Plan Your Meetings

A  campaign is afoot to find an articulate spokesperson for the meeting, convention and business travel industry who can interact with the media and tell a compelling story about what meetings mean to people in the hospitality industry and local communities.

The contest, organized by Meetings Mean Business, is open until April 24. If you’re interested in applying to be the new “Face of Travel,” read the guidelines here. Applicants are asked to submit a short 45-60 second video in which they introduce themselves, say where they work, and explain what meetings mean to them and their community as well as why they think they should be the new face of the travel.

All entries will be made available on a special YouTube channel created for the contest.

PYM wishes all applicants the best of luck! Let us know if you enter the contest, and we’ll embed your vids in a special post.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some links to stories that presented our industry in a favorable light. I’m glad to say that there have been more of them to share.

The New York Times ran a great article by Ben Stein entitled, “Don’t Blame the Business Trip.” In it, he points out that there is a danger of puritanical excess in the way business meetings are being criticized that will ultimately put companies at a competitive disadvantage and punish the most productive employees companies have. On March 30, the Times also ran an article about the effect cancellations have had on major hotel chains and what the industry is doing to turn things around.

“The Today Show” recently did a segment on what criticism and cancellations are doing to the meetings industry. You can watch the clip here:

Speaker Keith Ferrazzi also created this short video on “Why Meetings Matter:”

Do you have other news items or comments on what’s going on? If so, please post them below.

What a whirlwind few months it’s been for the meeting, incentive, conference and event (MICE) industry. Luckily, there are many active and engaged meeting professionals keeping on top of new legislation, press coverage and industry efforts.

For the latest posts and information on the MICE crisis, check out what people are Twittering about here:

Sally Allen
Executive Producer
The Water Coolers

Sally Allen and her husband Tom run The Water Coolers, a corporate entertainment group based in New York City that recently was awarded the 2009 Spotlight Award for Entertainment Ensemble of the Year.

Describe what The Water Coolers do.

I guess they’re a comedy group that sings. We draw on the Broadway talent pool to find our talent. Some of the material is about work. We figure if it bonds people in the workplace enough to keep them around the water cooler, it will bond them in a meeting.

Do you have an entertainment background?

I started as a meeting planner for an association. I did that for six or seven years. Then I moved to New York and married a comedy writer [Tom Allen].

What kind of entertainment do you provide?

Meetings [don’t have] a one-size-fits-all objective. My goal is to create things that fit into a number of objectives and budgets. We do everything from soup to nuts … whatever length of show is required: 10-minute pre-shows, 50-minute after-dinner shows, and awards shows that make the winners feel like stars and help motivate people for next year.

Why should planners incorporate comedy into their events?

Comedy can achieve a lot of goals planners need to achieve. It helps people feel more connected to each other — that’s the reason why we all come together when we could be teleconferencing. In times like this, comedy can break a lot of tension. A lot of people are feeling, in the worst case, fear; in the best case, trepidation. One planner said to me, “This is my goal: My people are nervous and I want them to feel normal again — to remind them that the sky isn’t falling; that we can be creative and find our way forward.”

How do you customize your shows for each group?

We ask the planner: “Why did you hire us? What is your objective? And what does success look like for you?” Maybe the answer is, “They’ve been in sessions all day, and I just want them to be able to cut loose and laugh and let go.” Comedy’s a super solution for that, too.

What advice do you have for planners wanting to use comedy at events?

I recommend always knowing the purpose of bringing someone in, so you can [say], “This is why I want you there.” The talent can help you reach your objective.

Make sure the comedians understand the company’s culture, where the boundaries are, what will be extra funny and what is outside those boundaries. When I was a planner, I hired a comedian who made fun of how heavy my president was. You don’t want that.

[Ask yourself,] “Do I want to have people involved from my audience, have my CEO or my CFO come in?” One planner felt most people would be intimidated by their Chief Financial Officer. They asked us to write something to humanize him, so we wrote him a rap solo. It’s better for us when we know who’s in the audience.

