Low-cost Euro airline Ryanair, famous for sneaking in fees for pretty much everything (including bathroom use), pulled a good one today with an early April Fool’s joke that I think might just be a feeler on how people would react to the idea: It announced it would be starting up kid-free flights this fall.

It’s not really, of course, but frankly, of all its funky ideas, I think this one actually could fly. So to speak.

I just put together this quick video slideshow of our Pharmaceutical Meeting Management Forum at animoto.com.

From the opening reception to the closing wrapup, it was pretty fabulous if I do say so myself. I’m still digging out from the meeting, but watch for more to come…

Joan Eisenstodt, chief strategist of Eisenstodt Associates, LLC, is no stranger to awards—she’s been inducted into the Convention Industry Council’s Hall of Fame,, recognized as an Educator by the PCMA Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, and earned the International Association of Conference Center’s Pyramid Award for sustained contributions to IACC education.

Now she’s done it again: She just became the first non-IACC member to win the Mel Hosansky Award for Distinguished Service since Mr. Hosansky himself. Congratulations to Joan for this honor, but more to the point, thanks for all the work, advice, teaching, learning, prodding, moderating, facilitating, mentoring, and championing Joan has done and continues to do for this industry and, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say likely thousands of individuals within it. And I know just how passionate she is about the role of conference centers in the meetings industry, so this is just right on so many levels.

According to a press release, she said as she received the award, “This is the ultimate! Particularly since it’s named for somebody who had more integrity than anyone I’ve known in hospitality. I see the award as reflective of Mel’s value and contributions to this industry segment, and that’s particularly meaningful to me.” She also expressed hope that “IACC conference centers would continue to be true to their mission, that they would be places where true learning would happen.”

Congratulations to Joan on winning this award, which is a special one to us here at MeetingsNet. While I never had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Hosansky, I did get to work with his daughter Tamar Hosansky, when she served as editor of Medical Meetings.

Oh, and did I mention that ahem, our publisher, Melissa Fromento, also won IACC’s Pyramid award this year? I don’t want to blow our own horn too much, but Melissa has put her heart and soul into the IACC Thought Leader Summit since she facilitated the first Summit in 2008 (she chaired the 2010 and 2011 Summits as well), and served for four years on the Annual Meeting Conference Planning Committee. How good was this year’s summit? I wasn’t able to attend in person, but the thought-leader summit my colleague and I attended virtually was dynamite (here’s our writeup of that session if you want to check it out for yourselves).

The worst fee imposers may not be who you think they might be (if you’re like me anyway)—here they are, courtesy of Elliott’s blog.

While they may only rank third, I still find airline fees among the most annoying. And it sounds like they’re going to vie for the number-one spot: According to this Boston Globe article, they’re looking to double the $18 billion they already get in fees over the next five years. Oh joy.

Remember the Brookings report? You know, when Heywood Sanders, professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said that the convention center market was, according to an article we published in 2005 when the report came out, “oversaturated, that demand won’t catch up with supply any time soon, and that convention centers, by and large, are not meeting economic impact expectations.”

Not surprisingly, most in this industry, including IAEE, thought he was full of hooey. Eventually it all quieted down, and convention centers—most recently Philadelphia’s—went back to expanding.

But as I read the Boston Globe this morning, I came across this column that cites Sanders in an argument against building a 1,000-room hotel near the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and eventually doubling the size of the BCEC itself.

When asked why the forecasts for room nights booked due to the BCEC so far have proved to be a bit optimistic, Jim Rooney, who heads the authority in charge of the BCEC, says in the Globe column that the emphasis should be more on snagging the big biotech, medical device, and financial shows the BCEC currently is too small to accommodate (hence the need to expand the center) than on “how many people slept in the Westin.”

I’m no city planner, but I’ve always been of the mind that we should beef up development around the BCEC, including hotels (along with residences, shopping, dining, etc.), to make it more attractive to the groups it already can accommodate but isn’t getting now because the larger shows have to go pretty far afield right now to house all their attendees. I think a new headquarters hotel would be a good use of the millions of dollars in public subsidies it would require, because I do believe in conventions as “financial engines” for cities. Then we can talk about further expanding the center (and hopefully simultaneously continuing development of hotels/shopping etc.).

