This is so not good: From the Washington Post

The FDA is considering changing the definition of chocolate to include those products that do not contain cocoa butter or even cocoa solids. It has come up with a 35 page petition proposing the change in food standards, which has been signed by juice producers, meat canners and the chocolate lobby.

In response to this the chocolate lovers have undertaken a grassroot letter-writing campaign to the FDA to inform the agency that they are against such a change in the standards.

To join the protest, go to Don’tMesswithOurChocolate.com. (Thanks to Patti Shock for the call to action!)

The Boston Marriott provides us with a wonderful example of why punctuation matters in this sign. Why does the lack of an apostrophe matter? Well, not only does it make the hotel look, well, dumb to guests, in this day and age, it also makes it look dumb all over the Internet. I saw it first on Seth Godin’s blog, and have since seen it in about 15 other sites.

This is why every bit of printed matter, however humble, should have a proofreader. We can never say this enough. (I only wish I had a proofreader for this blog—I’m sure I make tons of mistakes even more egregious than making up a new word for more than one person of the female persuasion).

It happens all the time: A speaker gets on a roll and goes over his time limit, then a sort of domino effect happens, with each subsequent speaker falling further behind until your whole schedule ends up dragging and you either cut a session or two, or find other ways to make up the time, or just let it drag on. But just think about what this is telling your attendees. From Seth Godin:

At a conference I recently attended, the group was 50 minutes behind schedule after only 2 hours of the program. For the speakers, the message was, “I’m important, as important as the last guy, so since he went over ten minutes, I will too.” For the audience, the message was, “this is a conference about the guys on the stage, not about us.”

I doubt this is the message you’re trying to get across. Yet another reason to have the hook ready—and use it.

This was one of my favorite quotes during the MeCo chat by Julia Rutherford Silvers, CSEP, on risk management this past Wednesday. (MeCo is short for Meetings Community, which is a listserv, Web site, Second Life mansion, job board…they keep on adding more stuff, including monthly chats with experts like Julia.)

There’s no way I could begin to cover all she talked about here, but here are a few other key quotes:

“You need to acknowledge that risk is inherent in all events. Your risk planning should be as robust as your event planning.”

“Risk is simply the unknown, the possibility that something bad—or something good—could happen.”

“Ignorance is no excuse. ‘I didn’t know’ will do you no good in the courtroom.”

Among her many points were that planners should identify all possible risks, then analyze them to determine their causes, consequences, probability, and priority. Then you can decide which risks need an action plan, and which are unlikely or inconsequential enough that you can let them lie.

As she said, the basis of any good risk management plan includes:

Recognize the risks
Interpret their implications
Solve the situation
Keep vigilant

She has a ton of great information on this topic (and a whole host of others) at this site. Thanks to Julia and to MeCo moderator Dan Parks for putting this series together.

We’ve all misunderstood words and phrases, like “‘Scuse me, while I kiss this guy” for “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky” in the fabulous Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. But Mental Floss and its commenters have me laughing out loud with some of the mondegreens they came up with. Some of my favorites:

I once had someone with a thick N’Yawk accent tell me something cost “a nominal egg.” Only later did I realize he was saying “an arm and a leg.”

When I was a really little kid, whenever they said “Hosanna in the highest” at church, I thought they were saying “lasagna in the highest.” I thought it meant everybody ate Italian food in heaven. It made sense - I mean, the Vatican’s in Italy, right?

I caught my sister-in-law singing in the car to CCR’s Bad Moon on the rise, “theeere’s a bathroom on the right!”

Gotta love these. I know I have a million of them, but can’t think of any just now…

I don’t know why, but these coffee mugs that bring out the animal in us just tickled my funny bone. Wouldn’t these liven up that coffee break? (They come in dog, pig, and rabbit.)

The world of continuing medical education has just changed. OMG, this is so huge. Check out this press release:

NEW FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT FOCUSES ON DRUG COMPANY GRANTS FOR MEDICAL EDUCATION
Inquiry reveals educational grants as common business practice, but potential for abuse remains

Washington, DC – Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Ranking Republican Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today released results of a Committee inquiry into drug company grants to fund continuing education for medical providers. Baucus and Grassley launched their probe following allegations that drug companies were using educational grants for improper purposes, such as rewarding physicians for prescribing their drugs, influencing clinical practice guidelines and Medicaid formularies, or promoting drugs for uses that have not been approved by the FDA – an illegal practice called “off-label promotion.” Guidance on keeping education programs independent of drug company influence has been issued by numerous organizations, including the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME). The report includes information from ACCME suggesting that some purportedly independent educational programs may still be influenced too much by their pharmaceutical sponsors. It appears that ACCME’s oversight of accredited CME providers is insufficient to guarantee the required independence.