Ask questions of the talent … collaborate. [Get] an audio demo and sample lyric [you] can send around the organization and share with anyone that needs to see it and give feedback. … It’s important that you’re working with a comedy act that really understands the event side of the business, too.

What are some of the ways you’d recommend planners use comedy?

Customization is always great. Comedy can work interstitially — that helps when programming is really dry and people detach. A lot of times, when you’re coming back from a break, it’s kind of hard to refocus the group. The last thing you want is to have your CEO struggle to get their attention. People hire us to go out there and give five minutes; by the end, people are all settled down.

Awards shows are another place where I see [comedy] all the time because people are ready to celebrate. That’s a great example of a way to use comedy to achieve the goal. You want that room full of excitement.

Victor Borgia once said, “The shortest line between two people is laughter.” Comedy truly is a connecting experience. That’s what makes it so wonderful for meetings.

What a difference grassroots mobilization makes. This past week, the number of signatories on the Keep America Meeting petition reached 17,000; members of the travel industry met with President Obama and got his endorsement; and media coverage started getting positive.

Check it out:

• Fortune – “Not Every Corporate Trip is a Boondoggle” March 11, 2009
• Associated Press – “White House says it encourages business travel”  March 12, 2009
• Reuters – “Hotel, travel executives press Obama on downturn” March 11, 2009
• Politico – “Obama reassures travel execs” March 11, 2009
• Washington Post op-ed by J.W. Marriott Jr. – “Memo to Business: Let’s Meet”

“This was a good week, but we are not out of the woods,” U.S. Travel Association’s Geoff Freeman said in briefing distributed to Keep America Meeting supporters. “The twin threats of over-regulation and media sensationalism still hang over our industry, and it will take a lengthy and sustained effort to mitigate both. We have gotten to this point, thanks to your involvement and your financial support. We will need more of both in order to maintain our grassroots, communications and advocacy activities in the months ahead.”

For more on the turnaround, go to Bruce MacMillan’s MPI blog, which includes some “eyewitness” observations of the politico meetings.

Things seemed pretty straightforward at the 2009 Greening the Hospitality Industry conference in Pittsburgh yesterday (stainless steel water bottles, reusable china, local/organic cuisine, multi-stream recycling, composting bins) until the keynote presentation.

That’s when Green Meeting Industry Council Executive Director Tamara Kennedy-Hill introduced our keynote speaker, L. Hunter Lovins of Natural Capitalism Solutions. Lovins didn’t walk out on stage. Instead, she was beamed live from Boulder, Colo.

It was a fascinating example of how a little thought in the planning process can make a huge impact. Here we were, attending a conference on how to green our events, and the organizers surprised us with this brilliant technology that’s innovative, interactive, functional, fun, unexpected and which is a great example of how planners can use technology as a sustainable solution. Typical of most green strategies that reduce waste, booking Lovins’ virtual keynotes also cost less money than flying her in for a speech.

Lovins was still able to show us PowerPoint slides, crack jokes and answer questions. She could see and hear us, too. But, as she says in this short clip, she didn’t have to “move her protoplasm around” and got to enjoy her birthday at home, radically decreasing her carbon footprint and increasing her quality of life.

Check it out. The Web site she references in the clip, in case you want to see the whole presentation, is Natural Capitalism Solutions.

I’m totally not into the name because it makes me think something is on fire, but you’ve got to visit the Web site Meeting Industry Crisis Center.

It’s got nifty links to keep you up to date on the crazy war politicians are waging on our industry. (In case you haven’t heard, the latest nutty manuever is a ban on incentives Sen. Kerry is proposing for companies receiving emergency financial assistance.)

And, best of all, it’s got a whole bunch of action items, from research proving why your work is important, effective and necessary to sample letters you can write to your pinhead politicians, biased local reporters and Madame President herself, Nancy Pelosi.

Get educated. Take action. Or start looking for another job, my friends.