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.

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?

As I may have mentioned, I finally got the chance to participate, if only remotely, in an EventCamp: EventCamp Twin Cities, or #ECTC11 in Twitterese. It was my first real hybrid meeting experience. It also was one of the most interesting conferences I’ve been to in a while. Here are some of my thoughts. (Picture is of my assistant, Mango, who diligently tweeted for me on the rare occasions when I had to leave to room.)

Thought 1: If I had to use just one word to describe ECTC, it would be “overwhelming.” There was just so much stuff to do, from filling out the learning journal, to listening to the theme song, to following the Twitter hashtag, to listening to the sessions on the regular channel and on Facebook, to getting to know my teammates and working with them to earn badges, meet challenges, and otherwise play the really cool, if involved, game that Kurt Nelson designed just for us, to watching the videos people were posting about the event to YouTube…you see what I mean? Even when there wasn’t anything officially going on, we had virtual emcees Emilie Barta and Glenn Thayer to keep it all going with speaker interviews and all sorts of engaging patter. It was total sensory overload, and that was just participating remotely!

Thought 2: If I got to add one more word, it would be “exhilarating.” If, as the organizers continually stressed, this was all a big experiment, then I was one happy lab rat scampering from bell to whistle to score my virtual cheese. All that frenetic activity kept me from giving into the temptation of constant e-mail checking or even (heaven forbid) getting work done. Yes, while I had intended to just drop in and out casually while getting articles written and edited, instead I found myself hopelessly addicted to reading and responding to that Twitter hashtag, gobbling up what the speakers were talking about, unlocking badges (who knew I knew so much about mobile technology even before the session about it?) and coming up with ideas for a team name and motto that instead I ended up working late into the night to get my regular work done.

How addicted was I? Because Minnesota is an hour behind Massachusetts, EventCamp went beyond my regular work day. So there I was out in the garden after officially shutting down for the day, picking tomatoes and beans with my trusty netbook at my side so I wouldn’t miss anything. I know, right? Sad, but a true confession. Good thing my husband was out of town, because he would have laughed at me.

The strange thing is that the sessions themselves were the least compelling aspect. Well, it’s not that strange, seeing as they were also the least interactive. The Pecha Kucha presentations held my attention because not only were they short and sweet, they were also really well done. Mike Scott of Dale Carnegie Training also had me the whole time, but he did it by asking participants for our ideas on how his organization could use social media in its programs. And BizBash’s David Adler’s vision of the future of meetings design for the most part kept my attention, in part because he asked us to think about what meetings can learn from summer camp (creates long-lasting memories, relationships, community) and the famous gym membership curve (spikes in January, deep dip come Feb.). I have to admit that a lot of the sessions became kind of background while most of my attention went to what people were saying about the session on Twitter (!). Never done that before. And these were all sessions I would have been glued to in real life, led by people I’d love to hear, but for some reason it just didn’t grab me as streaming video the way I know it would have had I been in the room.

Thought 3: The difference in what you got out of it depending on where you sat, be it on site, in a pod (a group of geographically related folks who gathered together to participate remotely), or, like me, on your own. From this discussion of one pod’s experience and from some grumbling I heard from other pods, their expectations for participation were higher, and perhaps because of that their experience may not have been as satisfying as mine was.

And would all that scurrying around that kept me wrapped up in the experience perhaps have been more annoying than addicting if I had people to interact with? I’d be curious to hear from those who were on site (I haven’t seen any blog posts about it yet—if you know of one, please leave a link in the comments. Thanks!). Was all that attention given to those not in the room distracting from your experience? Did it enhance it in any way? What did we all miss by not being there?

Thought 4: Unlike previous EventCamps, ECTC was more of a traditional conference with pre-scheduled speakers and topics than a barcamp. While normally I’d much rather go with a more Open Space type of environment, in this case I think what already was jamming would have a high probability of sliding into chaos if they’d gone that route. And I have a strong feeling that we would have ended up with similar topics and many of the same people leading the discussions anyway.

Thought 5: Add my data point of one to the “not” side of all the arguments you hear about whether or not hybrid events will encourage people to just attend remotely and skip the live conference. All they do is whet your appetite for more, trust me. Better yet, don’t trust me—try one of these yourself. Watching the community build as people work and learn together just makes you want to be even more a part of it. And maybe have the chance to do a little after-hours karaoke, too. Hmm, maybe not.