“American taxpayers spend billions of dollars every year on drug treatments for Medicare and Medicaid patients, and those scarce dollars need to be spent wisely. Medical education funded by drug companies has to be real education, not a soft sell designed to sway treatment decisions,” said Baucus. “This report shows some separation between medical education and marketing efforts, but this process still isn’t clean enough. As long as drug companies’ medical education efforts can influence Medicare and Medicaid spending, the Finance Committee has to insist that there be more improvement.”

“We need to make sure educational grants serve appropriate purposes. I take seriously my obligation to the taxpayers to make sure dollars for Medicare and Medicaid are spent properly. I also take seriously my obligation to help make sure the 80 million beneficiaries of these programs receive appropriate care. What drugs doctors prescribe for patients, and what drugs federal health care dollars buy, should be made based on accurate scientific information and what is best for that particular patient, not on improper influence from any drug maker.”

The full Finance Committee report is online at http://www.finance.senate.gov/press/Bpress/2007press/prb042507a.pdf . The Committee contacted 23 drug manufacturers in the course of their investigation, and all 23 cooperated fully. Drug companies reported that they continue to fund educational grants as part of a broad business strategy to sell their products, but that they have set policies to distance educational grant funding from marketing. Committee staff concluded that the pharmaceutical industry has focused more on compliance with guidance for educational grants, but risks still exist for kickbacks, veiled advertising of drugs, efforts to bias clinical protocols, and off-label promotion.

Baucus and Grassley said today that the Committee will follow up on its findings with participating drug companies and with organizations that have issued guidelines for medical education grants, including the FDA, the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services, the participating drug companies, and ACCME.

Having worked on Medical Meetings up until recently, I can only imagine the howls that are going out now among the CME community. This really could be the end of CME as we know it. Or not. I haven’t read the report yet, but from the press release, it sure sounds like more regulation is on the way.

We will be following developments in Medical Meetings Magazine, or course. If you’d like to comment, please contact Tamar Hosansky, Editor, 978-466-6358, e-mail tamarhosansky@verizon.net.

The past week has been rife with all kinds of reports of what hotels, convention centers, airports, and others in the meeting industry are doing to green up (and if I weren’t so lazy today, I’d scare up a raft of links for you). But when I saw this item in today’s Boston Globe, it seemed like a different approach to the topic of greening meetings. From the article:

GoLoco.org is part high-tech college ride board and part social calendar, with a dash of environmental conscience. The online service — which went live yesterday, Earth Day — brokers trips between friends, neighbors, and strangers, then automatically divvies up the cost, the seats in the car, and the carbon dioxide emissions…

Travelers set up a profile including languages they speak, the music they like, a short snippet of their voice, and reviews of their driving or conversational skills from past travel companions. They list their close friends and trusted network, then post and search for trips.

Trips are listed, along with the expected amount of carbon emissions, and the cost of the drive — calculated in much the way businesses use to reimburse employees for mileage. If everyone agrees to the trip, details such as pick up time are negotiated, and the trip costs are electronically transferred from passengers to the driver…

A website that simplified ride-sharing could give people headed to conferences, networking events, or client visits an intimate environment to talk with clients or team-build with colleagues.

Not to mention save some money on gas, save a few pounds of gak (to use the technical term) from hitting the atmosphere, and save some bucks on parking, which in cities like Boston can be astronomical. The meeting organizer could include a link on the meeting’s home page so people would start thinking about the carpool option. I like it—next time I have to go into Boston for a meeting, I just might give it a try. (Thanks, Lee, for the reminder about this story!)

There’s a new thing under development that may revolutionize, well, something or other: Furry Vision. From the New Scientist Blog:

consumer electronics company Philips says a single pixel can be made out of a piece of fabric covered with hair-like strands.

Here’s how it works: imagine the fabric is red and the hair is blue. With the hairs lying flat obscuring the fabric beneath, the pixel looks blue. But applying an electrostatic charge causes the hairs to repel each other and stand on end.

This reveals the fabric underneath and changes the pixel from blue to red. With an array of pixels, Philips says it should be possible to build a furry display that can show complete images.

Just think—pettable signage! Talk about a unique sponsorship opportunity…

You know that old saying about pessimists, optimists, and a half-glass of water, right? Well, the always-brilliant Tom Asacker takes it further in this post (wish I’d of thought of this one!).

how would an engineer see the glass? Probably that it’s twice as big as it needs to be. The accountant would want to know if the glass really needs all that water…The government would say that the glass is fuller than if the opposition party were in power. The opposition would say that it is irrelevant because the present administration has changed the way such volume statistics are collected.

And he goes on—made me laugh out loud. At the end, since he’s in the marketing world, Tom asks how a marketer would see that glass. My question would be, how would a meeting planner see it?