That’s the message I got when reading this post on the TSMI Trade Show Marketing Report. Rich Westerfield mentions an example of the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s conference, and how the attendees are forcing change on what sounds like a pretty stodgy association. This is something I’ve never understood: Why associations don’t lead their members, instead of having members push and shove the association into the future. As Rich points out:

The number of voices and the numerous opinions shared by the more than 1,000 baristi, coffeehouse owners, suppliers and others who participate in these online forums and read these blogs are in and of themselves, an alternative to having to go to an association for education.

I would hazard a guess that the upcoming generation isn’t going to bother doing all that pushing and shoving to make an association and its meetings relevant; they’ll just head elsewhere for the information they need, the way they want to get it. Associations should be all over the new information delivery (for lack of a better term) trends, even if their members aren’t there yet. Because they will be, and soon.

P.S. I was so happy to see Rich Westerfield posting again—the conversation around tradeshow marketing hasn’t been the same since he redirected his energy toward Aldo Coffee.

I love that this BusinessWeek article on the world’s most innovative companies leads off with a description of a meeting:

It was a fitting way to wrap up the first day of IBM’s (IBM ) innovation-themed leadership forum, held in Rome in early April. Guests were treated to small group tours of the Vatican Museum, including Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. They sipped cocktails on a patio in the back of St. Peter’s, the vast dome of the basilica outlined by the light of the moon. They dined in a marble-statue-filled hall inside the Vatican. What better place than Italy to hold a global confab on innovation, the topic di giorno among corporate leaders? It was, after all, the birthplace of the Renaissance, another period of great innovation and change.

As the article says, innovation is about a lot more than new products and new technologies. It’s also about new ways of doing business—including new ways of doing meetings. The time is ripe, my friends, for meeting planners to showcase how what they do impacts what others in the organization do, and how innovation in meetings can lead to whole new field of endeavor, and profitability. The article talks about how meetings and incentives help spur innovation at companies including BMW, Southwest Airlines, Nokia, and 3M, among others.

Thanks to Joan Eisenstodt, leader of the MiForum listserv, for the pointer.

If the new U.S. requirement that everyone entering the U.S. via sea or air show a passport goes into effect as scheduled on Dec. 31 of this year, you may be saying bye to some of your Canadian attendees. And it could hurt the Canadian meetings market, too. From Travel Wire News:

In the Hotel Association of Canada/Fleishman Hillard survey, 37 percent of Canadians say they would take at least one trip to the US this year, with the majority (24 percent) indicating at least a one-night stay. However, when asked if they would still travel to the U.S. if a passport requirement were in place, 27 percent said they would likely cancel the trip.

America is Canada’s largest inbound market. Almost 75 percent of Canadian business comes from the US. If a huge percentage of Americans needs to cross the border but will cancel travel due to the passport issue, Canada’s meetings and conventions business will suffer tremendously. The Conference Board of Canada reports that the loss will be about $1.7 billion over 3 years. (Currently, only about 20 percent of Americans has passports). Conversely, American hotels, conventions and meetings loss is estimated at $785 million once the requirement is in place.

Remember that Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report that came out a few years ago? The gist of it was that the police has all this weird technology that enabled them to tell who was going to commit a crime before they committed it, so they could arrest them first and prevent the crime from happening. It didn’t work out too well in the movies.

So I wonder what makes Texas think that busting people for drinking in bars, in the hope that they won’t drink and drive, will work out any better? (Link to article about the new crackdown here). As David McCann says over at MiSoapbox:

We’re going to create a big mess for our society if we start arresting people based on crimes we think they might commit later. I read an article not long ago suggesting that it’s very easy to predict which people are going to commit violent crimes. Maybe if we put all of those people in jail, the crime rate would drop. Heck….if we put everyone in jail, the crime rate would surely drop to zero. Wouldn’t that be great?

