Interesting article in this week’s Chief Marketer e-newsletter: Show Business: What Makes a Conference Worth Attending.

The 2005 Out & About travel awards, given to destinations that recognize the value of and are marketing to gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexuals, have named Spain as the overall best destination for the glbt crowd. The top 10 domestic U.S. cities are:
Atlanta
Boston
Chicago
Hawaii
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
New Orleans
New York City
San Francisco
Washington, D.C.

(Visit the award sponsor, PlanetOut, for more details.

I found this paragraph in the press release to be pretty interesting, too:

For the 12th straight year, Sandals Resorts’ continued discrimination landed them on the “Rock Bottom” list, which comprises an infamous — yet ever-shrinking — group of places. Although the resort stated publicly that they changed their “heterosexual couples only” policy, OUT&ABOUT Travel received an internal memo Sandals sent to their sales agents last year that stated, ‘ we will continue to market exclusively to conventional male/female couples in love. There will be no departure from this original market niche.’

If anyone from Sandals is reading this, I’d be curious to know if this is true or not.

From this Wired item, it sounds like the logistics must have been interesting for the At the Brickfest 2005 convention, held at George Mason University over the weekend.

Grown-ups showed off their humongous Lego sculptures, including castles and spaceships. And the article even quotes the planner:

Event director Christina Hitchcock said about 350 people registered for this year’s conference, and 2,000 members of the public were expected to cycle through the expo to see all the Lego creations on display.

“We’ve really outgrown this space,” she said.

And one poor guy had TSA dismantle and randomly put back together one of his creations as he was trying to get it through airport security. Ah, the things we do for love.

Over at Fast Company, the Corporate Shrink answers burning questions about PowerPoint use and abuse, and why some people fall asleep in meetings. It’s good stuff.

Scott Briscoe risked life and limb (well, probably a lot of grief anyway) to bring us shoe shots from the show floor, like this painfully uncomfortable-looking-but-stylish look worn by Gina Ballard with PCI (and yes, her feet hurt). After looking at all those pretty shoes, I need to go shoe-shopping!

Anyway, no time to comment on all the posts I’d like to today, but go check them out for yourself! Here are some of my faves since yesterday, both silly and sublime:

60 Tech Tips in 90 Minutes (with a downloadable PDF from the session)

My cohorts and I would like a Methuselah of champagne, if you please… (I had no idea there were so many different sizes of wine bottles!)

The Singing Bartender

Catching a Buzz (though why they call word-of-mouth a “nontraditional” form of marketing I’ll never understand. It’s been around as long as someone’s had something to sell. I may have to write more on this one later—interesting ideas on who your most effective WOM folks might be.)

The Credibility Gap (more from Stan Slap’s session. I really wish I hadn’t missed that one! This one’s about why advertising campaigns aren’t the answer for membership retention.)

I recently had a phone conversation with Izzy Gessell about his work in bringing improv to meetings, and he just blew me away. Most people, like Betty, who wrote about Izzy’s ASAE session here, say things like, “Izzey is one of the most popular presenters at IAF conferences, but his thing - Improv Theater - has always kinda scared me. Way out of my comfort zone!”

Then they experience it, and find that they absolutely love it. One of the exercizes they did in the session was replacing “yes, but” with “yes, and” in conversation. This idea was introduced to me a while back, and it made such an impact that I wrote an entire article without using the word “but.” It was harder than I thought it would be, but really interesting. Give it a try one of these days and see how it changes the whole tone of a conversation. And if anyone’s using Izzy for a program in the greater Boston area and wouldn’t mind a journalist tagging along, please let me know. I’d love to see his ideas in action.

From what I’ve been reading on the ASAE show blog, I would have absolutely loved Stan Slap’s session on Sunday. Here’s a quick snip from Kevin Holland’s most recent writeup, but go read the whole post (and a couple of previous ones, here, here, and here.):

Many associations, because we are built around the concept of consensus, fear controversy. We’d be much happier if everyone got along … if people worked through “proper channels” rather than airing critical thoughts in public. However, if your association is not the topic of pro-and-con conversation among your constituents … if your trade press is not analyzing your actions and measuring your success … if you’re not being criticized sometimes … then you have to question how relevant you really are.

Passion is not blind allegiance. It’s a commitment to the idea of an organization and a fervent desire to see that idea succeed.

Substitute the word company or meeting or product or project (or magazine or blog, for that matter) for “association,” and it still rings true. I’ve felt kind of bad for taking a few swipes at ASAE for its blog this year, but it’s only because I really care about it and want to see it be a success. If I didn’t care, I’d ignore it instead of pore over it and pick it apart. I poke some sticks at MPI and PCMA every now and then, too, when I feel they deserve it, as well as applaud the things they do right. Because I care about what they do, how they position this industry to the rest of the world, and most importantly, their members.

Don’t be afraid of criticism—embrace it. As I’d bet everyone’s mom told them at some point in life: I only say this because I love you.

And please feel free to give me a (Stan) slap when you think I deserve it. I’d be honored, because it means you care about what I’m saying (and that someone’s actually reading this thing!). Plus, I love a good discussion, and if everyone’s coming from the same place, well, where’s the fun in that?

P.S. Note to PCMA and MPI: Notice how much more play ASAE is getting than your conferences did in this space (unfortunately, I’ve been chained to my desk for all three this year). Not that I don’t care just as much, but I had no idea what was going on until I heard about it from friends and colleagues after they got back. Please consider following ASAE’s lead and doing a show blog for your meetings.

Here it is. I like it—especially that it’s all in lower-case letters. Makes it look kind of unpretentious and friendly. What do you think?