Sen. Tom Coburn is looking to cut wasteful spending—in government meetings, no less. According to Federal Times, the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on federal financial management, government information, and international security, thinks there may just be a little too much fat in government meetings. He sort of has a point: Government spending on conferences has gone up 45 percent since 2001, according to data he has gathered from various agencies. And there have been some whoppers in the past, like when 236 Health and Human Services Department employees spent $3.6 million to go to the 2002 international AIDS conference in Barcelona. But HHS, like other agencies, has since cleaned up its act and tightened up its processes, according to the article.

I’m with Society of Government Meeting Professionals Executive Director Carl Thompson, who says in the article:

You hear a few bad things, but no one ever talks about the good stuff that’s happening. This is sensationalism, I think. Saying, ‘Aha! Look at how taxpayers’ money is being spent!’” he said. “I think the readers should understand that our government planners deserve kudos for pulling off meetings with the limited budgets they have.”

A few weeks ago, Cisco held its annual party. Nice, right? I’m sure it was, for those who got to it. It sounds like the planners didn’t take traffic issues into account. From geek blogger Robert Scoble:

I have a few friends who work at Cisco and they are — more than a week later — still livid about how their company handled their annual party. One worker there told me she was stuck in traffic for more than two hours and decided to simply turn around and go home.

So, what happened? Well, 11,000 Cisco employees were told to go to Shoreline for its company meeting. The thing is Shoreline isn’t designed for that kind of traffic inflow during rush hour. It messed up the commutes of many people, particularly those who work at Google.

But internally workers are still stewing. It’s amazing that they took an event that was supposed to generate postive morale but turned it into really negative feelings toward the company.

As event planners know all too well, every detail counts. This is just another painful reminder.

How’s this for a frequent-flier perk: London man uses air miles for space trip. Yup, an obviously well-traveled Londoner will be aboard a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight in 2009. From the article:

Electrician Alan Watts said he flew to and from the United States on Virgin Atlantic flights more than 40 times in the past six years, earning him enough miles to take the trip into space with Virgin’s space wing, London’s The Sun newspaper reported Friday. The trip cost 2 million frequent flier miles, compared to the 90,000 miles required for a first-class flight from London to New York.

That’s $200,000 worth of miles. Probably this wouldn’t be an option for your incentive group, but wouldn’t it be interesting to turn all those accumulated corporate miles into a once-in-a-lifetime experience?

Via Slashdot.