Jeffrey Cafaude posted something pretty interested on his blog:

Sometimes the simplest insights yield the greatest dividends. One of the things I’ve noticed consistently in my facilitation efforts this year is the following:

When Baby Boomers think of community, they tend to place a premium on networking and interacting with people like them: homogeneity.

When Generation Xers and Millennials talk about community, they seem to place a premium on spending time with people not like them: heterogeneity.

Similarity. Diversity.

This could have profound implications.

While I’m not sure I entirely agree with his observations, if true, that could cause some serious disconnections for meetings, especially those whose attendees come from different age groups, and those whose planners are of a different generation than the majority of the attendees. How do you provide for both seemingly divergent needs? I think just awareness of the differences helps, but practically speaking, how would this play out? I keep envisioning gray-haired cliques with younger clique-busters circulating at the social functions…

Update: According to this press release, it looks like the younger generation’s mix-it-up philosophy has some science behind it. The research concludes that successful teams are composed of diverse groups, and unsuccessful teams generally are composed of the same folks doing the same thing over and over. I may be a traitor to my generation (Boomer, just barely), but who hasn’t noticed the benefits of working with people who look at things differently than you do?

Overheard at the Denver International Airport recently as Pat and Penny Penguin from Seaworld in San Antonio ducked (can I say that?) through the metal detector:

“Why do I have to go through this thing? It’s not like I’m going to highjack the plane to Antarctica or anything.”

“Just do it and quit complaining. Remember, we’ll do anything for fish. Wish they’d let me belly-slide through, though.”

Thank goodness someone is keeping us safe from fish-toting, non-flying birds! They are awfully cute, though.

Say you have a banquet, and you want to really honor someone. Why not say it with pizza? That’s what UK-based Pizza Express,  which shared a birthday earlier this week with the Queen of England, did when it put together some portraits-in-pizza of the Royals. Do click on the image to enlarge–they’re borderline surreal. And yet, I’m sure, yummy. OK, I better go eat lunch and stop all this foolishness!

(Thanks to BoingBoing for the pointer.)

Repeat that as your mantra when your keynoter misses her plane, your executives ask you to take their laundry to the cleaners, and your feet are aching. Because a survey of 5,000 people really think both our jobs are sexy, according to Salary.com. While reporters and event planners came in behind firefighters (natch!), flight attendants, and CEOs, 10 percent of people think our jobs are just peachy (for more, click here).

Let’s let them hold onto that delusion for a while, eh?

More from Tim Brown’s negotiation session at NEMICE yesterday:

Some helpful facts to tuck away about hotel profit margins–they get a 74 percent margin on rooms, a 36 percent margin on group food and beverage, a 19 percent margin on F&B outlets, a 15 percent margin on recreational outlets, and a 15 percent margin on retail and miscellaneous departments.

More helpful facts: When it comes to expenses as percentage of revenues, hotels spend 33 percent on debt service/renovation, 30 percent on employee costs, 23 percent on operating costs, 8 percent on energy, and just 6 percent on sales and marketing.

A quick summary of where we’re at today:

The economy and the hotel industry is getting stronger, and average daily rates and occupancy are improving. "Every hotel has formulated how much of its inventory to save for transient travelers–which provide a much higher value than group business," said Brown. "If a hotel has a hole for a short-term meeting, that’s good for you." But, he added, as hotels get busier, groups with the best history are going to be the winners.

According to this article, “The typical U.S. hotel achieved an 11.4 percent increase in profits in 2004 over 2003 according to the recently released 2005 edition of Trends in the Hotel Industry published by PKF Hospitality Research (PKF-HR), an affiliate of PKF Consulting. This improved profitability follows a three-year industry recession that saw unit-level hotel profits decline 36.2 percent during the period 2001 through 2003.”

This is good for hotels, of course, but they still have a way to go: “the average hotel in the Trends sample is just barely achieving the same bottom line dollars they did back in 1996.”

I just got an e-mail promotion from Microsoft Office Live Meeting that is very cool. It invites you, potential user, to participate in its free business seminar series using its technology. In effect, you demo the product while learning something you want to know. And the topics are pretty interesting:

Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich
The Entreprenurial Leader
Billionaire Secrets that double revenues even for small companies
Trendscape 2006

I want to attend some of these–this marketing idea totally works, at least for suckers like me. Do you have something about your product, be it a hotel or a meeting, that you can work in a similar way?

I was recently asked this question by a couple of women who are doing a project about teachers who have made a difference in people’s lives–not just academic teachers, but anyone who has taught us a memorable lesson. I responded with this:

One of the most influential teachers I have ever had is my younger sister, Becky Abbot. Becky was born with mental retardation, and for much of her childhood was institutionalized, in foster care, or in group homes. Her early life was not easy, and she underwent many experiences I can’t even imagine. But somehow, she has managed to keep her faith that people are good, that everyone she meets is a potential friend, and that there is pure joy everywhere you look, in every experience you have–even the bad ones. She now lives independently, works a regular job, and has an infinitely better social life than I do.

I’m the kind of person who likes to dwell on what-ifs and should-have-beens, and I like to beat myself up over the past. Becky just says, “Oh, my sister Sue, you’re so funny!,” laughs her infectious laugh, and shows me just how rewarding living in the moment can be. She teaches me to trust in people, and in life. She teaches me that whatever happens is what’s meant to happen; it’s up to you to figure out the lesson in the experience and then move on. Or not figure it out and move on anyway. She teaches me that the true test of a person is not in their intellect, or social status, or any of that horse puckey–it’s in how you touch other people as you dance through life. And how you let them touch you. And, of course, that bowling is the ultimate in fun, even if I stink at it.

Another excellent teacher I had was a girl I’ll call Leslie D., who in 7th grade daily threatened to beat me up after school. I didn’t even know her, or her friends, but she hated my guts for some reason. While I lived in fear and never traveled alone for a while, she taught me an important lesson–that it’s not all about me. Sometimes, people will treat me in ways that have nothing to do with my intrinsic worth, or anything at all to do with me. They have their own reasons and motivations that I may never know, or understand (she told me it was because she hated my face, whatever that means).

While I still struggle with this, especially when I get treated in ways I don’t believe I deserve–I seldom complain when I get kudos I don’t deserve, but that’s another story!–it’s important to remember that people come into situations with their own perspective, and none of us see any given situation or person the same way, since we’re looking through different lenses. And that life isn’t fair.

I could go on and on (Mrs. Hermann from 8th grade English–your influence was so profound it would take a book to do you justice!), but I’d rather hear your stories about people who have taught you important lessons for your work, your life, or whatever is important to you. Please drop your story in the comments area and share with the rest of us those who have helped to shape who you are.

In an interesting move, The Society of Incentive & Travel Executives issued a press release saying that it has sent

a letter to Delta Airlines CEO Gerald Grinstein asking the airline to reconsider its recent decision to discontinue its Meeting Network program. The change would require ticketing thirty days after blocking space with the carrier and makes it difficult, if not impossible for most incentive planners to use Delta for air travel.

“Delta’s recent decision to discontinue its Meeting Network product negatively and directly affects SITE members around the world,” said Bill Boyd, President of SITE and President of Sunbelt Motivation and Travel. “Typically, when an incentive trip is planned, the airline is contacted nearly a year prior to the event. Seats are blocked, but the actual names can not be submitted until 30-60 days prior to travel since incentive winners are not known until the end of the incentive campaign,” Boyd said.

Here’s a list of what Corporate Board Member magazine considers to be the top 10 hotels for board retreats. Just thought you might want to know.