The Subject Is Ethics

We've been sending out invitations to participate in quarterly short online surveys for a while now, and I've never received as much feedback on a topic as I did yesterday, shortly after our latest survey — on ethics in the industry — went live.

Seems like we touched a nerve. One respondent pointed out the irony of offering a drawing for a $50 American Express Gift Card as an incentive to complete the survey. The irony wasn't lost on us, but since American Express generously funds our surveys and we give respondents the option to be entered into the drawing, we didn't think it presented an issue.

But that's just the thing: Just as offering a carrot is a commonly accepted practice in the survey world, a lot of our survey questions have to do with commonly accepted meetings industry practices. What we are really after is what practices do planners think are questionable and when are they — if ever — appropriate?

Some things just aren't black and white. The subject of ethics in this industry makes for a fascinating gray area. We're relishing the opportunity to analyze the results and share them in an upcoming issue of Convene.

Extra, Extra!: Convene Newsstand

A couple of weeks ago I inaugurated a weekly companion to PCMA's ThisWeek e-newsletter, which goes out to PCMA members every Tuesday, and contains, among other things, news items for the top three or four stories in the meetings industry from the past week.

But so much else happens every week! And my Firefox is always filled with great stories. It seems that all the news that's fit to print, well ... just doesn't seem to fit. With that in mind, here's an extra helping of meetings industry news — some weird, some pertinent, and some inspiring.

Developer JBG Companies and Marriott International have settled a dispute that was holding up construction on Washington, D.C.'s long-awaited 1,167-room Marriott Marquis convention center headquarters hotel. Last year, JBG filed a lawsuit that accused Marriott of engaging in an irregular procurement process for the hotel. Now that the dispute has been settled, construction on the $550 million hotel should begin this fall.

Sci-fi fans who felt uneasy about the name of the digital billboard on the side of Denver's Colorado Convention Center — SkyNet; aka the name of the ruthless worldwide computer network that seeks to wipe out humanity in the Terminator movie series — can rest easy, as the company behind the billboard has gone kaput. As someone once said, "Hasta la vista, baby."

The San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau (SFCVB) celebrated its 100th Annual Luncheon last Wednesday. Congrats, SFCVB! And, can you believe it? The bureau and the city, which has won the Conde Nast Traveler Readers' Choice "Best City" award for 17 years running, has certainly come a long way since the devastation of the 1906 earthquake. At the luncheon, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and SFCVB President and CEO Joe D'Alessandro both took the opportunity to speak out against a proposed 2 percent hotel tax hike on the November ballot.

According to the Associated Press, Hyatt Hotels Corp. plans to embark upon a multimillion-dollar revamp and subsequent reopening of the 1,193-room Hyatt Regency New Orleans, which is adjacent to the Louisiana Superdome. Before it closed in Dec. 2005, the hotel served as a primary support location for government agencies when Hurricane Katrina struck the city.

Sick of what airline baggage fees? (The Dept. of Transportation recently announced that U.S. airlines brought in $770 million in checked-baggage fees during the first three months of 2010, representing a 33 percent increase over the same period last year.) Well, UPS has come up with a novel solution: The shipper has begun selling cardboard boxes that resemble luggage, complete with carrying handles, for travelers to use in shipping their excess baggage to their destination — and it will cost from $30 to $80 less than taking it with you on the plane.

Convene Reads: Metatropolis

Even in the future, when a combination of dwindling natural resources and increasingly nimble technology creates a semi-dystopian world where international borders mean nothing and some cities have swelled into self-enclosed nation-states -- even then, there will be meetings and conferences. How do I know? I just finished reading Metatropolis, a collection of short stories, edited by John Scalzi, that explore how urban environments might evolve -- and devolve -- in the coming decades and centuries. In one of the stories, "To Hie From Far Cilenia," by Karl Schroeder, people are able to use other people as their flesh-and-blood avatars -- called "cyranoids" -- anywhere else in the world. One of Schroeder's characters, who physically is in Stockholm but who has been living in an "augmented reality" city called Oversatch, describes using a cyranoid in Brazil:

"It was in Sao Paolo. You know Oversatch has been sponsoring me to attend conferences, so I was riding a local cyranoid  at an international symposium on vanishing rain forest cultures. We were off in a English breakaway session with about ten other people, some of whom I knew -- but of course I was pretending to be a postdoc from Brasilia, or rather my cyranoid was -- you know what I mean."