Right on, Dave. I’m all for trying to reduce (better yet, eliminate) drunk driving, but I don’t think this is the way to go. Especially iffy is that it’s up to the officer’s judgment to decide who’s intoxicated by observing their behavior. I can think of all sorts of medical conditions that could land someone in the hoosegow when stone cold sober. Oh, the lawsuits…

Anyway, while I doubt this will put a damper on meetings in Texas, I’d let people know about it if I had something coming up in the Lone Star state. It would be pretty awful to have your key stakeholders thrown in the slam because they had a few nightcaps in the hotel bar. I’d also check out whether or not police will be monitoring private functions, like receptions held in a hotel. That could be even more interesting—what would the meeting organization’s liability be if someone got arrested at their function? I know you all try to control alcohol consumption with trained bartenders, drink tickets, etc., but sometimes people do overimbibe anyway. I don’t know enough about the specifics, but it might be worth talking to a lawyer about if you have Texas meetings.

The big winners in all this won’t be potential victims of drunk drivers, or the legal system that will undoubted clog up with soggy criminals. Hotel room service and minibars, though, will probably get a big boost as the party moves from bar to guest room.

Read this post on Creating Passionate Users, then think about it. While Kathy Sierra is talking about why the teens today are so hooked on the social networking site MySpace, what are meetings if not social networking sites iin real time and real space? And if you want to meet the needs of your next generation of attendees (who, by the way, sound like they will insist on being participants, not attendees), think about what they like about MySpace. According to Kathy’s daughter:

“myspace keeps doing what everybody really wants, and it happens instantly.”

She said they respond to feedback, “As soon as you think of something, it’s in there.”

She said, “It’s always evolving. It changes constantly. There’s always something new.”

I asked if these changes were disruptive or made it harder to use when nothing stays the same, and she gave me that teenage-attitude-eye-rolling-what-a-lame-question look.

Then she said the weirdest thing of all: “myspace is like a whole new plane of existence.”
She wasn’t kidding.

That’s setting a pretty high bar for live meetings, if they can get all this in cyberspace. Can you imagine a convention where events can turn on a dime, based on constant monitoring of feedback and somehow psychically being able to intuit what they’ll want next? If not, just wait a few years and you’ll see it start to happen. Because if it doesn’t, they most likely will give the whole meeting scene a pass, mentally if not physically.

Some truly fascinating reading along these lines is this talk given by Danah Boyd at the
O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference earlier this month, which Kathy points to. It’s about digital communities, but I would suggest it’s a must-read for any association exec who’s interested in growing a particular association community, online or off.

This article from Fast Company explains what millennials—the latest generation to join the workforce—want in their jobs, and gives some ideas on how different generations can coexist peacefully in the office. Like it or not, my fellow boomers and Gen Xers in supervisory positions, these guys will be changing the way we do business, and unless you plan to retire in the very near future, it’s time to do some attitude adjusting. And remember, it’s not just your new hires who likely will want to work differently, it’s also your attendees.

Of course, sweeping generalizations are sweeping generalizations, but generally speaking, according to the article:

Millennials aren’t interested in the financial success that drove the boomers or the independence that has marked the gen-Xers, but in careers that are personalized. They want educational opportunities in China and a chance to work in their companies’ R&D departments for six months. “They have no expectation that the first place they work will at all be related to their career, so they’re willing to move around until they find a place that suits them,” says Dan Rasmus, who runs a workplace think tank for Microsoft. Thanks to their overinvolved boomer parents, this cohort has been coddled and pumped up to believe they can achieve anything. Immersion in PCs, video games, email, the Internet, and cell phones for most of their lives has changed their thought patterns and may also have actually changed how their brains developed physiologically. These folks want feedback daily, not annually. And in case it’s not obvious, millennials are fearless and blunt. If they think they know a better way, they’ll tell you, regardless of your title.

So for meetings, I see personalized career-setting tracks, lots of different ways for them to provide—and get—feedback, and to listen to what they have to say about the meeting and make changes accordingly. I also like the idea of assigning new attendees mentors, providing a less-structured environment so they can group and regroup according to what interests them at any particular point in time, shorter and more interactive sessions, and being willing to reconsider if they come up with an idea that’s been tried before and didn’t work.

