I’m downloading this one now: Jets, the travel app that fills you in on where the best seats are on your flight (and the worst). Kind of like SeatGuru for your iPhone.

Reading this CNN article on how different types of people (on both the meeting leader and attendee sides) can derail a small meeting reminded me of what I think was the very first article I wrote for the MeetingsNet magazines: How to Keep Your Small Meeting and Attendees On Track. In re-reading it 13 years later, I think it still makes a lot of sense. For example:

• Have a time limit and stick to it.
• Break larger groups into smaller ones if you want to have meaningful discussions.
• Do a quick and painless teambuilding exercise at the beginning to help the group coalesce.
• Allow everyone to have an opportunity to have an equal say.
• Use nonverbal cues to bring ramblers back to earth.
• Be willing to pull the plug if the meeting is irretrievably lost.

And more. But what I like most about this article is that I got to interview my dad (Quincy Abbot) for it! What are your best small meeting management techniques? We all struggle with these, especially staff meetings, so any tips you have to share would I’m sure be useful.

You may be getting a good handle on how to manage hybrid meetings, but what about special events? I would imagine it’s pretty tough to bring a sense of the experience of a flash mob or a chef challenge to those not actually at the event. But some are doing it—here’s how, courtesy of Special Events.

Dan Loomis at the Great Ideas blog takes on the controversial issue of whether an association’s online content should be for free or for a fee (remember the big debate when MPI decided to charge for the online versions of its conference sessions a few years back?).

Rather than take a side, though, he points to the benefits of both, and instead gives a pretty useful set of questions to ask before you decide, and some more resources to help guide your policymaking. Good stuff.

I was thinking today about a conference I went to once that had a near-miss with a keynote speaker who got stuck in traffic without a cellphone. Where was she? Would she make it? If not, who could step in? I happened to be hanging out near the meeting planning staff, so I just watched in awe as they very calmly went about lining up an alternate speaker to fill in while my blood pressure shot up on their behalf. Fortunately, the keynoter glided in just in time and everything went off without a hitch.

Which leads me to wonder: Do you plan to have a back-up, just in case? Is it something you talk about, plan for, have a procedure in place, if not an actual second speaker (which could be a tad expensive, I would think)? Or do you cross your fingers and hope that all your pre-planning pays off and your big presenters make it on time, as they always have in the past? If you work with speakers bureaus, is part of your deal that they provide a back-up should the worst case happen?

I’ve been hearing so many bad hotel customer service stories lately that I started to lose hope. Then I read a post on MeCo (and later on HotelChatter) about a guest at a Kimpton property—Hotel Monaco in Portland—who, in response to the hotel sending him a note asking if there’s anything he needed for his upcoming stay, joked that he couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t outrageous (like a bed full of puppies, or a tub full of Reese’s Pieces) and he wasn’t celebrating anything special but if they’d like, they can pretend he’s celebrating a quintuple homicide acquittal.

Then they send him back a note saying they couldn’t accommodate the puppies or candy thing, but would do their best to make his stay special. He found this when he walked into his room:

Along with a funny handwritten note and a gift certificate for $10 off the minibar. Kudos, Kimpton, for hiring folks with senses of humor and great service attitudes!

While I’m sure there will be billions of words printed, tweeted, keyboarded, and texted today about the passing of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, one thing I read in this morning’s Boston Globe about his philosophy is something meetings professionals (and pretty much everyone else) would do well to take to heart:

“He insisted the company put the human experience first, focusing on design as well as technological prowess.”

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all put the human experience first?

Rest in peace, Mr. Jobs.

Can you even imagine how cool this must have been in person if it’s this amazing on video?

Thanks to @JeffHurt and Conference Basics for the pointers.

After reading about the levels of customer disservice recently received by two very visible—and very vocal—meeting professionals, MaryAnne and Joan, I have to wonder what is going on. I know the economic fallout on most of us, and particularly those in low-wage jobs, is an increasingly overworked and overstressed workforce, but there’s just no excuse for all the rudeness and just-don’t-care-itude (I know, not a word) I’m hearing about lately.

While training may be able to help some, it comes down to having an attitude of service, or the lack thereof. If you truly believe, as I do in my job, that you’re there to help, then you try to help to the best of your ability. If you’re just there to earn a paycheck, eh, why bother?

As I commented on Joan’s post, there is something fundamentally wrong with an organization’s culture when being unable and/or unwilling to try to retrieve a guest’s package is seen as normal, rather than mortifying.

Service should be in the DNA of a hotel (um, this is still the hospitality business, no?), not peripheral, not optional depending on the mood or time of day or who’s in house that day, not something that you need to be trained to do, because a truly service-oriented organization hires for that service attitude and trains on tasks, not the other way around.

I know we’re all stressed, and overworked, or out of work and scared, or going through whatever it is we’re going through. But that’s no excuse to stop caring about the people around us and, for those of us whose jobs entail customer service, servicing the customers or, if we can’t get them what they want, at least empathizing and doing our best to assuage the pain our ineptitude is causing them. This ain’t rocket science, folks.

The latest issue of Wired had a great travel section. It includes things like a fabulous time versus money column along with the marginal utility curve (tracks bang for the buck of things from a ride on the Staten Island Ferry to zero-gravity flight); how to plan your trip like an engineer; and a handy chart that plots out where each airline stands with things like baggage fees, typical economy seat pitch, and flight delays. I also like their travel app suggestions (Google translate, yes!), and their advice on how to site, eat, and sleep well on the road. Just a great roundup of travel tips and tidbits.

And speaking of tips, the New York Times took on one of my biggest travel woes: The inability to sleep on an airplane. While it doesn’t really come up with any solutions (for me, anyway), I did learn a few things. If you can sleep on a plane—without drugs or copious quantities of liquor—I’d love to know your secret!