I remember posting about the Hampton (Va.) CVB’s Meeting Planners Sound Off contest, but I forgot to check in to see who won for having the most bizarre meeting experience.

Fortunately, my colleague, Dave Kovaleski, remembered. Here’s a snip from his article:

You can’t make this stuff up: Michael Tyron, an independent meeting planner from Edmonton, Alberta, was running a meeting for the Edmonton Police Service at which a woman complained to police that a man was following her. It turned out that the man was trying to recover his wallet, which the woman had stolen from him as part of a pickpocketing scam she worked with her daughter…

Then there was the story, told by Mark Singer, president of Advocates of Virginia, a Richmond-based event management company, of an audience that was moved to tears. During a conference for hospice workers and caregivers, Singer arranged for a state trooper to speak about safety. During a demonstration on the use of pepper spray, the officer dispensed an empty container toward the ceiling. Suddenly, the crowd was hacking and wheezing — but not from the pepper spray dispenser, which was indeed empty. In the kitchen, someone had just spilled a 10-pound container of black pepper in front of an air duct, which sucked the pepper into the meeting room.

The CVB is running it again (yes, you win neato prizes for having the best entries), so go on over to the site to check out how to enter. And here’s hoping you don’t have any pickpockets or pepper spray in your immediate future!

Remember these low-flow flush cards I wrote about a year or so ago? The problem, as probably most hoteliers could attest to, was that Clayton, Mo.’s Clayton on the Park hotel guests weren’t flushing, um, sufficiently. So they created the above card, and the number of times engineers were called to deal with potty problems plunged (sorry!) by more than three-quarters.

This morning, I received this update from general manager Micarl Hill: “Well it’s been 1 year now and we are amazed…..76% less plunging to do! Our guests are happier, our desk agents are taking less calls and our engineering staff is way happier! Also our guests think the card is pretty darn funny adding to our contemporary out-of-the-box style.”

One might say, if one were feeling as snarky as I am this morning, that they’re feeling flush with success.

A few months back, I posted about volunteerism, and why more meetings don’t try to include some elements of service projects into their meetings.

And now, lo and behold, check out what the Professional Convention Management Association has cooked up: A “Service in Sync” Community Service Day. According to the press release, on Nov. 2, “16 PCMA chapters located in cities and regions across North America will organize a variety of “hands on” community service initiatives to give back to their local communities” as part of PCMA’s Network for the Needy program. Very cool, guys.

If you want to know more, Sarah Corradino or give her a call at 312-423-7232.