I just read an AP story this morning about how the Meredith Grey-Derek Shepherd wedding-to-be (from the TV show Grey’s Anatomy and yes, I admit I watch it avidly) has its own Web site. I know, I know, pretty dorky and it has nothing to do with anything to do with meetings. Or does it?

In lieu of gifts, the make-believe bride and groom are asking for donations to three associations that are related to story lines on the show: the American Academy of Neurology Foundation, the American Skin Association, and the Alzheimer’s Association.

Hopefully this tie-in will generate some good donations for these organizations. What is going on in the greater cultural wasteland that you can tie into your organization and/or your meeting? From the article, it sounds like people on the show side came up with this one, but I bet if you come up with an interesting way to tie what you do into something that will benefit you and the other party, both could win.

Just had to mention this as I thought it was pretty brilliant, in a goopy, soap opera-y way.

First the economy, then bad press and boondoggles, and now swine flu? What’s next, locusts?

Anyway, I am hoping that many, if not most, meeting planners took the crisis management hint when SARS put a scare into the meetings business (with a 16k attendee casualty rate for the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in the spring of 2003, among others). Or when the possibility of an avian flu pandemic started pecking at our collective consciousness two years later. You all did create your crisis management action plans then, right?

For the one or two who perhaps haven’t gotten around to it yet, please get your ducks in a row now. Here’s a crisis management action plan to get you started. Freeman has put together a terrific business continuity blueprint that you can download from IAEE’s site. There are also lots of resources available on MeetingsNet (do a search for crisis management, pandemic, etc., for a bunch of relevant articles).

While we wait to hear how this develops, keep your fingers crossed that this latest potential disaster will ultimately end up being more of a wake-up call than something we wish we had prepared for but never thought would actually happen. (Here’s the best pandemic update site I’ve found so far: pandemicflu.gov.)

If anyone has an upcoming meeting in an affected area, my thoughts are with you. Stay safe.

Update: U.S. Travel has just set up a Swine Influenza Dashboard that includes feeds from ECDC alerts, CDC Tweets, WHO alerts, and customized news feeds for airlines, airports, hotels, travel agents, employees, preparedness, and treatments. According to a press release, new feeds will be added daily.

Some great comments on the Starwood corporate espionage lawsuit against Hilton over at Hotel Chatter. I’m not one to rush to judgment, so I won’t, but…let’s just say I’m looking forward to what else comes out in the wash. I do agree with the one commenter who says, “there’s nothing good about this for Hilton.”

Here are a couple of interesting tips on how you can increase attendance to a meeting using social responsibility, from Gary Hirshberg, cofounder of Stonyfield Farm, to attendees at ASAE and The Center’s Springtime Expo: Service days and offering carbon emission offsets (link goes to much more of what he said, via the Acronym blog). Service days are becoming more common all the time, and at least at meetings I’ve been to, they’ve been maxed out, so the idea is definitely catching on among people. I think the jury’s still out on carbon emission offsets, particularly since that particular business has had some scamming going on. Here’s a list of carbon offset providers and those who certify them, and here are some tips on finding the right carbon offset provider for your organization.

Here’s more on green meetings, in time for Earth Day.

Just found this blog via the MiForum listserv (thanks, Tyra!): Meet Prepared, offered by Brad A. Goldberg, Owner/CEO of TriGold Consulting, LLC. Just three posts so far, but they are terrific:

Contingency Planning: A View From the Venue Side of the House

Crisis Management Gotchas: Food Fiascos

Crisis Management Gotchas: Evacuation

Wow, this should be interesting to follow: Starwood Sues Hilton and Two Former Starwood Executives for Corporate Espionage, Theft of Trade Secrets, Unfair Competition. Keep in mind that this is a press release, not a news story, so only one side is represented. Looking forward to hearing the other side…

Or good appetites, anyway. Seems the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority set a Guiness World Record for the largest sit-down dinner ever when 16,206 of the ladies sat down to dine at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center last July during its Centennial Convention.

For those who, like me, want to know the menu, here’s what I got from a press release:

For the dinner, WCCA’s catering partner, Centerplate/NBSE prepared baby iceberg wedge salad, three tons of beef filet, served as Beef Wellington, along with 2.25 tons of mashed potatoes, 1,800 gallons of pink lemonade and thousands of individual “Pink Velvet” chocolate cakes with green icing. Alpha Kappa Alpha’s official colors are salmon pink and apple green. Centerplate/NBSE used approximately 300,000 dining utensils, and tableware was set against 3.5 miles of linen table cloths and seven miles of pink and green napkins for the event. To help accommodate the unprecedented number of attendees, Centerplate solicited assistance from wait staff throughout the East Coast. Centerplate’s network of chefs and convention center professionals borrowed personnel and equipment from New York, Denver and Dallas to assist.

