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.