From ASAE’s Acronym blog comes the results of a new association executive study. Here’s the interesting meetings-related piece of it:

“Where execs were most wrong, though, was predicted in the first economic study we did after the economy soured in early 2009, when we got responses from 8,500 members of 97 diverse associations. The data from that study suggested that there would not be a mass movement from face-to-face meetings to online events. This was contrary to the expectations of association execs, 61% of whom were expecting revenue from online education to increase. In actuality, only 33% reported in 2010 that such revenue had increased.”

That’s about what I would have predicted (she says, with perfect hindsight).

Jeff at Midcourse Corrections thinks big-name speakers who are hired just for their big names actually are beyond the “becoming” phase when it comes to irrelevance, and that they may just make your meeting — and your organization — irrelevant too.

Read his post for all the reasons he thinks celebrity speakers who don’t customize their messages should go the way of the dodo bird. I agree with him, for the most part, though, as I noted in a comment on his post, I’d hate to see a conference get so insular with its content that ideas that aren’t directly related can’t get in. While I can only speak for myself, of course, I’ve found that some of the best ideas come from things that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, but spark me to think differently about that topic. I can’t tell you how often something from meeting planning has changed the way I look at journalism, for example.

Targeted content should of course be the main course of any conference mental buffet, but I wouldn’t rule out throwing in some unrelated, yet thought-provoking, appetizers as well.

If you’re wondering who’s hiring in special events now, and why, check out this article, which just so happens to be titled Who’s Hiring in Special Events Now–And Why. Some good news is that Special Events found 17 percent of the companies surveyed were planning to hire new employees.

When I read this article in today’s Boston Globe, I couldn’t help but wonder if this may in fact be where associations are — or perhaps should be? — headed: The End of the Office and the Future of Work. The basic premise is that we’re moving away from the old business model (you get a job and work for a company that provides salary, benefits, etc.) and into one where jobs are chopped into pieces and fed to a growing army of freelancers. It’s fascinating stuff. But when you lose the old employment model, you also lose the security, the bennies, and the sense of belonging to a community of sorts. From the article:

But to provide a greater level of stability freelance workers may require a new kind of institutional ally. Malone predicts that the growth in freelance work will necessitate a different breed of labor union to provide some of the benefits the employer now offers. Today’s unions are largely defined by their role in collective bargaining - negotiating with employers for better benefits, conditions, and pay. But many early unions actually arose in industries like construction or the garment trade where workers didn’t work for the same employer for very long, so the longstanding relationship wasn’t with the employer but the union.

These unions were more like guilds: organizations, united by a common set of specialized work skills, that combined elements of a social club and a mutual aid society. And rather than pressuring employers to provide benefits, they provided them directly. Malone argues that this sort of guild would be well-suited to a work landscape in which more workers are freelance. Such organizations might even see fit to offer income-smoothing insurance policies where freelancers can in good times pay into a fund that then helps them through leaner periods.

This sounds like a good fit for the association world to me. Of course, they’ll also be in the business of meetings. Freelancing can be tough on a lot of people due to the isolation of working remotely, or mostly solo, or both, so companies using freelancers, associations, and/or guilds will also likely include community-builders and ways for people to connect (i.e., meetings). More from the article:

Some of the online freelance companies try to tackle this. Most have online forums through which they try to recreate some of the dynamics of an actual workplace. iStockphoto goes further, organizing “iStockalypses” for select groups of its photographers: weeklong gatherings in exotic locales worldwide that are part party and part photo shoot. And iStockphoto photographers have begun organizing regional “Minilypses” on their own as a way to pool resources for photo shoots, to share information and simply to socialize.

Freelancers Union’s attempts to knit its members together socially are more conventional. Last month the organization held a holiday party in New York, and 150 or so people showed up. It was, says Horowitz, an enthusiastic crowd. “These people hadn’t been to a holiday party because they had been freelancing for years,” says Horowitz. “They want to feel connected, they want to feel that they’re part of something.”

At least that isn’t likely to change.

Update: A colleague just reminded me that we covered a similar idea in an article a few years ago, albeit from a more generational perspective: Associations Take Aim at Generation X. A key quote:

In the current service-driven economy, where workers are less likely to band together in the form of labor unions, “we’re going to find that associations are going to be a more common type of social capital building and a pretty indispensable resource for professionals,” [Arthur Brooks, PhD, associate professor of public administration and director of the Nonprofit Studies Program at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University] contends. “People might be hungry for a different source of community.”

