This video brought tears to my eyes. I know, it has nothing to do with meeting planning, but who wouldn’t want a hug?

Many thanks to Patti for the pointer.

Aren’t these roses made of maple leaves gorgeous? Maybe, with all the New England leaves just starting to burst into color, I just have fall on the brain, but I would love to see centerpieces made out of these, or bouquets. To learn how to make your own, click here.

While most meeting planners hire high-profile speakers whose names will be a draw for attendees, might there be some circumstances where an anonymous speaker might be best? That was the case at Toorcon, a conference for hackers and security specialists held recently. From BoingBoing:

This year at Toorcon we had a talk that was done fully anonymously over Tor. As far as we can tell, it’s the first anonymous talk ever given at a conference. Alan Bradley and Kevin Flynn gave the talk on methods for circumvent and conceal software copyright protection which technically violates the DMCA. Hopefully this sort of format will be used in the future to talk about somewhat controversial subjects without having to worry about the speakers being arrested (like Dmitry Sklyarov at Defcon and Steven Rambam at Hope). Alan Bradley ended up posting up his notes on how he got the talk to work, and so I just thought I’d share it in hopes that other conferences will adopt this setup. Link

Would anyone other than hackers want to do this? Unclear, but I thought it was interesting, anyway.

We have some new kids playing in the meetings blogosphere: Welcome to the Fabulous Spellos Brothers by James Spellos of Meeting U (I’ve been enjoying his e-newsletter for ages now) and his bro Peter; and to MeetingsBabble (isn’t that a great name?), by Eli Gorin of gMeetings. Also relatively new is the Tourism and Hospitality blog. And if you want to know what’s catching the eye of the ever-vigilant UNLV hospitality prof Patti Shock, check out Stuff from Patti Shock. Be forewarned: She posts a lot.

I had high hopes for Abu Dhabi Events, but it seems to have gone fallow. But I won’t give up on it. After all, the Expophile came back after a hiatus, and Rich Westerfield still (very) occasionally posts on his terrific Trade Show Marketing Report. Some of my other favorites are listed in the sidebar at the left.

Are there others out there that I haven’t heard about yet? Please let me know.

It seems we’re headed that way, anyway. Check out this article about a guy who was taken out by security after being overheard speaking Tamil on his cellphone at the Seattle airport. And what about the two Orthodox Jews who caused a flight to be diverted by praying in Hebrew (link). And language-in-airport issues aren’t just in the U.S. Two guys were kicked off a flight from Malaga to England when they were overheard speaking what fellow passengers took to be Arabic (link).

Next time I fly, I’ll just keep my mouth shut.

(Via BoingBoing.)

The New York Times has this story from a reporter who was on board the corporate jet that collided with the 737 that went down in Brazil last week, killing all on board. And then I think of those innocent girls in their Pennsylvania schoolhouse, who one minute were learning their sums, and the next shot by a madman.

Along with some things that have been going on in my personal life lately, it reminds me once again how quickly and completely life can change, how the vagaries of fate provide a miraculous landing to one plane’s passengers, and a fiery death to the other’s. Safety to one school’s kids, horror to another’s. It also reminds me to appreciate each minute of each day, savor every experience as if it could be my last. Because it could be. It’s so easy to sleepwalk through the day, lulled by routine and familiarity. But really, this moment is all we have for sure. I plan to make the most of it.

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.