This weekend's ardfheis will feature a number of firsts. The first for Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach. The first since Fianna Fail went back into government. The first ardfheis village, and the first to have the party president's speech broadcast live on the Internet.
Each of those firsts is important in its own way, though you might not think it at first glance. They are important because of what the ardfheis now is. The Americans have a term for it, a pep rally.
It is a long time since real decisions were made at ardfheiseanna. Policy-making has been moved away from this event purely due to practicality. Around 6,000 people will be attending this year's get-together and trying to get some coherent sense of how the party's strategies should be moving from that size of crowd in two days just isn't practical.
Yes, there will be a rake of motions for the delegates to vote on. But they will all feature words like endorse, congratulate and support. The most critical language that will be used will be couched in the most positive construction possible.
"The Minister is to be praised by all and sundry for his/her sterling performance on the implementation of the four-day weekend policy and the ardfheis urges the Minister to continue and expand his/her efforts in this matter to create the five-day weekends this nation needs."
The measure of a pep rally is the mood of the delegates when they leave. They should head off to their various towns and villages filled with the urge to work harder for the party.
This year that might be the trickiest job to do. Right now Fianna Fail is doing very nicely. Great showing in the polls, phenomenal performance economically and none of the major divisions such a large party would usually suffer from. This ardfheis will be a half-time team talk for a side that is winning comfortably.
Any team manager will tell you that that is the most difficult team talk to deliver. The trick is to convince your players that they have not won the match already, that lapses in concentration and effort will result in the other side snatching victory from you.
Bertie Ahern's address tonight will be key to achieving that goal. He is going to have to achieve what no leader has done in a long time with that speech - make it interesting.
The length of time allocated has turned the oration into a marathon: an ordeal for the person who has to deliver it and an ordeal for the viewing audience.
When the speech was first televised the viewing figures were pretty good. But now only the most dedicated party supporter and the political correspondents tune in.
This year, with the web broadcast and the inclusion of a series of video inserts, that novelty value will be restored. The viewing figures will be up again.
Bertie has to take advantage of that to deliver an address that grabs the attention, spends just enough time slapping everyone on the back and then gets them focused on the job ahead. I don't envy him the task.
He has to scare them without worrying them, undermine their self-satisfaction without shattering their confidence, and make the opposition look threatening without painting them as too powerful, dangerous or competent.
The ardfheis village is an interesting innovation. The idea is, ostensibly, to include the social partners, to allow them to share in the congratulatory atmosphere that will permeate the conference.
Among those who will be represented at the village are the ICTU, the IFA and the National Women's Council of Ireland. Each of these organisations has spent quite some time recently being anything but congratulatory towards the Government and Fianna Fail.
I suspect this is a variation on the idea of keeping your most implacable enemies inside your tent so that their stream of invective has to be directed outside. That idea is based on the quality of the manners of your guests. I'm sure the senior party officials are hoping their guests' house training lasts the weekend.
I said earlier that there were no major divisions within the party and that is true. But there are a couple of minor ones that do need to be addressed.
We have heard of discontent within the ranks regarding regionalisation. While the plan included the areas that would already fall within the EU criteria (the west, Border and the midlands) everyone was relatively happy. The inclusion of Clare and Kerry, both of which do not currently comply (according to some observers) with the Objective One criteria, has lead to understandable resentment.
This has been exacerbated by the trumpeting of their inclusion as a personal victory by Jackie Healy-Rae. But of course Jackie Healy-Rae's behaviour was predictable and is neither surprising nor unexpected.
Then "Mighty Mouse" took the stage. Jim Kemmy christened Willie O'Dea thus on account of Willie's tendency to create a lot of noise in his own constituency and through the media while remaining silent at parliamentary party meetings.
His attack on Sile De Valera was a perfect example of this behaviour. An outspoken attack on a Government Minister from his own party in the papers, having kept his mouth shut at the parliamentary party meeting.
Whatever about the rights and wrongs of the O'Dea outpouring, it has brought forward a worry that must be dealt with. Backbenchers, especially those sharing a constituency with one of the independents, are concerned that they have very little real power.
They see the independents saying "jump" and the Government asking "how high?" At the same time they believe that they can bellow their lungs out while the Cabinet doesn't so much as twitch. (It can be even more frustrating sometimes for a Cabinet Minister).
This is a communications problem more than anything else, and in Bertie Ahern we have a superb one-to-one communicator who will be able to solve this mini-crisis without breaking a sweat.