I’ve heard of meetings happening on trains, planes, and automobiles (well, buses, anyway), but I hadn’t thought of using a boat as a meeting venue. Not a cruise ship, but a local charter boat, as detailed in this article from the Palm Beach Post. From the article:

“This is a whole different experience. Companies are looking to do things differently, especially when they’re entertaining clients,” said Duane MacPhail, president of Palm Beach Yachts International, a yacht management and charter firm in West Palm Beach. “It’s the exclusivity of it, being able to talk to clients or employees captively. There are no distractions, and it’s a beautiful setting.”

MacPhail estimates that about one-third of his charter customers are companies looking to conduct business on the water, from product launches to year-end wrap-ups.

“That was nonexistent five years ago,” he said.

I’d love to try this for one of our weekly editorial meetings, but maybe I’ll wait until summer to suggest it. Somehow, I think Boston is a little different than Palm Beach in January.

If I were a bellman, I’d seriously consider moving to New Orleans, where bell wages post-Katrina have risen 95 percent, according to a a survey Wagewatch conducted for a group of New Orleans hotels (of course, I have no idea what they got paid pre-Katrina in New Orleans, so this might not be such a great deal; just a better deal than it used to be).

While bellmen are seeing the largest increases, wages also are on the rise for everyone from housekeeping to front desk people. That’s because there’s still a huge shortage of hospitality industry workers in New Orleans, and the city needs to attract folks so it can get its convention and tourism business going again. According to Wagewatch, room attendant and housekeeping wages increased 29 percent, and front desk and night auditor wages were up 22 and 21 percent, respectively.

The idea of embedding radio frequency identification in passports is not being received well by the public commenters, to put it mildly. During the comment period that ran from February to April last year, people expressed all sorts of objections, mainly citing privacy issues. The irony, as Aaron Peterson points out, is that the comments are posted in their entirety, including contact information and full names: “So, way to go, thanks for addressing our privacy concerns by posting the personal information of everyone that had feedback on the subject,” he says.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Is your organization stuck in a rut, holding the same conference year after year, on the same topics, delivered via talking heads and PowerPoint, in a location chosen because your leaders like to golf there? As Jeff Jarvis says, it’s time to shake up the conference model. But how do you get past the “We always do it this way?” barrier?

Check out Death by Risk Aversion at Creating Passionate users. A few of her takeaways:

Regularly review your sacred cows
Regularly review the assumptions behind all your decisions
Practice LETTING GO
Push the boundaries strategically, one-by-one
If all else fails and the culture of risk-aversion is stealing your soul, consider going into “short-timer” mode

As author Kathy Sierra says, “If you have a great idea, what do you risk by not persuing it? Will you have more regrets if you try and fail than if you don’t try at all? Some of the best and biggest ideas happen within the scope of large companies, but some of the most world-changing happen… elsewhere.”

Go ahead and Death by Risk Aversionread it now.

When you think about it, there really isn’t a whole lot to lose, and there is so much to gain.

Keep conferences small: That’s what Robert Scoble, Microsoft blogger extraordinaire, says, if you want to keep it cost-effective for attendees and not take the financial risks.

But what’s even better is this post from Jeff Jarvis on why conference business is ripe for revolution.

Read ‘em and weep, or not, but the times, they are a-changing. What are you doing about it?

P.S. I got an e-mail yesterday from someone about the need to turn the whole conference concept on its head. She thought that the current model was working just fine. But look at the comments to Jarvis’ post, and tell me something doesn’t need fixing.

Update: Here’s a thoughtful post on E-Venting about what’s right about the current model, and what conference organizers can learn from the blogosphere. Some day, I’ll take the time to write thoughtful posts like this!

Here’s a great post on why most training programs don’t end up changing participants’ behavior—and what you can do about it: How to ensure that training is NOT a waste of time! by Management Craft.

(Thanks to Johnnie Moore for the pointer.)

Here’s an encouraging sign: Sexy “booth babes” face fines at video game show. From Reuters:

The video game industry’s 2006 E3Expo trade show in Los Angeles is getting a make-over — banned are the swarms of sexy, semi-clad “booth babes” that in years past took the unveiling of new games and technology to titillating new levels.

