(Breakfast service ends at 8:15 am)

Keynote address: Based on his best-selling book, Becoming a Category of One, today’s keynote speaker gives a roll-up-your-sleeves presentation about the mindset that creates market leaders. Hear about the attitudes and ideas that top performers bring to challenges and opportunities every single day.

Joe Calloway
Nashville, TN

This session includes a 45-minute tour and a 45-minute flower-arranging class featuring some of the plants used in the hotel. The resulting arrangements will be sent to a local nursing home.

No speaker! No program! Just enjoy lunch while networking with fellow attendees. (Note: You’re invited to join one of the “Management Forum” discussion tables at any time.)

Join your fellow EASAns in the exhibit hall for the industry's leading trade show event!

While there, stop by the New Product Theater! Take this opportunity to see presentations and ask questions regarding the latest products to hit the market from a variety of vendors. The theater will be located on the exhibition floor. Make sure to check out the daily schedule of presentations.

Click here to view a list of this year's exhibitors

A fun-filled extravaganza awaits you this evening! After networking with fellow members during the cocktail hour from 6:00 - 7:00 pm, enjoy a delicious meal, followed by the presentation of this year’s EASA Exceptional Achievement Service Award. Then get ready for the music of singer/songwriter Pam Tillis! A past Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year, she has 13 top ten country music hits to her credit as well as a Grammy for Best Country Music Collaboration with Vocals. She ranked 30 on Country Music Television’s 40 Greatest Women of Country Music in 2002 and recently released the album “Rhinestoned” on her own label.

(Suggested dress: Choose from dressy casual to jacket-and-tie for men; dressy casual to dinner dresses for women.)

Today you’ll experience many facets of the jewel that is Music City. Included are a driving tour of Music Row’s recording studios and music publishing offices, Nashville’s historic downtown district, the painstakingly reconstructed Fort Nashborough, the Victorian warehouse district and the Tennessee State Capitol. The tour stops at Ryman Auditorium, one of country music’s signature landmarks. The facility was originally built by Captain Ryman as a tabernacle, but from 1943 to 1974 it was the home of the Grand Ole Opry–the “Mother Church” of country music.

The tour also takes you to the world’s largest research center dedicated to a single form of American music–the Country Music Hall of Fame–for an in-depth look at the people, places and instruments that have contributed to the development of country music.

(Travel takes about 25 minutes each way; have lunch “on your own” when you return to the hotel.)

A visit to Belle Meade Plantation sets the stage for today’s Southern culinary adventure. Belle Meade played a part in the Battle of Nashville (1864) and was world renowned in the 19th century for breeding race horses. Among its original buildings, it boasts a fully restored Greek Revival mansion (circa 1853), a large carriage house, a stable, and a log cabin.

Your tour of the plantation kitchen will include cooking and tasting Southern classics like biscuits with smoked country ham, pecan pie, or home-raised honey and grape preserves. In the smoke house, you’ll learn the art of salt curing and smoking of hams. (Secret recipes will be shared with all.) Then as a special treat you may sample five wines from the plantation’s vineyards. You’ll also have time for browsing in the Gift Shop.

(Travel takes about 30 minutes each way; includes cooking and tasting Southern food classics and wine tasting.)

Seventeen miles and 100 years from Nashville is Franklin, a friendly town that’s steeped in old-fashioned Southern hospitality and Civil War history. There you’ll visit the Carter House (circa 1830), which served as a command post and field hospital during the Civil War Battle of Franklin. This National Historic Landmark still bears bullet holes sustained during the fighting that day, while the Carter family took refuge in the basement.

Next, you’ll tour one of the largest estates in Williamson County, the elegantly restored Carnton Mansion. Completed in 1826 by former Nashville mayor Randal McGavock, this hotbed of political activity was frequented by Presidents Polk and Jackson. Like Carter House, it served as a field hospital during the Battle of Franklin. The McGavock family maintained the Confederate Cemetery established there until their demise. The mistress of the plantation, Carrie McGavock, was the subject of a New York Times Best Seller, A Widow of the South.

Cap off your tour with “lunch on your own” in Franklin’s Historic District, followed by browsing in the charming shops, boutiques, art galleries and antique emporiums of this “Great American Main Street City.”

(Travel takes about 40 minutes each way; lunch is “on your own.”)

Enjoy a scenic cruise on the Cumberland River and lunch aboard the grandest showboat of them all–the General Jackson. A replica of paddlewheelers that plied the waters of American rivers in the 19th century, the General Jackson has four massive decks and folding smokestacks that enable it to navigate beneath low bridges. Best known for fabulous live shows performed in its beautiful two-story Victorian theater, the General Jackson combines the unique experience of an authentic paddewheel cruise with fantastic sightseeing, dining and musical entertainment (“Fiddlin’ Around” with Tim Watson). You’ll also have time to enjoy a stroll along the decks before docking.

(Travel takes about 15 minutes each way; includes lunch.)

Unwind with fellow members at the EASA Lounge this evening while enjoying cocktails and tasty treats. Pleasant background music will set the mood, at sound levels that will allow you to converse with fellow attendees! This enjoyable evening will be the perfect ending to your 2012 convention experience.

(Suggested dress: Business casual.)