Funny how just 10 cm can make the difference between unlocking the cockpit door and causing a 737 to roll and drop 1,900 meters in 30 seconds. Yikes!

Speaking of fees—here’s a new twist on cancellation fees: airline-like rebooking fees (read through the comments for more interesting takes on it). My biggest takeway? Read all that fine print!

How else can you take the news that U.S. hotels are now raking in a record $1.8 billion (with a “b”) in fees and surcharges? To be fair, some of the increase is accounted for by an uptick in occupied rooms (which come with all those fees and surcharges), rather than just from an increase in the number and amount of the fees. And I can see the appeal to hoteliers, since the report points out that these things tend to have profitability of 80 percent to 90-plus percent, and let’s face it, business hasn’t been all that fabulous lately. But still, doesn’t this seem just slightly outrageous?

What are these fees and surcharges? From the report: “resort or amenity fees, early departure fees, reservation cancellation fees, internet fees, telephone call surcharges, the costs of local calls, business center fees (i.e. cost of sending/receiving faxes and sending/receiving overnight packages), room service delivery surcharges, mini-bar restocking fees, charges for in-room safes, and automatic gratuities and surcharges. For groups, there have been increased charges for bartenders, service, and other staff at events; charges for set up and breakdown of meeting rooms; charges for meeting rooms in which meals are served (the common practice has been that there is a charge for meeting rooms but not an additional room charge for rooms in which meals are served); and fees for master folio billing and baggage holding fees for guests leaving luggage with bell staff after checking out of a hotel but before departure.”

The report come courtesy of Bjorn Hanson, PhD, with the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management, NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

I’m in Baltimore for the National Task Force on CME Provider/Industry Collaboration conference, which is one of those typically brain-exhausting two-day information marathons where so much gets thrown at you you’re lucky if anything sticks. As was made kind of obvious at the opening general session, when the conference chair asked the audience members who had attended the previous year if 1) they remembered one thing they had learned last year, and 2) if they had done anything differently because of what they learned. I saw maybe five or 10 hands go up in that crowd of a couple hundred people. Ouch.

But the organizers recognized that this was a problem (they are, after all, adult ed experts) and decided to try something new this year. They handed out a reflection sheet that had a space for the session title and speaker name, key points made, and action plan and implications. They even included a 10-minute period after the keynote to fill out the form and discuss your key points and action plans with others at the table, which I found incredibly useful. Unfortunately, the next 10-minute “reflection and application” period doesn’t happen until the very end of the conference, and we’ve only been reminded to do it I think once since, but it’s a start. They also are using some sort of a closed electronic system that allows people to follow along with the PowerPoints and submit questions in some sessions.

It is a bit depressing to see these folks (again, experts in adult ed) doing the same old bad practice of cramming way too much into their hour-long presentations, but I guess old habits are wicked hard to break. Is it the fear that people won’t think they’re getting their money’s worth if the presentations were more streamlined and interactive? This deserves some thought, since we all (OK, well most of us) seem to be clinging to this with a death grip even when we know it’s not the best way to educate. Building in a few 10-minute discussion and reflection periods are at least a start (and the communities of practice sessions, at least the one I went to, was much more a discussion than a lecture, and probably was one of the most useful sessions of the day for me).

On the plus side: The Marriott Waterfront makes a mean crabcake, of which I partook happily at the reception last night. Now if we could just get WiFi in the ballroom and breakout rooms, I’d be a happy camper.

Talk about attention-getting: Check out The Week’s Bad Opinion Generator, which highlights some of the worst predictions ever made. Go ahead and click through if you want to stay glued to the site for the next five minutes.

At first I thought this is kind of off-topic, but then I thought how cool something like this would be to flash on the screen pre-general session at a conference with a change-related or risk-taking theme. (Thanks to MentalFloss for the pointer.)

I’ve been to many sessions at industry conferences that teach about different learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile), and I do believe that different people may learn best in different ways. But the problem that always brings up for meeting managers is, of course, how do you accommodate all those learning styles in one session? And multiply that over dozens, maybe even hundreds of sessions over the course of a conference, and it becomes a pretty difficult proposition, or so I’ve heard.

In fact, according to this item on NPR, some researchers now say that there’s no evidence that tailoring education to different learner types actually improves learning. Instead, they say, it might make more sense to rely on other learning theories that have evidence to back up their worth

Far be it from me to argue that it’s not a good idea “to figure out similarities in how our brains learn, rather than differences.” That means, says University of Virginia Professor Dan Willingham, to boost attention by switching things up regularly. “Mixing things up is something we know is scientifically supported as something that boosts attention,” he says in the article. Another good practice supported by research is to provide chunks of learning over a period of time, rather than dumping the lot on learners all at once.

While the article appears to be talking about teaching kids, I think it holds true for us alleged grownups as well.

