Here are this year’s Trade Show Week Fastest 50 (fastest growing trade shows). Congratulations on keeping growth up in a down economy.

According to this article, convention planning is a great career choice because you get to enjoy nice long vacations when you go on site for a program. Say what?? The article describes it thusly:

If you can’t take time for a vacation, why not pursue a career where your job is actually an extended tour in paradise? Hotel managers and convention planners help corporate clients book long business meetings at luxurious accommodations in resorts and spas. Your work will seem like a juggling act, but you’ll be ideally situated to get the most of your off hours and long weekends. When the dust settles from a major booking, you can use compensation time for swimming and tanning.

Someone take that writer and have her shadow a meeting planner on site at a conference, please! This is just a tad misleading, don’t you think? Or maybe the writer just read this definition of symposium and thought that nothing much had changed since the ancient Greeks got the whole thing rolling (thanks to Ken for the pointer to that Wikipedia entry!).

Here’s more on the topic, from Meeting News.

How could anyone not click on these headlines?

U.S. Peppers Cleared but be Leery of Lobster Liver

Foil Balloons Under Attack (which was followed by California Balloon Ban Deflates)

Someone’s having fun over at our sister magazine, Special Events, and it shows. Made me smile, anyway (and click over to the stories).

How compelling are your calls to action? “Click here to register” may do the job, but it’s not much fun.

I had thought that perhaps towel origami was losing its grip on cruise ships and hotels around the world, but it looks like it’s still going strong. Behold the latest concoctions (via BoingBoing):

Awww.