There’s a new book out called Travia: The Ultimate Book of Travel Trivia, that sounds pretty fun. Did you know that the word “travel” can be traced back to

a Latin root for torture or torment. In Old French it gave rise to “travaillier,” meaning to become tired or worn out.

By the 14th century, “travaillier” had given rise to the English cousins, travel and travail. Ouch.

Or that Cary Grant, in an attempt to woo a female companion, started the tradition of hotels leaving chocolates on the pillow?

The film star created a trail of chocolates from the parlor of his suite into the bedroom, culminating with a note on the pillow.

According to Travia, “The story, told by the housekeeper, inspired the manager to place chocolates and good-night wishes on guest pillows.”

All this, and so, so much more, or so it sounds in this writeup.

A lot of times, groups need to do a little something to get the juices flowing before a brainstorming meeting. While I haven’t had the pleasure of doing too many innovation/creativity exercises in meetings (though I’d love to), here are a few I like to use to grease my creative wheels:

Take abstract words, like joy or disappointment or power, and describe them in sensory terms (joy is the first morning light hitting a pure white rose just as it starts to open, disappointment is the smell of worms on a sidewalk after a rain, that kind of thing). It forces my brain to think a little differently than it usually does.

Another one I like is to take a task from one profession or role and perform it (or describe it being performed) by someone completely different. Say, how a firefighter would design a park, or an astronaut would cook a gourmet meal.

Or have people try to describe in words something they do every day, then have someone else try to do it following that person’s directions. We did this in a creative writing class I took way back when, and I had to invent a whole new way to tie my shoes because I couldn’t describe how I actually do it well enough that someone couldl follow my directions!

Or have people reverse something they do all the time to do it the opposite way, or just differently. In my case, I occasionally will try to write an article from the end to the beginning, or try to write something without using the word “but,” or write a sentence or two where all the words have to be in alphabetical order (or harder, reverse alpha). Or a news item in rhyming couplets. You get the picture—I’m sure this could translate to other professions or roles, too.

Anything to break the usual way of doing things helps free me up a bit. What works for you?

If you’re like me, you spend an awful lot of time Googling things. I just this morning heard of another search engine that lets you do something good as a result of your searches. Called GoodSearch.com, which will donate a penny per search to whatever non-profit you designate. I don’t know much more about it than that (it’s powered by Yahoo!, so the search engine should be decent), but I thought it sounded like a very painless way to help out a favorite charity or school and wanted to pass it along.

This writeup in the New Orleans CityBusiness talks about how the American Library Association convention in NOLA went off pretty well. All in all, the writeup is pretty positive, though I think I’m still with the 33 percent of people in our recent poll who would need a lot a assurances about safety and security before bringing a citywide to New Orleans, much as I love that town. Particularly now that the murder and crime rate are on the rise again. Then again, it’s still well below what it used to be, so hush my mouth:

New Orleans is now averaging six armed robberies per week compared with 63 pre-Katrina and 8.9 murders per 100,000 people compared with 54.6 in 2004.

That may be, but what about the roving gang of transvestite desperados ripping off armloads of frippery on Magazine Street? (Click through to the article—it’s a great read.)

Anyway, we’ll have to wait and see how the city continues to handle its larger meetings and citywides, and how many organizations have attendees as adventurous as those librarians (I love librarians!). As UNLV hospitality professor Patti Shock says in the article above:

You might be able to bring the meeting planner down there and do a site inspection and convince them all is well but you can’t do that for every single attendee.

“If a meeting planner books, but instead of getting 1,000 people to come they only get 500, that’s a big hit for them and a big risk. Most people are going to hold off and wait and see.”