For presenters and planners, what’s your philosophy and/or practice (they may be two different things) when it comes to accommodating different learning styles? If you do, how do you deal with the logistics of it? If you don’t, what do you default to, and what if any effect do you think it has on the learning?

Update: I totally forgot about this interesting article Ellie Bayrd, Associate Editor with Meetings: Minnesota’s Hospitality Journal, wrote last year on learning styles (it even, ahem, includes a few quotes from your truly).

Jeff Hurt has a knack for coming up with some pretty catchy ways to talk about common meeting woes, such as cramming too much information into people without giving them time to digest it. His most recent is really sick: We Need a New Drug. Sample line: “We need some conference-related Pepto-Bismol that will treat upset brains, information indigestion, diarrhea mind and brain-burn when conference presenters try to shovel too much information into our minds.” And he asks what conference drug we’d design to help cure the common conference.

OK, I’m game. How about:

The People Pill: Soothes CIRD (Jeff’s acronym for conference information reflux disease, which is a pretty awesome play on GERD, though there’s nothing funny about the latter) caused by information overload by forcing presenters to interrupt their presentations to allow for some interaction and peer-to-peer problem-solving.

Clarity: Brings relief to eyes that are red, itchy, and watery from straining to see overly complicated slides in a dark room hour after hour by making certain all slides are pre-screened to ensure they are simple, graphically pleasing, and are adjuncts to the presentation, not the presentation itself to be read off the screen.

SpecialEffexor: This pill will bring up the mood of the crowd by injecting some fun, creativity, and surprise into stage set and the overall meeting design.

SeeAllUs: Causes a presenter’s laser pointer to rise up to the ceiling, where it stays for the duration of the session, forcing the presenter to interact with the people in the room instead of the PowerPoint on the screen.

I better stop now before I make myself feel a bit ill…

It feels like yesterday.

The Frozen Zone

Soft autumn breezes rattle
The first crackling leaves
Dancing in crazy spirals
Across the graying asphalt
Silted with ash
Slick with tears

A surreal montage
Helmets and hoses
Buckets and backhoes
Streaked faces etched in horror
Working, hoping, working
working
Debris flaming red as leaves
flutters the air

Amid unthinkable chaos,
A stillness grows
Enfolding souls lost
Souls at a loss
The world stops
Frozen in one aching moment
then another, and another

But soft autumn breezes rattle
The first crackling leaves
And redden warm child cheeks
Hands reaching hands
Holding tight
Holding tighter

and the thaw begins

In memory of those who lost their lives September 11
In hope for those they left behind

—Sue Pelletier, September 2001

People say all the time that there are no questions too stupid to ask, but I’m thinking that’s really not true. Or rather, that you can ask them, but beware the consequences. For example, I was just reading this post on the Fully Committed blog, in which a stupid question (”So what does National Speakers Association do?” asked of the NSA’s meeting planner by a new national sales representative for a major hotel corporation who has had the NSA’s file on her desk for months) still lingers in that planner’s mind 10 years after the fact.

I’ve asked at least one that I know of in my 12 years with MeetingsNet. Someone at a conference a couple of years ago told me about how a question I asked him about AMA PRA Category 1 credit when I was first starting out was in fact so stupid that he regularly uses it as an example when talking with people (with, “can you believe an editor with Medical Meetings didn’t know that?!”). Why he felt compelled to tell me this I don’t know—I’d really rather not have known not only about my stupid question, but that it lives on in infamy, thank you very much.

Anyway, I understand Cara’s point in her post, that the person really should have done her homework before the meeting (and I agree that she should have). And I guess I should have learned the details of this aspect of the business I’d be covering before interviewing anyone. (I am struggling not to defend myself here, because there’s a lot to know with this business, and I really don’t think it was wrong to ask instead of pretending I knew what he was talking about. Oops, a little defensiveness just slipped through!)

In the end, even with my face glowing red every time I think about my stupid question experience, I stand by my philosophy that it’s always better to ask, whether you know, as the rep did in Cara’s example, that the question is stupid, or not, as was the case with me. And hope that the person you’re asking understands that you’re only asking because you want to learn, even if it is too little and too late.

What do you think? Is it better to lower the quality of the interaction by not asking that stupid question and blustering your way through? Or is it better to ask it and lose face/cred with the other person in order to have a more informed discussion?

It’s good to know that astrophysicists can shoot their considerable brain power to down-to-earth issues like the most efficient way to board an airplane. That’s what Dr. Jason Steffen, an astrophysicist at Fermilab, has done, according to PopSci. Watch the video for how it works:

According to the article, “First, passengers sitting in the window seats on one side of the plane all board at once, in alternating rows (row 1, 3, 5, etc.). Then the same is done on the other side of the plane. Then the middle seats, still in alternating rows, boards on the first side of the plane. That continues with the other side’s middle seats, then (first one and then the other) aisle seats. Then, do it all again for the even-numbered rows.”

It sounds logical, doesn’t it? I’d be willing to give it a try.