A big thank-you shout-out to all the organizers, volunteers, techies, participants, virtual and IRL emcees, and especially the sponsors who were willing to get behind this great experiment. Even when things went horribly wrong, as Murphy’s Law insists they had to, you all kept it a fun, engaging, learning experience.

As to what went horribly wrong…as the organizers kept saying, remember that they’re experimenting so we don’t have to!

P.S. This post was much better the first time I wrote it. Darn you, hurricane Irene, for making the electricity flicker just as I was hitting that “publish” button! Lost the whole thing. Argh!

P.P.S. Remind me to write a post just about the game piece of ECTC11. If you were there and have thoughts you’d like to share or if you have seen someone else’s writeup about it, please let me know. Again, this was a first for me, but I have a strong feeling it’s something we’re going to be seeing a whole lot more of in the future.

I’ve managed to be either at an event or on vacation for the previous EventCamps, but this time around I was determined not to miss it, at least virtually. It’s a busy time for the magazine so I’ll likely have to drop in and out, but I am so looking forward to virtually attending EventCamp Twin Cities (it’s not too late to sign up if you want to join me).

One very cool thing so far is that the organizers mailed me something called a Learning Journal, which in addition to listing the program includes a My “Big Ideas” page where I’m to write down ideas I’d like to try at my next event. There’s also going to be an EventCamp Challenge (I’m on the Omnipress pod).

Here’s the theme song—love it!

If you want to follow along on Twitter, use the #ECTC11 hashtag, or follow @eventcamptc, where (according to the Tweetosphere) Mitchell Beer is tweeting his little heart out as of now.

It took me forever to get around to posting this, but speaker and productivity expert Neen James took a few minutes at this year’s Pharmaceutical Meeting Management Forum to share a quick tip:

Thanks, Neen!

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…

If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend checking out Life After Layoffs, Arlene Sheff’s first-person account of losing her senior meeting and event planner position with The Boeing Co. I couldn’t put it down.

I wish it weren’t the case, but so many people have recently gone through something similar, or are going through it now, or are ducking and covering and hoping it won’t happen to them that I’m guessing it resonates with more than just me. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been touched in some way by the economic downturn, and the way she shares the emotions that go along with a layoff is just, well, you can’t help but root for her.

To all who are in the throes of unemployment right now, keep the faith. As someone who’s been laid off, I know how disheartening, frustrating, and scary it can be. But, as they say, this too shall pass. Eventually. Hang in there.

As for Arlene, I can’t wait for the followup story on her brilliant post-Boeing career.

If you’re a meeting professional who’s working on your own, you might want to check out what I think is a pretty cool community for solopreneurs. It’s for independents in all walks of life, not just meetings, but there’s a wealth of information and opportunities to learn from each other that I think would be really useful.

Whether or not you want to join up, you might want to take part in the The Solopreneur Life 2010 End-of-Year Survey. I’m curious to see what the current state of the solopreneur state is, seeing as I was a solopreneur back before that term was coined.

Yep, the US News and World Report made it official when it included meeting planning among its list of hot jobs for 2011.

The meeting planning section admits that the job entails a lot of stress and physical and mental work, it also says, “Employment of meeting and convention planners, who hold 56,600 jobs nationwide in 2008, is expected to grow faster than the average for all professions over the next decade or so. The Labor Department projects that the number of meeting planner jobs will jump 16 percent, thanks to the growing importance of meetings to increasingly global companies.”

ASAE’s Lisa Junker posted three great questions to ask yourself about your career if you are considering making a change (gleaned from a conversation she had with June Cline, CSP, CSAC, Open Heart Communications, a career coach at #ASAE10’s annual meeting. The first one is key: “Does [your job] give you energy or does it take it away?”

It really resonated with me because of a conversation I had the other day with a friend who left a stable, if boring, job to take a leap into entrepreneurship. He said he had really begun to notice that he was wrung out after working his day job, but energized after working on his new business. It was, he said, night and day, and made it obvious which direction he should move in.

Here’s hoping your job, while I’m sure it’s not without its frustrations, keeps you humming (even on a Monday)!