefits of utilizing social media and redesigning our brand, which we launched in early 2009.