Another awful airlines story, this time from Steve Yastrow at tompeters.com. It seems that his mom wanted to fly from Phoenix to Denver, pick up his niece, and head off happily together to New York. But, as so often happens these days, her flight was cancelled, she was rerouted and would land in New York an hour after the 13-year-old.

When Mom asked United to give the lone 13 year-old unaccompanied minor service for no charge—a seemingly reasonable request under the circumstances—guess what the United ticket agent said:

“We can’t waive any fees since we’re in bankruptcy.”

Wow.

To which I add, oh so redundantly, wow.

Can a meeting be enough to turn an association around? It sure can be a strong factor, says Kevin Holland on The Association Blog. But (and this is a big “but”) it has to do two things to swing it. He says, talking about the ASAE conference that just wrapped up, it has to succeed in

1) Creating an impact on the people who were there, and

2) Making that impact so hard that it created “buzz” like shockwaves that will emanate from the center of the meeting to the rest of the [in ASAE’s case] association community

Your meeting hopefully does the first, or no one would come. But does what happens at your conference create buzz outside of the convention center? Are your industry bloggers yapping about the keynotes? Are people e-mailing and calling each other to discuss a session? Are your industry’s magazines and Web sites reporting on the meeting? Is even the mainstream press reporting on something you did, or something that was revealed at the meeting? The last one would be a real buzz-masterstroke, granted one that few can achieve outside of tech and medical conferences, where the whole world wants to hear about new gadgets and healthcare procedures.

Anyway, Kevin says a Level 2 event catapulted his organization, the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) out of the doldrums it was suffering under new leadership that came after what he calls “both after a wrenching and politically touchy restructuring that followed years of declining membership,” and was held just a few months after 9/11. They put everything they had into it and, according to him, it was the beginning of a whole new era.

The power of meetings=pleasing loyal members. The power of really good meetings=energizing an entire organization and membership base. The only problem with doing a Level 2 event is doing it again next year, and the next, continually topping yourself as expectations rise.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Citing Labor Unrest, Sociologists Move 2006 Meeting from San Francisco to Montreal (free subscription req’d):

Another scholarly association has decided to move its annual convention
away from San Francisco because of the simmering labor dispute involving
that city’s hotel workers. The American Sociological Association’s
executive officer, Sally Hillsman, said on Tuesday that it was “99.9
percent certain” that the group’s 2006 meeting will be moved from San
Francisco to Montreal…

The sociologists are at least the fourth major group of scholars to
abandon San Francisco because of the conflict. Last fall, the American
Anthropological Association moved its annual meeting to Atlanta at the
eleventh hour. This past spring, the meeting of the Organization of
American Historians jumped from San Francisco to San Jose, Calif. And
earlier this month, the American Political Science Association announced
that its 2006 meeting would move from San Francisco to Philadelphia.

The Unite Here Union strikes again, or at least, that’s the fear. This is sad, especially since the association already moved its meeting once due to union issues. Please work something out here, folks. San Francisco is too great a meeting city to lose these conferences.

Kevin Holland at the Xtreme ASAE blog is talking about the bane of a planner’s existence: Proving that attending the meeting was worth the time and cost of sending people to a show like ASAE. That ROI depends on people putting what they learn into practice, which is a tough thing to do when you’re immediately upon your return buried in e-mail, projects, and deadlines that didn’t go on hold while you were gone.

I find it helps to create specific actions you’ll take, designate who’s going to take them, and set deadlines. Then follow up, and follow up again. I was shamed into doing this after a speaker who led a great session—I learned tons that I planned to use— called me a couple months later and asked me what I was doing with what I learned. As embarrassing to admit as this is, I couldn’t remember what his session was about, much less what I learned or what I did with it! I immediately pulled out my notes and got working on it. Way too easy to let things slide.

As a post-show blog idea for ASAE, wouldn’t it be great to use it as a followup mechanism by asking people to talk about how they’re putting what they learned to use? Could be a good reminder for others, too. That is, as long as someone remembers and cares enough to share.