So not only will there still be physical conferences when everything else in the world is virtual, there will still be breakout sessions. Comforting, no? But you might want to start thinking about specific programs to accommodate cyranoids at your next meeting.

Friending Fiscal Policy in the UK

It's one thing to talk about how the social web flattens out hierarchies, but it is another thing to see Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- wearing a blue t-shirt -- videochat with UK Prime Minister David Cameron about using Facebook to connect with Britain's 26 million Facebook users for ideas on how to straighten out the UK's finances.

The British government is partnering with Facebook in "The Spending Challenge," which asks UK Facebook users for their ideas on how the government can reduce its spending and pare the deficit. The first phase, directed at workers in the public sector, elicited 60,000 comments, and the campaign is now open to all British citizens.

The initiative has already saved Britain millions, maybe billions of pounds, Cameron told Zuckerberg, by providing a platform for engaging the public. "That's a pretty good start."

Hat tip to Mashable.com.

UPDATE #3: Arizona Boycott

The 2010 Border Governors Conference, which was to be held in Phoenix in September, was cancelled by Arizona Gov. (and conference chair) Janice Brewer last week after the governors of six Mexican states announced they wouldn't be attending because of Arizona's new immigration law. (Read our previous posts about the controversial law here.) But, according to The Washington Post, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is against the law, is trying to reconvene the conference in another location -- because it offers a valuable forum to hash out the issue:

"I feel very strongly, and so do the Mexican governors, that we need to have the conference because this is a conference that has been going for 30 years," Richardson said. "It's a conference that diffuses a lot of problems."

Brewer agrees. In a letter to the Mexican governors announcing that she had cancelled the conference, she wrote:

Naturally I am disappointed by your decision, as I sincerely believed the gathering of the Governors in Arizona would have presented a great platform to initiate dialogue about the legislation and other topics of great importance to the border region.

Well, maybe it's some kind of a start when people on both side of the issue agree about the power of meetings.

Isn't That Special?

Still confused about what's necessary and what's excessive when it comes to holding a special event? Yesterday's issue of Bisnow for associations and nonprofits reports on a presentation that Gloria Mobley -- grants manager for St. Ann's Infant and Maternity Home, in Hyattsville, Md. -- gave about that very topic at the Foundation Center in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. In figuring out whether you should go ahead with a gala or other high-profile event, Mobley favors the SMART system: Ask yourself if the event has a specific purpose, how you can measure its success, whether your goals are achievable and/or realistic, and does your timetable makes sense.

If you decide now isn't the time for your event, don't throw away your binder:

That doesn't mean organizations can't put things in place for a real event further down the road. "A 'no' is never a 'no.' It's just a 'not now,'" Gloria says.

Flower Power

Tipping our hand a bit, the cover story in the July issue of Convene -- mailing this week, with the digital edition following close behind online -- is about the many intangible factors that make calculating a meeting's true ROI more than just an exercise in accounting. Among the things that Senior Editor Barbara Palmer explores in the article is how aesthetics and production design affect how attendees experience an event -- something that Laura Dowling, the White House's new chief floral designer, has to think about every day. (The lavender bouquet pictured at left is from her website.) A recent profile in The Washington Post discusses Dowling's (and Michelle Obama's) penchant for "official flowers in a 'looser' garden style" -- and suggests what a presidential administration's notion of beauty can say about the administration itself:

Flowers from previous administrations can look dated in years to come, just as first ladies' dresses often do. An Eisenhower-era state-dinner photo shows rows of stiff pyramids of that 1950s favorite, the pink carnation. Jackie Kennedy brought more relaxed arrangements in a decidedly French style. The Nixons are pictured at an informal family dinner (ties for the men, headband for Tricia) with a big ball of daisies and yellow mums in the center; it looks like an old FTD special.