Rules prohibiting the use of scantily clad young women to peddle video games are nothing new, but the handbook for this year’s show in May outlines tough new penalties, including a $5,000 fine on the spot for the booth owner if the “booth babe” is semi-clad.

This press release from the Association for Psychological Science has some interesting food for thought for adult educators—and gives a whole new meaning to role playing. Researchers studied what enabled actors to memorize their lines, and came up with some interesting ideas. From the release:

Most people imagine that learning a script involves hours, days, and even months of rote memorization. But actors seldom work that way; in fact, they often don’t consciously try to memorize lines at all. And they seldom consider memorization as defining what they do.

What gives actors their seemingly effortless memory capabilities? Could acting teach us something about memory and cognition, and could acting principles help those with memory problems?

These are the questions that cognitive psychologist Helga Noice (Elmhurst College) and her husband, cognitive researcher, actor, and director Tony Noice (Indiana State University) have set out to answer in nearly two decades of psychological studies of actors. The Noices have not only described a learning principle that can be taught to non-actors but they have also tested acting-based interventions to counter cognitive decline in older people. They review their research in the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science…

The key, the researchers have found, is a process called active experiencing, which they say uses “all physical, mental, and emotional channels to communicate the meaning of material to another person.” It is a principle that can be applied off-stage as well as on. For example, students who studied material by imagining conveying its meaning to somebody else who needed the information showed higher retention than those who tried to memorize the material by rote…

Memory is heavily reliant on emotion, action, and perception. In their work with actors, the Noices’ have found, for example, that memory is aided by physical movement. In one study, lines learned while making an appropriate motion — e.g., walking across a stage — were more readily remembered by actors later than were lines unaccompanied by action. The physical motion didn’t need to be repeated at the time of recall.

Meeting planners and learning facilitators, take note.

E-venting has a great post about the various different types of blogs people are doing to support their meetings. For our Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum in March, I plan to do kind of a hybrid of all four types that he mentions—on-the-scene posting from the conference, some back-end stuff about the operational aspects (of interest, since the attendees are meeting planners), some pre-event programming commentary, and links to stuff of general interest to pharma planners. Ambitious, I know, but I think it’d be the right mix for this particular group of participants. Of course, no one will ever comment, the pharma industry being pretty circumspect these days, but it’s worth a try. It’s what I’d find most interesting, anyway.

What would you find most useful in a blog about a conference you’re going to? If you have any ideas, please drop me a line or leave a comment here.

I’m liking the Hilton San Francisco, where I’m staying for the Alliance for CME annual meeting this week. The place is enormous, but for some reason I’m finding it easy to get around, which is highly unlike me. Usually, in a place this big, I end up wishing for a bag of bread crumbs to leave a trail. They’re also doing a really good job, so far, with this meeting, which is a feat given that, up until a few months ago, it was to be held in New Orleans. Just don’t order the room-service pizza, like I did last night. Either it was a little off, or it just didn’t go well with watching CSI. Hmm.

Since things didn’t get going until this afternoon, I spent a good chunk of the morning wandering the streets of San Francisco. Other than a plethora of panhandlers, this is one great walking city. And shopping. Just don’t let me back into Nordstroms, where there’s a disappointed salesperson still looking to sell me a suit a just loved, until I found out it cost $2,000! Call me New England frugal, but that’s a bit rich for my blood, not to mention my wallet. But it was so great to be able to wander around without a coat—gotta love this California weather!

Quick airline note: The van driver got stuck in all kinds of traffic yesterday, and we didn’t get to the airport until 8:45 a.m. My flight was at 9. I was resigned to waiting for the 3 p.m., but the person at the counter said to give it a try since I just had carry-on, so I sauntered through security and down to the gate, never dreaming that I’d get on the plane. But I did, can you believe it? That kind of thing never happens to me. And then, since the plane was nowhere near full, I got three whole seats to myself. It was almost better than flying first class (almost).