As conferences go, the Hawaii Executive Conference isn't very big: only 130 delegates attend. And for the four days it is held at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, by design it will get zero publicity.
Those who attend, however, can take solace in knowing they are among those in Hawaii who have arrived.
They are invited to attend by the conference's 28-member advisory committee and are usually picked from the leaders of Hawaii's top 250 businesses.
Walter Dods, chairman and chief executive officer of First Hawaiian Bank, is there. So is Hawaiian Electric's Robert Clarke; Jeff Watanabe of Watanabe, Ing & Kawashima; Wadsworth Yee with Grand Pacific Life Insurance; Robert Long of Longs Drug Stores; John Brewer of Al Phillips the Cleaner Inc.; and George Ellis with the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Some of the businesses and island institutions represented include: Outrigger Enterprises, Oceanic Cablevision, Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate, Ernst & Young, Pacific Resources, Victoria Ward. Ltd., Alexander & Baldwin, Architects Hawaii, Barnwell Industries, IBM, American Savings Bank, Aloha Petroleum, Milici Valenti Ng Pack, Honsador Lumber, Xerox Corp. and Aston Hotels.
The conference carries so much clout, said Campbell Estate trustee David Heenan, that when he was preparing to come to Hawaii 22 years ago as the dean of the University of Hawaii's School of Business, then-UH President Fujio
Matsuda directed him to arrive early for the conference.
"This is where you will meet all of Hawaii movers and shakers," Heen said Matsuda advised.
The business of the conference is business, but in a larger perspective, said Robert Witt, conference director, the meeting gives Hawaii executives a chance to mull over their own professional development and where they want to be five years from now.
"Some of the younger executives say the conference doesn't seem to have a lot they can use. I say to them: "Just wait -- think of the people you met, the contacts you made, the people you can now just pick up the phone and call,'" Witt said.
When the conference started, it was aimed specifically at getting business leaders together. According to the 1963 brochure, the discussions were about such crass goals as "increasing the dollar profitability of your staff and departments."
Back then, the men and women went to separate breakfasts. Some of the companies in Hawaii's economic stratosphere at that time included the now-gone: American Factors, Bishop Trust, Ewa Plantation, Kahului Railroad Co. and Andrade and Co.
As Hawaii's corporate structure has changed, so has the executive conference.
This week Stephen Case, former Hawaii resident and now chairman and chief executive officer of America Online, will discuss high technology and business. The U.S. ambassador to England, former Adm. William Crowe, Jr.; Charles McDowell, columnist for the Richmond Times Dispatch; and the University of Hawaii's dean of the Ocean and Earth Science and Technology School, C. Barry Raleigh, will also speak.
"It is always a wonderful thing, they bring in meaningful speakers who share their opinions," Richard Henderson, former Big Island state senator and now president of Realty Investment, said.
Dick Grimm, general manager of KGMB-TV, seconded Henderson's views, adding, "The conference's value depends on the speakers."
While Hawaii's business leaders are also using the conference's closed-door roundtable discussions as a chance to bring up new ideas, Witt said.
"Here they can talk freely and exchange views because nobody is taking notes. It gives them a chance to try on something new and express a view," he said.