Do you use flowers at your meetings -- as centerpieces or stage dressing, or in some other capacity? Do you see them as an integral part of the message you're trying to communicate? Or are they just something pretty to look at? Then again, as this month's cover story suggests, there may not be any such thing.

Convene Spins: Philadelphia Freedom

On a beautiful Friday afternoon in the nation's capital, at the start of Fourth of July weekend, there's only one song that a guy from Philadelphia wants to hear: "Philadelphia Freedom," by Elton John. An obvious choice, but undeniably rousing -- especially this version, which was filmed at the Royal Opera House in London, and features a 90-piece orchestra plus a student choir from the Royal Academy of Music. Suitable music for any meeting held in Philadelphia, of course, along with legislative programs that are designed to involve attendees in advocacy, politicking, and other democratic rabble-rousing.

Happy Fourth of July!

They're With the Banned

One of the things they tell you to do when you're starting out as a writer is "Write what you know." A good variation for meeting professionals might be "Meet as you do" -- a guiding principle that the American Library Association (ALA) put into effect at its Library Advocacy Day rally on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. As Bisnow reports, the event -- held during the ALA 2010 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. -- was "the only rally we've ever been to that started with story time," with young-adult author Lauren Myracle reading from her book Violet in Bloom. Myracle's work is among the most frequently banned in the United States, which to me makes her reading a double-score for ALA, because (1) it was a literal demonstration of what libraries bring to people every day, and (2) it made a political statement that was in keeping with Library Advocacy Day. Meet as you do, right?

Convene On Site: London, Part 4

The Visit London press trip wrapped up this past Saturday, and after a short English holiday with my wife, I'm back at work, sifting through piles of business cards from the many contacts I made, not to mention stacks and stacks of brand-new memories. Two final postcards from the other side of the pond:

1. A world-class tennis event is a meeting with strawberries and cream. Visit London pulled out all the stops on this trip, which on Saturday culminated in a visit to Wimbledon, where we learned about ticket packages (easily reconfigured as incentive trips), toured the handsome new Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum (available for events), and watched some dazzling tennis (Sweden's Robin Soderling beat Brazil's Thomaz Bellucci 6-4, 6-2, 7-5, while Russia's Maria Sharapova beat the Czech Republic's Barbora Zahlavova Strycova 7-5, 6-3). It was particularly interesting to watch what happened around the court while a match was going on, which was both everything and nothing -- armies of ball boys and ball girls (pictured above), line judges, umpires, and other officials, all positioned exactly where they're supposed to be, moving and speaking only when they're required to and only in prescribed ways, all in service to the players. Just like meeting planning, with logistics, ground rules, regimentation, and even pageantry -- the science of an event -- setting the stage, then receding into the background while the art of an event plays out.

2. Destination marketing is older than Jane Austen. On Monday, my wife and I spent the day in Bath, the historic spa town about a hundred miles west of London where Jane Austen lived for part of her life and which featured in several of her novels. During a walking tour, we learned about Richard "Beau" Nash, who became the city's Master of Ceremonies circa 1705, when its popularity as a resort destination was just beginning to rise, and who eventually appointed himself "King of Bath." Something of a dandy, Nash introduced elegant new rules for social conduct and dress, and in 1708, he commissioned the building of the Bath Assembly House, which soon became a primary gathering place. According to a BBC profile of Nash, "Within three years, Bath was turned into the most desirable location in the country, even drawing socialites from the continent." It's not overstatement to say, as the BBC does, that "it was Bath that made the man, and the man made Bath." Could a destination marketing  executive ask for a better epitaph?