The eagerly awaited winners of the 7th annual “America’s Best Restroom” contest have been announced. Below is a photo of the women’s room sink at the third-place finisher, Brio in Rockford, Ill. They’re all funky, and I’m sure very functional, too. This one does make me feel a little seasick, though (and this is supposed to be heaven-themed; the men’s room is themed to make the little guy with the pitchfork feel more at home).

Thanks to Dianne at the MiForum listserv for the pointer!

Or, to be exact, a magician in the subway and amusement park, in this case. I mostly am posting this video because it had me laughing out loud, and who couldn’t use a laugh? But also because I thought this could be an interesting idea to contemplate for a conference: Having someone who looks like everyone else wandering around and surprising people with funny tricks (though the last one in the clip could cause a liability issue if there’s anyone with a heart problem in the crowd). Enjoy!

Via BoingBoing.

Organizers of the Democratic National Convention going on in Denver this week were good at letting the media know about what they were doing to green the convention (and despite the rumors, those wooden keycards are working). What I hadn’t heard so much about until now is all the tech bells and whistles they’re using (thanks to Next Generation Event for this link).

And the schwag bag doesn’t look too shabby, either.

If you want to get a glimpse of what you missed if you didn’t get to ASAE and The Center’s annual meeting, or just want to hear a bit more from some of the speakers, check out the video clips available here. I’m guessing there’s more to come, since I saw a lot of people not yet up there being taped at various spots throughout the center. Very, very smart, ASAE!

What I want is the happy dance video to be posted, though.

Just wanted to let you know that our main site, MeetingsNet.com, now invites you to comment on articles. You do have to register (just takes a second, we don’t ask a lot of questions), but then you can tell us what you think and, on the off chance we didn’t think to interview you on a topic you know much about, share your knowledge with others.

I love that we’re (finally) doing this, and hope you aren’t shy about sharing your opinions!

As an example, one person who also has a lot of experience in the business read this article on Susan Sarfati’s leaving ASAE and The Center to join The American Bureau Program and commented, “I would love to head or join a special membership or delegation of retired and/or semi-retired sales and marketing individuals. It is a shame that after all the years in the industry, heading up several 5 star hotels and resort, being a past HSAMI board member, that my talents and experienced can’t be used to assist those younger and inexperienced members.”

What a great idea. Does anyone know if such a thing exists? If not, is anyone willing to take this idea and run with it? It’s too good not to make it a reality, if it isn’t already.

I look forward to hearing more from you, both here and on MeetingsNet.

I ran across this today on another forum and wanted to share. Even if it has nothing to do with meetings, it has a lot to do with being human:

One evening an old man told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy,sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old man simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Here’s an interesting study (download from link) from the National Business Travel Association that compares lodging, rental car, and meal taxes in the top 50 U.S. cities. When you compare hotel, car, and meal taxes over a one-day period, the highest rates are in Chicago; Nashville, Tenn.; Charlotte, N.C.; Seattle; and Houston.

The lowest taxes can be found in Honolulu, Hawaii; Portland, Ore.; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Fort Myers, Fla.; and West Palm Beach, Fla. (Hartford, Conn., comes next, sandwiched between two more Florida cities, Tampa and Orlando).

The report also breaks it out by airport hotel/car/meals, and by discriminatory increase over general sales taxes. Interesting reading–those taxes can add up in a scary way if you’re not paying attention to them.

I have to say I’m with Kevin on Rene Mauborgne’s keynote about Blue Ocean Strategy. I know it’s been around for a while now, but there’s a lot we all can learn from little success stories like Nintendo’s Wii. Instead we had a lot of what Kevin calls “association trivia” and ran out of time for her session at the end. But it did get me thinking about how to make the very bloody and red ocean my business is currently in turn a nice and healthy blue. It’s easy. All we have to do is:

Create an uncontested market
Make the competition irrelevant
Create and capture new demand
and offer something that’s both differentiated and low cost

Hmm. I think I may need to buy the book to get a few more hints on how exactly to do that. She was a great speaker, though, and I wish I could have been in a few places at once so I could have attended the session on Blue Ocean earlier.

I can’t say enough good things about this session, either. Susan Fox, VP, The Forbes Group, who seemed like a mild-mannered academic until she showed us her World of Warcraft avatar, explained how we digital immigrants differ from the digital natives (she put the dividing line between the two generations at the invention of Pong back in 1972).

