I just listened to a quick audio clip (available here) of a followup interview with an attendee at the ASAE and the Center annual meeting last August in Boston. This person was disappointed by all the hospitality vendors on the show floor, and in particular the ones offering personal incentives to meeting planners who book their destination. I must have missed this one, but from what she says, it sounds like someone was giving away a car to planners who bring meetings to their city?? She’s right when she says that this doesn’t make anyone look good, and that we need to “clean up our act.”

Tom Asacker has a great post about the use of motivational speakers. While I like a good motivational speaker—they are nothing if not entertaining—do they really make me change anything? Not hardly. I think they are good at setting a mood and getting some energy going to kick off a conference, but if you want real change to happen, I’m with Tom:

Emerson wrote, “The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.” That’s the way to cut through complacency. Inspire each individual. Show him how he is truly at the heart of the brand and the company’s success in the marketplace. Teach him to see clearly, to empathize deeply, and to bring people together for the benefit of others. Encourage him with candid conversation, asking for his help, and really caring about his success and well-being. The secret ingredient for building an engaged organization is not a sprinkling of inspiration. It’s passion, insight and a heavy dose of social intelligence.

I know, that doesn’t seem possible to those who came to Boston for ASAE this year and had the joy of dealing with our surly taxi drivers, but the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center is trying to change all that. They just launched a program that would give drivers who play nice with conventioneers a chance at a $500 monthly prize. BCEC officials will hand out cards at the center, and attendees can check off whether their driver was courteous and helpful, knew where s/he was going, and was a “good ambassador” for the city. Drivers then turn in the cards with favorable reviews and get a shot at two monthly cash prizes.

Hey, it’s worth a try, right? I have to say that when I was in Baltimore last month, I was so impressed with the cabbies I met. They were almost all not just nice, but genuinely seemed interested in what I was doing and what I thought about the city. One gave me the low-down on every hotel in the downtown area. If Boston could somehow get our cabbies to that same level of niceness, it sure couldn’t hurt.

In sort of good news, TSA has announced a slight relaxation of its liquid and goo rules. Now you can carry on containers holding up to 3.4 ounces (instead of the previous three ounces), as long as they still fit in a zip-top bag. And you can carry on larger containers, as long as they don’t contain more than three ounces of goop. So, the half-empty toothpaste tube can now come on board. Whoopee.

One sort of cautionary note: When flying out of Asheville, N.C., on Monday, I had to go to the “welcome desk” to get a baggie, and they charged me a quarter for it. In Manchester, N.H., which I had flown out of, they handed them out for free when you got to the guy checking IDs and tickets in line. When in doubt, BYOB (bring your own baggie).

Kare Anderson sent me some links that meeting planners might find of interest. I don’t know any more about them than what she said, which is this:

Board members and committees might want to try 1videoConference.
. It is a free web conferencing tool in alpha stage. Download the software and install on your server. It can be folded into an association’s domain just like other web pages.

An association’s meeting planning staff and committee chairs can then invite users to participate in a video, voice, text chat and screen-sharing web conference. It is far from perfect today but already very popular. It is an attractive alternative to high-priced web conferencing. Give it two or three months and it will be smoother to use.

Two other “group work” services are Thinkature (for online collaboration) and Conceptshare (for the group creating the online and print promotion for the meeting.

If anyone’s using these tools, I’d be curious to know what you think of them.