Check out this map of corporate jets taking off after the Super Bowl. Amazing, isn’t it? I wonder how badly that exodus messed up commercial flights trying to leave at the same time. Or maybe there are smaller airports the corporate jet set uses?

(Via No Silence Here.)

Or, more accurately, they want to charge you for yours. According to this article on MSNBC:

British Airways will begin limiting some of its long haul passengers to a single bag per passenger — and charging them 120 pounds ($236) per flight for every extra piece of luggage each way, the company said Thursday.

The change applies to passengers flying economy class to destinations outside North America, the Caribbean, Nigeria and Brazil. While passengers to destinations such as Europe and Asia were previously allowed as many bags as they wished, they would now be limited to one bag — and charged for the excess.

While the airline says this actually could end up being less expensive than the old system, which charged by weight for any excess baggage. I don’t know, but a $236 charge per extra bag sounds awfully high to me. But I wouldn’t count out seeing something similar happen at other airlines as well. Personally, I’d rather see a discount for those who limit themselves to one bag, but that’s just me.

When it’s done well, according to this post on a blog called “The Big Picture: Meetings Should Make a Difference,” which I fell in love with on just the name alone. Blogger Martha McGinnis writes about how to make your meeting “sticky,” and it’s not by handing out Gummi Bears. A snip:

Stickiness isn’t an accident, and it’s not a function of content, although poor content will quickly negate it. It’s in the DESIGN, the LOOK, the FEEL of a website, and it’s the same with meetings. Is your meeting effective at attracting people to what’s most important? Does it draw them deeper, invite further action or commitment? When they follow through, are they acknowledged, rewarded, “fed”?

Do read it. I’m going to head back over there now and see what other brilliant things she has to say. It looks like the blog was only active for a couple of months, but you can say a lot of good stuff in a couple of months…

Someone asked me today: “On what criteria or data is used that would consider a city a second tier city versus a first tier city. I know that most of us seasoned planners know that when you say New York, San Francisco, Chicago, we think “first tier” and Minneapolis, Denver, San Antonio “second tier,” but what makes it 1st or 2nd tier?”

Ah, the age-old tier question, which, unfortunately, is one without any really great answers that I know of. According to the Convention Industry Council APEX Glossary, a second-tier city is “A city where the space limitations of the convention center, the hotels, or the air lift, make the city more appropriate for smaller meetings and events.” But under that definition, New York would be second tier, which it generally isn’t thought to be. They don’t have a definition for first tier.

I dug around a bit and found a couple of articles that might be useful (here and here), but I really couldn’t answer her question. And what is second-tier to some is third-tier to others.

If you have a more scientific way of looking at what tier a city might fall into, I’d love to hear it either via e-mail or drop a comment below. Thanks!

Thanks to David Shaw, I get to play a game that’s been going around the blogosphere, where you have to post five things people probably don’t know about you, then pass along the honor to five more bloggers. So, here are five things you likely don’t know about me (and likely didn’t care to know, but what the heck):

1. I once wrote the screenplay for a horror movie, based on a plot treatment from a producer. I hear it actually got made, but I never saw it. It was truly, entirely, awful in every possible way (hey, I just wrote it—I didn’t come up with the idea!).

2. I like to collect sand from around the world. I have no idea why, but I have little glass dishes of sand from places I’ve been all over the house. So far, I haven’t been flagged going through the airport and had to explain those grit-filled baggies, but I’m sure the time will come…

3. Roger Daltrey of The Who once told me to @%#$ off. On the flip side of brushes with fame, I once danced on the stage with Tower of Power. Now that was hip.

4. The worst job I ever had was insulating houses in the summer. Think crawl space, bugs, snakes, and fiberglass that gets into the skin and doesn’t shower off. Or maybe it was being a bartender in a disco back in the late ’70s, where the uniforms, if you can call them that, were small, the customers all wore spoons on chains around their necks, and Donna Summer never, ever, stopped loving to love you, baby. I still have nightmares about that.

5. I once was a die-hard Star Trek fan (we’re talking junior high, here). I not only was wildly in love with Captain James T. Kirk, I also made tribbles that moved and purred out of cannibalized plush toy parts, and a communicator that flipped open out of an old microphone from our school’s AV department. Yes, I was, and still am, a hopeless geek. But I have gotten over William Shatner, though I do get a guilty pleasure from watching him and his cohorts on Boston Legal.

Tag—It’s now your turn:
Michael Chaffin, A Star in the Margin
Ben Martin, Certified Association Executive
Mike McCallen, Grass Shack Events & Media
Jeffrey Cufaude, Idea Architect
Tim Bourquin, Tradeshow Startup

I hope their five things are more interesting than mine!

After reading this press release about how the DIY (for “Do It Yourself”) Network is setting up a “blog cabin,” where anyone can vote on design elements from countertops to fireplaces for an actual log cabin to be built in the Smokies, I thought it would be a very cool experiment to do for a meeting as well. Why not give all the options, from formats to speakers to room sets, and put it all out there for a vote? At the least, it would give you a better handle on what people actually want, versus what you think they want.

If you include any graphics in your meeting’s marketing materials—and if you’re not, why aren’t you?—this periodic table of graphical styles is a terrific tool to goose your creativity and bring dull old text to life.

And while you’re at it, kill these buzzwords from your copy. If I never see another paradigm, I’ll be a happy camper.

I know, I know, it’s hard to stay focused on a teleconference call. But here are some tips on making them more productive, brought to you by Web Worker Daily via Boston’s Business Filter.

Check out this editorial in the Boston Globe about sales meetings. Ouch. A sampling:

The sales promotion department works hard to keep attendees conscious during presentations. The meeting room temperature is set at a comfortable 35 degrees to keep people alert and mask the effects of decaying flesh. But, with a planned half day of “recreation” in the offing, they cram 27 1/2 hours of material into two days. The audience inwardly screams “once more with expression” as speakers robotically read scripts until everyone but the person cueing slides is sawing logs. This is interspersed with occasional doses of “executive decongestant” — senior management members performing awkward skits designed to make them seem less “stuffy.”

The sad thing is that there probably is some truth to this perception—not for your sales meetings, of course, but for some.

Two religious travel professionals got together and formed the World Religious Travel Association, which sounds like a pretty interesting organization. From a press release, WRTA “WRTA will promote every aspect of religious travel including escorted touring, cruising, missionary travel, adventure trips, FIT/Independent travel, attractions, retreats, conferences, and conventions/meetings.” (Emphasis is mine.)

The organization also will be holding the World Religious Travel Expo in September ‘08.