For those idle moments (yeah, right), Mr. Picassohead, like Mr. Potatohead only much, much stranger.

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Joan Stewart, a speaker/trainer/consultant also known as The Publicity Hound, is full of great ideas for getting free publicity. Her tip for today is for those who find themselves in this situation:

Did you ever host a big-name speaker, attract media coverage, then end up disappointed when the media covered the speech but never mentioned the name of your organization?

Of course, she has the answer. (Hint: think strategically when it comes to your logo.)

And I love the way I heard about this item: Someone who reads both her e-newsletter (which I just signed up for) and this blog suggested she get in touch with me to share the wealth. And in true publicity hound fashion, she did. Thanks, dual reader, whoever you are!

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Fast Company magazine, which I continue to have a love-hate relationship with, recently published its list of 100 trends for ‘05. Unlike Rich at TSMR, who didn’t find much of interest, I thought a few of the trends bode, well, something, for the meetings biz. Take #2, for example:

This is just awful. A young man attending a corporate retreat in Alberta was killed by a co-worker (click here for the full story). I don’t know why this happened, but I feel terrible for the family and friends of this man, and for the poor planner and/or facilitator who had this happen on their watch.

How could you possibly handle such a thing? The other attendees must have been devastated.

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Unite Here strikes again–literally. Now Los Angeles joins San Francisco in labor woes as hotel workers decided to boycott nine LA hotels.

So if you have a meeting at the Millennium Biltmore, Bonaventure, Hyatt Regency, Wilshire Grand, Regent Beverly Wilshire, Century Plaza, St. Regis, Hyatt West Hollywood, or the Sheraton Universal coming up, time to brush off your contingency plans.

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Request from the CIC:

The Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) Board of Directors of the Convention Industry Council (CIC) invites you to take part in an important survey to identify the knowledge and skills that a meeting professional must master in order to perform their job in a competent and professional manner.

Part of this study involves surveying actual professionals on specific tasks and knowledge they believe is important. This survey is being conducted as part of a large-scale research project referred to as the Job
Analysis. The invaluable data that is collected as a result of the Job Analysis will be used to update the content of the CMP Exam beginning in 2006. The survey will take approximately 35-40 minutes to complete.

To participate in the survey, click here. Please make your best effort to complete the survey before December 15, 2005.

As an incentive, CIC will let you enter a drawing to get a free copy of the new CIC Manual when it’s released in the spring.

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I find the secrecy around the report that Homeland Security and TSA are now going to allow stun guns on flights to and from the U.S. a little disturbing. Here’s the Reuter’s item:

Taser International on Monday said it had won US government approval to use its stun guns on some commercial airline flights to protect passengers from potential harm.

Taser, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, said the US Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration had approved a “major international airline’s application” to let specially trained personnel use Taser stun guns on flights to and from the United States.

Tom Smith, Taser’s president and co-founder, said the approval was the first to allow the trained personnel to use Taser technology on US commercial flights.

The airline asked that its name not be disclosed, but Smith said the stun guns would be used on all of its roughly 50 weekly flights to and from the United States.

But they not only aren’t disclosing the airline, but they also aren’t saying where the arrival and departure points are. Then again, do I really want to know if there are stun guns aboard a flight I’m on?
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http://www.travelwirenews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000022/002273.htm

This has nothing to do with meeting planning, but if you’re as addicted to Google as I am, you might want to know that Microsoft has entered the search engine game with a beta version of its own search engine.

I wasn’t overly impressed with it myself–definitely not a “Google killer,” as someone in a New York Times article said in today’s paper.

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