Plan Your Meetings

Jeff Boyd, president of Luggage Free baggage shipping company, has some tips on how to minimize travel-related stress this holiday season:

1. Avoid busy travel days. “If possible, the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the day before Christmas should be avoided,” Boyd says. “If you are flexible and have room to maneuver, avoiding these heavily-traveled days can save you a lot of headaches.”
2. Use smaller airports. “By using less-traveled gateways, you can score on all fronts — from parking, rental cars, security lines and even traffic to and from nearby hotels. This will all save you time and money.”
3. Ship your luggage ahead. “Travelers can avoid all the inconveniences of carrying, checking and claiming bags by shipping ahead.” Shipping services can send luggage to and from your final destination for as little as $1.50/lb.
4. Grab a good seat. “Web sites such as SeatGuru.com outline each seat on most major airline planes, giving you inside information on things such as extra legroom and proximity to power outlets.”
5. Invoke the 240 rule. “For any reason other than weather, under Rule 240, your [airline] ticket can be endorsed over to the next available flight, even if it’s with a competing airline.” Ask ticketing agents to invoke the rule if your flight is cancelled or delayed.
6. Book an early morning flight. Boyd points out, “Statistics show that early morning flights have a better on-time performance than any other flights throughout the day. Booking your flight as early as possible will dramatically reduce your chances of experiencing delays or cancellations.”

Homeless drifters, deceiving muffins and trips to the emergency room: Salisbury, Md.-based The Knowland Group released its Top-Five list of bizarre meeting planner complaints about group events.

1. Bankers and beggars. At a banking convention, one planner struggled with vagrants, beggars and drifters, who were drifting in from the bus station next door. “The drifters came into our rooms and helped themselves to the buffet, approached the conference attendees for money, and also stole several items from some of the vendors.” The hotel called local police, but the planner said the intruders were not deterred.
2. Muffin of deception. An event coordinator refused to return to a hotel because she felt as if the hotel’s catering staff purposely deceived her. What did they do? They included an apple muffin with the breakfast selection. “I thought it as a bran muffin when I picked it up,” said the event coordinator. “I was quite disappointed.”
3. Itchy session. A South Florida hotel’s unruly chigger population disrupted an annual, weeklong training session for an automobile manufacturer, biting attendees indiscriminately. “Maybe the hotel needed to spray,” the planner commented.
4. Fishy situation. A banquet at an upscale waterfront hotel ended with several attendees being rushed to the emergency room. “There was a big problem with the main fish entrée,” the planner explained. “Two people got tiny fish bones stuck in their gums, one attendant got a bone stuck in the roof of their mouth, and three people had some stuck in their throats!” Luckily, none of the injuries proved serious.
5. Crummy cookie platter. After ordering the “cookie monster” platter from a venue’s catering staff, an event planner was horrified to find out, on-site, that the monster platters only held a few cookies each. “There were over 200 students that attended the event,” the planner recalled. “I had to keep ordering more cookies while conducting my program.” Due to the cookie stress, the planner said she never would use that location again.

By Christine Born

Planners love to hear case studies, meeting bloopers and ways we all turn challenges into successes. So we decided to take you behind the scenes of our Southeast Expo in Atlanta, held Sept. 27 at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta-Ravinia.

1. If you’re served a lemon, make lemonade … In this case, it turned out to be apple cider. When your liquor sponsor drops out at the last minute, your vendor’s liquor license is not in order and your attendees are expecting a reception, what do you do? If your theme and décor are fall apples, you order fresh apple cider from the closest orchard and turn your reception into a celebration of the season.
2. Follow that theme, wherever it may lead … The image of one red apple standing out amid a bunch of green apples was chosen to illustrate this year’s Expo theme, “Take Your Meetings from Ordinary to Extraordinary.” It kept growing, until bushels of apples were purchased for use in table decorations, to adorn speaker podiums and in gift baskets. Expo decorator EventScapes got in on the act with red and green tabletops in the reception area. By the day of the event, the entire staff was sick of the things.
3. Whose coffee station was it, anyway? … Four meeting rooms off the hall were ours; another company was using two. We served cappuccinos at a registration reception, but when our attendees saw the coffee and pastry station in the meeting room hall, they lined up. Who could blame them? Room monitors became hall monitors, and tried to redirect traffic away from temptation.
4. Timing is everything … You don’t want to start a meeting late, but you also don’t want to start it while attendees are still pouring into the room, meeting and greeting, exchanging introductions and, generally, enjoying the interaction. But, schedule anxiety hit; we were on schedule and determined to remain so. The luncheon welcome address started, even though many people weren’t able to hear it.
5. Know your crowd … Maybe a mixed group of planners and vendors is not the best forum for tips on how to win concessions during negotiations, especially when the A/V team, jokingly, threatens to cut off the sound.
6. Lessons reinforced … The art of planning requires creative adaptation, determination, flexibility, a sense of humor and the audacity to go for “extraordinary.”

OK, so I’m a typical Gen Xer: I’ve got MySpace, Facebook, Quechup, LinkedIn and SecondLife profiles; I subscribe to blogs and list serves and have been known to podcast. But, it never fails to amaze me how many of my peers think what they broadcast on the Internet is private. Excuse me, but if you’ve got a LiveJournal or profile page set to public, people are going to read about how you chose to play golf instead of go to work.

Once something hits the Web, it’s out there. I’m not surprised that pictures a naughty flight attendant posted got her fired. And she shouldn’t be either. If you think what you post on these sites won’t get back to employers in the digital age, you’re so living in 1995, my friend.

Now that companies have their own MySpace profiles and are conducting virtual business, no one has six degrees of separation from anyone anymore. According to Rob McGovern, president and CEO of Jobfox, employers now are investigating social networking sites as a part of the job interview process. And anything you type in about your friends or company is going to get back to them, eventually.

So, if you’re feeling the urge to post images of last weekend’s revelry or you really want to rant about your boss, first ask yourself: “Do I really want everyone with Internet access to know about this?” If not, buy a paper journal and keep it to yourself.

Feeling a little insecure about the way you “face” the world? Now, there’s help. Nintendo DS is teaching people how to smile. The handheld game, currently available in Japan, helps players become more expressive by leading them through a series of exercises. An animated woman’s face illustrates exercises on one side of a split-screen while gamers see how closely they match her expression on the other. Gamers are cautioned from playing for more than 15 minutes at a time; doing so may leave facial muscles “out of balance.”

I almost lost my luggage on my way to the MPI World Education Congress in Montreal. Debarking from my flight behind most of the other passengers, I wound up in the back of the line through customs and arrived late at the luggage carousel. After watching it go round and round with the same few pieces, I finally accepted the fact that mine was not among them. I was about to go to the Delta desk when my quick-thinking husband took a name and phone number from a tag on a piece of luggage that was similar to mine. Yep, the guy’s wife had hurriedly grabbed the wrong bag (same shape, similar color) even though mine had a pink nametag that, I thought, set it off. The good news was we caught them as they were headed out of the city, and they quickly turned their car around so we could exchange bags. Lesson: Always check the nametag.