He believes that associations are representative of the new “idea” economy. “We’re talking about the golden years of workplace-based social capital with associations smack in the middle of it.”

According to this survey by Special Events, events budgets are going to stay skintight in the coming year. Oh joy. From the article:

Some 71 percent of in-house special event professionals say that “having reduced budgets to work with” will be one of their greatest professional challenges in the new year. A whopping 78 percent of independents agree, though this figure is down slightly from the 2009 survey, when 81 percent of independents bemoaned tight event budgets.

An uncertain economy and short lead times round out the top three concerns event planners have for 2010.

The economy hasn’t been good for most of us, and that includes hotels. Hotels are going into foreclosure at an escalating rate as occupancies and revenues decline. From the article:

And it could get worse next year. An oversupply of guestrooms could keep room rates low, making 2010 a high-risk year for hotel foreclosures. Demand should gain 1.6%, according to hotel research firm STR Global, but average room rates are likely to fall 3.4%. The result would be the greatest spread between demand and rates in the 20 years STR Global has been collecting data.

But what does it all mean for meetings? My colleague Dave Kovaleski did a good job of outlining the issues, including declining service levels and cost-cutting where you may not want it. Do your due diligence, and get some language into your contract that will protect you from any unwanted fallout (read the article for more tips. It’s pretty useful stuff!)

Interesting post over at Social Entrepreneurship called “The Conference Is Dead (…Does Anyone Care?),” by Nathaniel Whittemore. It’s not that I haven’t heard before (and probably said a few times) how people just aren’t willing to put up with the old plenary/breakouts/talking heads type of conferences — or at least they won’t be in a few years as they experience unconferences and other (to me) more engaging ways to interact with experts, peers, and information. But Nathaniel makes the argument well, and the comments really take the conversation to new and interesting places from the perspectives of attendees, presenters, and conference organizers. I’m tempted to chime in, but I can’t think of anything that hasn’t already been said, and really well, by the current crop of commenters. I particularly liked this one:

“Bad organizers organize bad events. Good organizers organize good events. If the streudel is no good, don’t blame all the streudels in the world. Blame the baker.”

And this in response:

“To continue the streudel analogy…it’s ultimately about whether the consumer will eat the streudel, regardless of the recipe. If the customer doesn’t want streudel, then the Baker’s got a bigger problem.”

The results are in from the latest Special Events survey:

Corporate business events will recover in 2009: 17 percent
Corporate business events will recover in 2010: 32 percent
No change expected: 20 percent
It’s only going to get worse: 15 percent

Based on nothing but reading the paper and gut instincts, I’m with the 32 percent who expect to see the events picture brighten next year, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

According to Jeff Hurt, normal ain’t what it used to be, and you better get used to the idea. Coming off this year’s annual conference for his association, he posts some predictions about what the “new normal” you can expect will be. And it turns out to turn some long-held beliefs on their heads. Like your meeting’s history is a good predictor of the future. Not anymore, says Jeff. And if you’re basing your attendance on your member list, you’ve gotten it backwards.

Is he right? Probably. At any rate, there’s lots of interesting food for thought with no F&B guarantee (one prediction I will add is that you can expect F&B minimums–something I have been hearing lots of grumbling about in recent years–to continue to be a reason to grumble, if not outright shriek).

When the Treasury Department released its new executive compensation rules, I’m sure corporate meeting professionals everywhere joined Krys Slovacek in breathing a small sigh of relief when they found out that, while it requires companies receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to develop a company-wide policy for meetings, events, and other corporate travel expenses, it leaves it up to a company’s board of directors to decide what’s frivolous and what’s not (i.e., one would hope, meetings).

But is it too little, too late, as Krys worries? As she says, “The public has been led to believe (by the media and politicians alike) that meetings are frivolous, evil things. And those who attend meetings are frivolous, evil people, wasting TARP funds.” Which as we all know is not the case.

I know the folks at Meetings Mean Business have been fighting the good fight on this one, but I’m with Krys in my concern that the damage has already been done. Or maybe the pendulum, having hit the wall on the one side, will now start slowly swinging back towards meetings as being the vital business tool we all know them to be?