People who grew up with online gaming process information differently, she said. They pool knowledge into a collective intelligence to work better in teams, and are experts in networking, negotiating, and seeking out/synthesizing/disseminating information. They’re great at sampling and remixing media and content, working with simulations, and adopting different identities to adapt to situational challenges.

One interesting point was about how those who grow up with online gaming (I think the figure she quoted as 75 percent of people under the age of 34 are familiar with the language of games, and the average number of hours they spend gaming per week is 22). Currently we look at leaders as those lone visionaries who will lead us into a shining future. But that’s not how the digital generation works, she said. “It’s going to shift, depending on the circumstances. Leadership for the digital generation is situational and fluid, and those who are leaders in some circumstances will be followers in others.”

While she placed most of the emphasis in her presentation on incorporating gamers into the workplace (i.e., on staff at associations–watch for online gaming guildmaster skills to show up on a resume near you soon), she did touch on how the gaming mentality could be the next big influence on the training and adult education you offer.

Called serious games, more organizations are going to be able to adapt gaming technology for their adult education, either by building their own or by (the much easier route) using game engines like wildpockets.com, which is coming online soon. “Engaging the imagination is what’s important,” she said, “not necessarily having great graphics.” She pointed out a few examples that are already out there, though not all are developed by associations:

My U.S. Rep (a Congressional role-playing game I’m now going to have to try)
America’s Army, where you can role-play being a soldier
Darfur Is Dying, which delivers a serious message through a role-playing game

I spoke with Fox briefly after the session, and she said she was planning to do more research into the adult ed aspects of gaming, so expect more greatness from her to be published probably in the Journal of Association Leadership (drats! I was hoping we could score this one).

This was the money session for me, the one that made it all worth while. If you haven’t had the chance to see Ron Rosenberg of QualityTalk Inc. in action, do try. He is one fantastic presenter. I mean, not only did he keep me awake (no small feat at an 8:30 a.m. session), but he had us roaring while we learned. And boy did we learn. I almost wish I were an event organizer so I could put some of his stuff into action. A few takeaways:

Use the objections people have to your event to your advantage. It’s too far to travel, takes too much time out of the office, whatever people say keeps them from coming, learn what those objections are and answer them in your marketing materials. “Take every objection and answer it so the only end result is, ‘I’m too stupid to live if I don’t come to your event,” he said.

There is serious power in testimonials, yet most promotions don’t include them, or include wimpy testimonial wannabes that don’t pack much power. Good testimonials, he said, include: the person’s real name, job title, company, location, photo, and compelling copy. The last is the hardest to get, but he gave us a few hints. Such as:
-Send them questions about the objections you’ve heard. If it’s about price, ask them why it was worth the cost to attend.
-Instead of/in addition to the usual speaker evaluation forms, go back to attendees in six weeks or three months and ask them what they’ve done as a result of the conference. Then call them to flesh it out, ask them for a photo, and send it to them to OK the final copy.

Big mistake most make: They use their organization’s name as the big headline on their brochures. Don’t do that! Find a theme, maybe destination-related, and use that for your headline (and sessions to really make it pop). Put your name at the bottom, where it belongs.

It may be prohibitively expensive to develop marketing materials for each of your niche markets, but why not create different cover letters for each market that you send out with the one brochure. The cover letter would point out the aspects of the conference that make it relevant and tailored to that particular niche.

Make speakers earn their pay by offering one-on-one consulting sessions, books, products, services. Use these as incentives for your early-bird mailings (register by April 4 and enter a chance to win one of three marketing makeovers by Ron, for example).

Make your incentives meaningful. If they’re not paying for their registrations themselves, $200 off for registering early isn’t too much of an incentive. Make incentives personally meaningful. Also, offer a choice of incentives, and make one unrelated to your business.

Never send attendees to your organization’s home page. Send them to a landing page dedicated just for meeting registration. Welcome them on that page and make them feel smart for registering now.

Offer a money-back guarantee to lure people off the fence and into your meeting. “Offer a guarantee–you get a cash refund of your registration plus up to $500 in travel expenses if you don’t get three things you can use out of the conference. People say, ‘we couldn’t do that. We would have to give back a lot of money.’ Well, then your conference [stinks],” he said. In fact, he asked people in the audience who gave guarantees, and of those, who had to give money back. One guy said he did, once.

There was a whole lot more, but these are a few of the ideas that rang with me. Love the guarantee thing, but have never seen it in real life. Yet.