SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Chances are, if you've been to a conference in the NWT, you've run into Darlene Mandeville.

A resident of Yellowknife since 1961, Mandeville - owner, president and chief operating officer of Prestige Planning Inc. - has organized conferences all around the NWT and Nunavut devoted to everything from flora and fauna to government legislation.

Every year, she puts on between 10 to 15 shows, the most recent being the 2009 NWT Aboriginal Business Conference, held over one evening and two days at the Explorer Hotel.

"I'm always busy," said Mandeville, who works from Yellowknife, where 90 per cent of her conferences take place. "There's never a time or day in the year when there isn't an event that's being planned or managed."

While her company, Prestige Planning, didn't come onto the Yellowknife scene until 1987, she had been planning events long before that, making her unofficial debut at the age of 18.

"I was working for the Government of the Northwest Territories and we were planning one of the commissioner's annual balls," Mandeville recalled.

"It was huge. They brought in the chef from the Chateau Lacombe in Edmonton. Of course, NWT and Nunavut were one, so they flew in guests from all across both territories."

It was after a friend asked her to orchestrate a conference in Inuvik for the Mokakit Indian Education Research Association Mandeville decided to make planning her full time (or "full time plus," as she called it) vocation.

"While I was doing that one, I got picked up for another one and it's never stopped," she said, adding that her work has also taken her to Cambridge Bay, Hay River, Fort Simpson and Iqaluit.

Mendeville said the most taxing part of her work is making sure attendees of events are well-informed about the proceedings, particularly when the event in question has an immediate impact on their lives, such as the election of a new band chief.

"For example, I also do the Dene National Chief election. It's so important that everyone knows the process, everybody knows the start date of the nominations, the close date and all of the dates in between that really mean something to them as voters.

"If somebody in the community doesn't get the information on time, then they're not able to participate at all," she said.

Mandeville is currently planning two events: the 50-person NWT Wildlife Act Elders Workshop in Inuvik and the 2009 Dehcho Economic Business Conference in Hay River, which is expected to draw 150 people.

While Mandeville does receive help from occasional subcontract workers as well as staff from the organizations hosting the conferences - and their help is indispensable, she said - for the most part, she's a one-woman company, and likes it that way.

"I have worked before with other staff in a business and enjoyed that very much. However, I'm very hands on, very detailed, and one of my clients said, 'You are Prestige Planning.'"

Mandeville said Yellowknife needs to market itself more as a convention destination to southern markets but needs a proper convention facility first.

"That would be our dream, us convention planners."