An article we ran online last week, MPI PEC-Europe: Passover Problem in 2008?, caused a lot of chatter on the two meetings industry listservs. Most, if not all, who talked about it were shocked and appalled that MPI would schedule its Europe conference over Passover, but believe it or not, it seems to be fairly common to have events scheduled over holidays of one sort or another. Not saying it’s right, just that it happens.

As the stuff hit the fan last week, I found out about two other events for meeting professionals coming up in the next year that fall over religious holidays. It wasn’t meant as a slap in the face in either case. It was more a matter of those dates being the only ones they could get during the time window and price point they needed. Both organizers were worried about how to handle it, given that they really couldn’t change the dates. This isn’t an excuse, but it is the reality some planners have to deal with.

Call me crazy, but I think a little transparency and thoughtfulness goes a long to mitigate the fallout from a scheduling snafu. If the organizers explained the situation, apologized, promised to do better in the future, and asked what they could do to accommodate those who would like to attend but still want to celebrate their holiday (it could be as serious as a religious holiday or just something like the Superbowl), attendees would likely be at least a little more forgiving.

That’s what the organizer of my hometown’s annual fall festival just did when she inadvertently scheduled this year’s Grotonfest over Yom Kippur. She wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper apologizing, explaining, and promising to do better in the future.

To prevent future faux pas, planners can check with the numerous holiday calendars out there, including Earth Calendar and the International Holiday Calendar. I know that sometimes you just can’t help but do it when faced with unmovable dates and inflexible rate needs, but there’s no excuse for just not knowing your dates fall over a holiday.

Maybe meeting planners can take a hint from Whole Foods when it comes to reducing the wait times in registration lines (a perennial problem at most meetings I’ve attended over the years). From the New York Times: A Long Line for a Shorter Wait at the Supermarket.

Sounds like an idea worth checking out to me.

Just when you thought the plans to expand the Jacob Javits convention center in New York were ambitious, they go and propose to double the cost of the expansion to $4 billion. The plan calls for upping the meeting and expo space from the current plan’s 300,000 square feet to 550,000 square feet, and for adding three new levels on top of the current space.

I know New York is expensive, but think about this, from the article:

Boston completed a new exhibit hall three years ago with 716,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space at a cost of $850 million, or $1,187 a square foot. The new plan in New York, by comparison, would cost $7, 272.73 a square foot.

This article from BBC News about the sometimes ridiculous reasons tourist visas are rejected in the U.K. makes me wonder if there are similar issues with visas for those who want to attend a meeting there. From the article:

UK tourist visas are often denied to would-be visitors because they “plan a holiday for no particular purpose other than sightseeing”, a report says. Others were turned down because they had never previously taken any foreign travel or could not speak English…

Linda Costelloe Baker’s report said that despite such flaws there had been “significant improvement in quality.” But she said entry clearance officers could use “some ridiculous reasons when refusing visa for tourist visits”. She said a common reason for refusal was “you wish to go to the UK for a holiday. You have never previously undertaken any foreign travel before and I can see little reason for this trip”.

It makes me wonder what we’d see if someone studied the reasons why applications are rejected in other countries, too. I can’t imagine this is just a U.K. issue.

Regular readers of The Meetings Group’s magazines will probably recognize the byline of CMI contributing editor Bob Andelman, who has been a fixture in our pages for more than 15 years (click here for his most recent story on an unconference held for Disney).

If you’re in a media-related industry or association, you’ll probably enjoy a blog he writes on the side called “Mr. Media” (http://www.mrmedia.com). Each Friday, Bob posts the text and audio of an interview with a major media newsmaker – the editor of Billboard Magazine one week, the executive producer of the TV show “24” the next. You can even subscribe to the podcasts in iTunes. I know this doesn’t have much to do with meetings, but I just stumbled across it last night and spent way too much time enjoying it, so I thought I’d pass it along.

Once again, I have to say that librarians rule! Check out these great conference ideas from the Information Architecture Summit. They include icebreakers, programming, podcasts, the works. Check it out.

Thanks to my favorite lawyer for the heads-up!

Check this out: Protesters spring big hoax on oil expo audience. It seems these two guys who call themselves the Yes Men posed as oil industry experts to get speaking gigs at the conference, and weren’t exposed as frauds until “candles supposedly made from remains of a deceased ExxonMobil janitor named Reggie Watts were handed out” to attendees. Eew. From the article:

As the Yes Men, the pair have travelled the world with an anti-globalization agenda perpetrating hoaxes on groups ranging from the World Trade Organization to the BBC.

In Calgary, ostensibly to promote their book and a documentary they filmed three years ago at the Plaza Theatre tonight, the activists said they couldn’t resist taking a shot at the oil and gas trade show, held over three days this week at Stampede Park.

“This was a great opportunity for us, like the holy grail, really,” said Bichlbaum.

The organizers, understandably, were beyond peeved. Can you even imagine having something like this happen? It sounds like these guys have been able to pull this over quite a few times. In fact, they even got a gig showing a multimedia presentation of their various hoaxes, instead of a night or two in jail.

Meeting planners rely on attendees to tell them what they want (or at least, I would hope they do!). If you regularly survey your attendees and potential attendees, you probably love those who respond as much as I appreciate those who respond to our magazine surveys.

So, a huge thank you to all who took the time out of their busy days to respond to Association Meetings’ latest survey. I appreciate it more than you can know.

Actually, I was off to cover our Meet the Greens Invitational Golf Classic and Marketplace earlier this month in Puerto Rico, but I ran into this cute little guy as we were starting out on an ATV trek through the foothills of El Yunque rainforest and we just seemed to hit it off.

There were a lot of things to like about Puerto Rico on this trip. The new conference center attached to El Conquistador Resort and Casino was just gorgeous. It had a wall mosaic/fountain in myriad shades of green that just mesmerized me. Oh, and it also had the biggest hotel ballroom in the Caribbean, the 22,650-square-foot Grand Atlantic Ballroom, which can be divided into three equally sized sections. It also features up to 16 additional breakout rooms ranging from 815 to 1,619 square feet, and an outdoor terrace for more event space. Our host hotel, the 600-room Rio Mar Beach Golf Resort & Spa, had just been rebranded from Westin to Wyndham, and everyone would catch themselves in mid-sentence, “the Wes…Wyndham.” It was kind of funny. Anyway, it is slated to undergo a $36 million redevelopment that will include a complete overhaul of its casino, as well as an upgrade of the resort’s 18-hole golf courses designed by Tom and George Fazio and Greg Norman, and lobby and guest room enhancements.

But my favorite part was going four-wheeling through the rainforest (don’t worry, it’s all eco-conscious), provided by the Hacienda Caribaldi. They also offer mountain biking, and if I go back next year, I will definitely go horseback riding there on the magnificent Paso Fino horses the ranch provides for trail rides. I saw the trainer putting one of their horses through its moves, and it was sheer poetry.

Sometimes I just have to pinch myself — this is work? Then, after a 10-day sail on a chartered catamaran in the British Virgin Islands (vacation this time, not work), I came back to the reality of a pile of thousands of e-mails and the rest of the detritus of two weeks away from the office. But at least I’ll always have Puerto Rico…

If you want some free legal advice about meeting planning, check out this compilation. A few that I think are particularly good:

State of the Industry: A Lawyer’s View of Today’s Marketplace

How to Improve Convention Center Contracts

Minimizing Risk in International Meeting Planning