Sure, Nebraska has a lot of cows and corn, but when Omaha’s Qwest Center wooed a group of insurance meeting planners recently, they did it with Maryland crab cakes, tempura ahi tuna rolls, and pastry-encrusted brats, according to an article on omaha.com. While the center staff knows they probably don’t have much of a shot as an insurance sales incentive destination, they pulled out all the stops in hopes of landing regional training-education and product roll-out meetings.

Some good quotes from Ken Juel, a Mutual of Omaha executive who’s been very active in ICPA (he now heads up ICPA’s Midwest region).

In other city news: Looks like San Jose is starting to pick up after a tough convention year. And, according to this article, even the mayor is getting involved in bringing more meetings business to the area.

Interesting editorial in today’s New York Times about a new cell phone service from Cingular Wireless called “Escape-a-Date,” where you can program your phone to ring at a certain time and it gives you a script to follow so it sounds like you have a legit reason to beg off.

First, let me say I am not a cell person. I did get one to keep in my car after a run-in with a weirdo who threatened me with a baseball bat for clipping the edge of his lawn with one of my tires (yes, life is brutal in the suburbs), but it mostly stays in the glovebox. I can’t stand to see four people sitting down to lunch together, each in cell conversation with someone who isn’t there. But this is, basically, institutionalizing lying. And I can just picture some executive programming his phone to give him an out during a board meeting or some such.

Please, just say no!

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“Microsoft Corp., which has amassed an unparalleled cash hoard of nearly $60 billion from its world-dominating software business, announced recently that it would return a large chunk of it to shareholders…the company will pay out more than $32 billion in that one stroke, pending approval of the plan by shareholders.” (zwire.com)

But wait a minute, didn’t they just two weeks ago send a memo around saying they needed to cut $1 billion? According to this article, among those feeling the budgetary heat will be the company’s marketing and event planning departments.

The irony is killing me.

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I’m one of those people who always gets lost in a mall, but I usually do OK when I’m in a city. Unless it’s Boston. No matter how many times I drive around bean town, I always manage to end up on a one-way street to nowhere, looking longingly at exactly where I want to end up and knowing “You can’t get there from here” (said with a Maine accent). That’s why I found this article on the most difficult cities to navigate to be so gratifying–I’m not alone.

“according to a recent study conducted by “Best Places to Live” expert, Bert Sperling, Boston is America’s “most challenging city to navigate”, followed closely by Washington D.C. (2), San Francisco (3), Baltimore (4) and New York (5)*.

So if you do a drive-in meeting to one of these spots, consider sending really, really good directions!

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