Boston’s not alone in this fight by any means. Which do you think should come first, the convention center chicken or the hotel/area development egg? In cities like Boston that already have nice, relatively new convention centers but lack the facilities nearby to fully support conventions, I vote for the egg. Am I wrong? Tell me why.

I always thought that both armrests belong to the person in the middle seat, but it depends on who you ask, according to this article on air travel etiquette in the Wall Street Journal. The article also tackles:
• What to do if the knees of the tall guy next to to you splay into your space (a frequent flier says, “Drop something on the floor. When he hopefully picks it up, reclaim your legroom space.” Snark.)
• How to handle it if the people you have to climb over to get to the restroom are snoozing (I agree with the majority, you have to politely wake them when nature calls, though I like the idea of the aisle person asking every 90 minutes or so if anyone needs to get up. When I’m in the aisle seat, I get up pretty regularly so it’s generally not a problem for my seatmates)
• What to do about rowdy kids (love this response: “I watched one flight attendant handle this adroitly by saying she ‘would hate to have to put him off the plane.’ Not another kick.” But I generally try to ignore it if at all possible. One thing I learned the hard way: Never play peekaboo with a toddler sitting in front of you unless you want to continue playing peekaboo for the next three hours.)
• Dealing with the stinky-food syndrome (says an ethics professor, “Airlines have brought this on themselves by eliminating food service. Not only did I have a middle seat [recently], I was in the back and all the food-for-sale was gone by the time they reached me. I got out my smelly cheese and ate it in front of my seatmates.” I think I sat next to him on that flight!)
• Whether or not it’s OK to recline your seat (whether it’s ethically OK or not, I try not to now that seat space has gotten so small).

I had a weird one on a flight recently where the guy behind me put his feet so far under my seat that they came out on my side. Then he reprimanded me for knocking into them—like I knew they were there! It was a short flight and he seemed pretty testy, so I just tried to avoid his feet in my space, but I’m pretty sure he was in the wrong on that one.

When in doubt, I think it’s wise to err on the side of kindness. After all, we are stuck with each other for the duration. Might as well make the best of it.

(Thanks to Patti Shock and the MeCo listserv for the link.)

I recently heard about FlightAware on the MeCo listserv, and thought I’d spread the word here as well. It allows you to track the status of a flight (could come in handy to ensure your speakers, company president, or other VIP will make the meeting on time), plus airport weather conditions and news, and a plethora of other air-travel-related info.

This Sunday’s episode of “Undercover Boss” goes all Vegas, baby, with the president and COO of the MGM Grand going incognito amongst the hotel and casino’s workers. The promo mentions he’ll sub as a dealer; I’m not sure what other areas of that huge operation he’ll be getting hands-on with, but I sure hope he tips his toes into the meetings side of the facility. Having just been there in January for the PCMA annual conference, I can only imagine what all goes on behind the scenes there!

The Canadian Society of Professional Event Planners has honored 11-year CanSPEP member Sandy Biback, CMP, CMM, of Imagination + Meeting Planners Inc., with its Industry Builder Award for her work in educating the current, and the next, generation of meeting planners. I’ve known Sandy for a while now, and she is an educator to her soul. Good call, CanSPEP!

Congratulations also to the other winners: Paul Marchildon (Industry Innovator); Julie Holmen (Industry Mentor); Jessica Ambrose (Industry Rising Star); Susan Prophet (Industry Volunteer); Nicola Kastner (Industry Planner); and Jane Wallbridge (Industry Veteran).

I recently stumbled upon If You Watch It Backward, which chronicles what things would look like if you thought about them backwards (duh!). There are some hilarious entries (and many that are a touch blue, so enter with care). Such as:

If you watch Jeopardy! backwards, it’s a show about rich people paying money for answers to questions.

and

If you watch Rambo backwards, it’s about Sylvester Stallone healing people with his magical bullet vacuum.

So, if your attendees had to describe your conference backwards, would it be “exhausted people rest in uncomfortable chairs in dark rooms until, invigorated, they get to go home”? Or, possibly worse, like this description of the movie Inception: “If you watch Inception backwards, it’s pretty much the same movie, except for the direction the van is traveling for about half of it”?

(Thanks to Mental Floss for the pointer to this most excellent time waster. Now I’m thinking about pretty much everything backwards…)