In addition to the regular catering staff, Centerplate/NBSE brought in an additional 300 chefs, 46 managers, 65 captains, 32 distribution assistants and 1,200 waiters.

Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

The Keep America Meeting campaign is going strong. Their petition now has 20,500 signers, and, new to the site, according to an e-mail today, are two must-see videos:

1. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) took to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to clearly articulate that meetings, events and incentive travel are important, and Rep Barney Frank (D-MA) confirmed those activities won’t be restricted by current legislation.

2. In his CNBC interview, the CEO of Texas Roadhouse talks about how important it is that his people deliver legendary service to guests. He looks at a five-day event as an investment in his people that will “yield great returns” for his publicly-traded business. “People are the biggest asset we’ve got,” he said. “If we take care of our people, they’ll take care of our guests.”

And that’s not all. More meetings-related items making it to the mainstream press:
Cities greet meeting planners with open arms (USA Today)
More companies meet virtually as conventions canceled (USA Today)
Corporate travel: ‘AIG effect’ causes companies to cancel $1 billion in conferences (Chicago Tribune)
Las Vegas loses 402 conventions, meetings (Las Vegas Sun)

And my favorite:
Business travel isn’t frivolous — it’s our lifeblood (Orlando Sentinel)

That’s one of the questions Scott Oser poses on Acronym, and it’s a good one. If “free” means it’s just a sales pitch, that could be fine if I know that’s what it is and that’s what I signed up for (sometimes I do want to learn about a product, and an infomercial comes in handy). If it’s marketed as educational, though, and ends up being a sales pitch, well, you’re going to get a tee’d off audience. Especially if, as seems to be increasingly common, your audience ends up getting on a never-ending e-mail list that bombards them with more pitches after the fact.

Scott also asks if these free vendor webinars compete with paid (or, I would argue, free) association webinar offerings. Sure, they do. Everyone’s time is limited, even for freebies, and if there’s a chance you can get good info for free, you’ll likely try it first. If the experience is good, paid webinars will suffer an audience drain. And if the experience is bad, that could tarnish even good association-produced webinars in an audience member’s mind (i.e., “all webinars are boring/promotional/not worth the time”).

Once again, I think the key is to be truthful and transparent. If you’re offering an infomercial, be clear about what it is. Let people know if they’re signing away their in-box in perpetuity if they sign up (but how stupid is it to bait and switch people like that? Can you think of a better way to get someone to never want to hear of your product again, much less buy it, than spamming them endlessly as a reward for signing up to hear your pitch to begin with?). But there is a market for infomercials, so I wouldn’t count them out altogether. Just be honest and smart about marketing them as what they are, and respectful in your followup.

If you’re offering good, unbiased education that you think is worth paying for, be truthful and transparent about that. There’s a market for that, too, and I would argue one people still are willing to pay for if they can. As Jeff Cobb points out in a comment over on Acronym, the rub is that more vendors and other third parties are getting smart about their freebies and offering real education, not just infomercials. That competes head-to-head with what associations are doing.

Though I hate the word, this could be a place where “coopertition” comes into play. Can you work with these third parties somehow instead of competing with them for the shrinking pool of webinar dollars? I don’t think this is a trend that will go away. In fact, I expect to see more of the smart marketers offering free webinars that establish them as thought leaders in their field and fewer infomercials. Associations may have a certain amount of built-in loyalty, but I wouldn’t rely on that too much. Whoever has the best info will win, especially if it’s offered for free.

It’s a Web thing, and we’re all struggling with it: Having given our best stuff away since the Intertubes started, and with more free stuff added to the pile daily, we have a hard time finding ways to make people pay for what they’re used to getting for free, especially when the quality is similar. Whether you’re talking about newspaper classified ads v. Craigslist or associations’ webinars v. vendor free webinars, we’re all in the same bucket on this one. And I don’t think quality alone will make it worth buying, unfortunately.

Update: Great discussion on this whole deal by Ken Molay at the Webinar blog. I love this line: “Value justifies cost… If the value of your exclusive content surpasses the cost to the attendees, they will pay for it. But if you are charging them to get content they could just as easily get from other free sources, watch out.” The key is to figure out what will make it that valuable. Thanks, Ken.