I’ve heard of meetings happening on trains, planes, and automobiles (well, buses, anyway), but I hadn’t thought of using a boat as a meeting venue. Not a cruise ship, but a local charter boat, as detailed in this article from the Palm Beach Post. From the article:

“This is a whole different experience. Companies are looking to do things differently, especially when they’re entertaining clients,” said Duane MacPhail, president of Palm Beach Yachts International, a yacht management and charter firm in West Palm Beach. “It’s the exclusivity of it, being able to talk to clients or employees captively. There are no distractions, and it’s a beautiful setting.”

MacPhail estimates that about one-third of his charter customers are companies looking to conduct business on the water, from product launches to year-end wrap-ups.

“That was nonexistent five years ago,” he said.

I’d love to try this for one of our weekly editorial meetings, but maybe I’ll wait until summer to suggest it. Somehow, I think Boston is a little different than Palm Beach in January.

Keep conferences small: That’s what Robert Scoble, Microsoft blogger extraordinaire, says, if you want to keep it cost-effective for attendees and not take the financial risks.

But what’s even better is this post from Jeff Jarvis on why conference business is ripe for revolution.

Read ‘em and weep, or not, but the times, they are a-changing. What are you doing about it?

P.S. I got an e-mail yesterday from someone about the need to turn the whole conference concept on its head. She thought that the current model was working just fine. But look at the comments to Jarvis’ post, and tell me something doesn’t need fixing.

Update: Here’s a thoughtful post on E-Venting about what’s right about the current model, and what conference organizers can learn from the blogosphere. Some day, I’ll take the time to write thoughtful posts like this!

I love this editorial by my colleague, Regina McGee, Association Meetings‘ editor:

A Better Tom: The Convention Industry Council will launch a new campaign to boost awareness in Corporate America of the existence–and importance–of the convention industry. Instead of ads in The Wall Street Journal featuring management guru Tom Peters praising the importance of face-to-face meetings (as in the previous campaign), CIC will hire actor Tom Cruise. Cruise will appearon the Oprah Winfrey Show, where he will jump up on her couch and excitedly declare his love for meetings of every sort. “They are just so fantastic and incredible–the most fantastic, amazing, experiences.”

Name Changes: Having hired a pricey consultant last year to develop a new name that signals the new role for convention bureaus, Destination Marketing Association International will revert to its former name, International Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus. It turns out no one, including any CVBs, use or intend to use the words “destination marketing organization” when referring to CVBs. Oh well.

Meanwhile, the International Association for Exhibition Management will succeed in getting members to approve a new name for the association–exactly 12 months after a seemingly hastily considered attempt to change the name at last year’s annual meeting failed spectacularly. However, instead of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events, as previously proposed, the new name will be the International Association of Exhibitions and All Other “E” Words.

Merge But No Purge: The Professional Convention Management Association and Meeting Professionals International, after years of competing for members, will decide the time has come to put aside any hostilities and to approve a proposal to merge the two associations. After months of haggling over the new name, during which both associations refuse to give up any of their former initials, the new name is announced: The Professional Meetings and Convention Management Association International, or PMCMAI. Members of both organizations veto the proposed name, however, in favor of the shorter PMP, or Professional Meeting Professionals, stressing that meeting professionals–long in search of professional recognition from the outside world–can’t emphasize their professionalism enough.

This ran in today’s edition of Association Meetings Extra, which also has a couple of other items worth checking out. I’m glad she did it—I was trying to do something similar, but this is better than what I could have come up with.

For travel and hospitality, here’s USA Today’s pick of the five biggest trends in 2006:

1. A-380, a mammoth new plane from Airbus, takes to the air. “Longer, taller, and wider than the White House,” the article says. Wow.

2: New Orleans returns, with predictions for a strong fall comeback for meetings. We’ll see.

3: Registered travelers get rolling. They predict the new TSA security program that allows some passengers to trade a background check for shorter lines will prove popular. But: “Some people, such as former TSA administrator John Magaw, have warned that terrorists could enroll and bypass rigorous scrutiny.” Sigh.

4: New rooms in New York—and even higher rates than ever.

5: Atlanta gets a new runway, a move that hopefully will cut down on flight delays.

I’m still mulling over my own top whatever list of predictions for the meetings business…