Face2face is a blog about planning face-to-face meetings, conferences, conventions, and trade shows, plus business travel and hospitality news.

Sue Pelletier MeetingsNet Web editor, mad blogger, and editor of Association Meetings magazine...more

Archive for March 4th, 2005

Fun with words

Sue Pelletier March 4th, 2005

Inspired by the Washington Post’s annual word list, which invites readers to add/subtract/change a letter in a word to give it a whole new meaning (examples: sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it; hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness), I thought it’d be fun to throw it open to meetings terminology.

A few to get us started:

Meltings: gatherings in really hot ballrooms

Baldroom: Where the follicly challenged go to meetings

Attendeed: A guarantee that you’ll never face attrition again

I’m feeling a little creatively challenged today–I know you guys will come up with much better than this! Go ahead and post yours in the "comments" area. I’ll post this to the MIMlist too, and will share the best of what they come up with.

Update: Some MIMlist ideas:

Volinteerns — People who offer their services gratis to learn how to offer their services gratis
Regisstation — Where you go to get badged by a talk show host
Set-up Brew — What the guys who turn the room around drink
Slow Manager — The guy who says he’ll come to your booth right away, and shows up 3 hours later
Prayage — The process of getting your shipment from the dock to your booth
Check-inn: informal term for hotel site inspection
food and leverage (at the prices some of these places charge!)
Aftrition: A contractual compromise allowing you to only have to pay for unused rooms in the back of the hotel.
Canference: Seminar held in a men’s room stall.

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A different kind of airhead

Sue Pelletier March 4th, 2005

As if you don’t get enough of my babbling here–I was interviewed earlier this week, along with Jeffrey D. Brown of TradeShowBlues fame, on Association Nation Radio about (no big surprise) blogging. If you are in the Washington, D.C., area, you can tune in to WMET-AM 1160 (Fox News Radio) on Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, or you can listen in to the show online at www.1160wmet.com. The program will also be available online for on-demand listening at www.associationnation.com beginning on March 15, 2005.

I had a blast talking about blogging, which I think is a great form of communication–for meetings, team projects, just about everything. I’m currently using a blog to map out the logistics of a meeting to be held later this month, and participants will be blogging live from the meeting so those of us who can’t be there can participate. Pretty cool stuff–if it works. I’ll let you know.

But since my main job is being a writer, not a meeting planner, I’d love to write an article entirely through the blog. That would require more back and forth than we usually do here, though. Then again, if Microsoft’s Robert Scoble can write a book through a blog, maybe we have a shot at it. Anyone willing to play?