Since I lust in my heart for a Mini-Cooper, I just had to share this image from the mad Photoshoppers at Fark.

But the stretched Mini is just one of a bunch of bizarre limo ideas (a 12-hump camel, anyone?). Some of them are downright hilarious (the pages does take a while to load, though, since it’s so image-heavy).

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This could turn me, bookaholic that I am, into a less-frequent flier: Ross Mayfield reports that a TSA screener informed him not only about the ban on lighters, but also a ban on books:

When he pulled a cigarette lighter out of my bag he mentioned the forthcoming ban, how you could carry four packs of matches and the whole idea was to prevent quickly lighting explosives (like that idiot with evil shoes). When he pulled out two books he mentioned that right now you can only have four books and on the 14th you can only have two. He didn’t have any explanation for this, and I can’t even fathom the purpose.

The very idea of running out of reading material on a flight makes my eyes itch. My favorite part is in the comments area, where one enterprising soul says, "Can’t you just stick some matches into books #3-6 and call them matchbooks? That way you could get six books total through."

Don’t you feel so much safer knowing someone that can’t tell a matchbook from a Vicki Stiefel novel is keeping those book-wielding terrorists at bay? (Full disclosure: Vicki is a friend and former colleague. I’m about three-quarters of the way through her latest, The Dead Stone, and if you like thrillers, you’ll like this one.)

While San Jose may have benefitted from San Francisco’s labor woes up until now, taking on the meetings that didn’t want to deal with the UNITE HERE labor union picketing of SF hotels. Now, according to hotelbusiness_online, labor troubles are coming their way, too.

Labor strife in the hotel industry is moving down the Coast from San Francisco to San Jose where unionized workers are now in talks with three South Bay hotels. The major issue here is health care insurance and the employers would like employees contribute more to the coverage.

The union has warned this past week that the hotel labor strife entering its ninth month in San Francisco could spread to San Jose if hotels here follow through on threats to make employees pay significantly more for health care coverage.

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

He gave us a case study that basically had us trying to figure out a way to increase our chances of placing what was pretty much a dog of a meeting: The requested rates were well below what the hotel wanted, the F&B dollars were below the hotel’s group average, its overall catering-per-room night was also below average, it’s a space hog compared to the room nights, the arrival/departure and seasonality patterns were not good, and its history didn’t back up a request for the larger room block being requested. The RFP for our fido meeting also said it’d accept either a cancellation or attrition clause, but not both. We had to try to figure out where our wiggle room might be.

The charming gentleman from the Drake Hotel sitting next to me and I worked out some ideas: adding in both cancellation and attrition to the contract, reducing the block to more reasonable levels, add in more F&B, changing our arrival/departure pattern and going to shoulder or low season. Other ideas the audience had were to reuse and consolidate the meeting space, to shrink the set up and tear-down times for our expo, and to guarantee future business with the hotel. Brown cautioned that, with the latter idea, "it’s difficult in this environment to judge what that rate you lock in might be by the time of your meeting. Oversupply might return, and the rate won’t look so good."

I just had an interesting chat with Gregg Talley, chairman of the Professional Convention Management Association, about PCMA’s recently released CEO Survey.

I’m having a hard time getting my mind around what looks to me like a glaring lack of strategic planning on the CEO’s part: They "get" the importance of meetings to their organizations–96.7 percent said meetings/events were either important or very important to their mission and bottom line–but they don’t seem get that it takes strategic planning to make them happen in a way that moves the organization toward its goals. They also recognize meeting planning as a key function of the association, but don’t seem to think planners can function on the strategic level.

As Gregg said, "It goes back to the mindset that [meeting planning] is the logistical role of implementation, as opposed to being part of the strategic planning of where you want the organization to go on a strategic level. That’s the connection we have an opportunity to make."

But, I countered, this is just what the CEOs perceive, not necessarily the reality. "If there’s a perceived weakness–and to the degree that perception becomes the reality–they’re not going to let you play at the big table because they perceive you’re not good at it." Aargh!

Then again, maybe some of the fault lies with planners (sorry guys!). While the CEOs said they most valued leadership and budgeting/financial management–two definite big-picture skills–in their meeting planners, along with contracting/negotiation and meeting logistics/coordination, their satisfaction levels lagged 10 to 20 percentage points behind the level of importance they put on these skills.

And it is different, as Talley says, to sit in on a strategic planning meeting than it is to lead a discussion of meeting details with staffers. It’s a whole different way of thinking, and communicating; one that requires planners to stifle their detail-orientation and get pie in the sky. We had a great session on how to work with senior management at our Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, the details of which I will share as soon as I get some time to write it up.

But it also comes down to learning more about the financial end of things. Talley said, "You can’t talk about strategic planning on where you want to go without knowing what resources you have and need to get you there. You can’t participate in strategic planning unless your financial skills are rock solid." He’s right.

A challenge for the brave among us: Take the survey results to your CEO and ask how you stack up against the list of attributes CEOs say they’re looking for. Or, if you’re really honest with yourself, rate your own skills in the areas they consider important. Do you make the cut? If not, it’s time to learn what you need to know to get that seat at the table. (And if anyone knows of such a survey among business magazine execs, please don’t tell me! I’m way too big a chicken to take the challenge I’m asking you to take.)

My other big, unanswered question: How do logistics fit into the big strategy picture? You can’t have one without the other, yet all people talk about is the "s" word, like logistics have nothing to do with it.

After years of meeting in Atlanta, the National Association of Home Builders’ board of directors has voted to move the 2007 and 2008 International Builders’ Show from Atlanta, citing as a reason that the show has outgrown the locale. While the press release said a new location hasn’t yet been picked, I’d put my money on Vegas. Then again, I’m a horrible gambler, so who knows.