Smart Meetings

It seems the more the world speeds up, the greater the pushback to slow things down. Fast food helped spawn the slow food movement, and Twitter and its 140 characters caused someone to start woofertime.com which requires a minimum post of 1,400 characters. And now we have the Aircruise, a sort of diamond-shape airship kept aloft by hydrogen, powered by solar energy and built to go somewhere really slow. In other words, your trip from London to New York will take 37 hours at an altitude of less than 12,000 feet.

But getting to the destination is not the point. The Aircruise will be about style and luxury, like a hotel in the sky. It’s also an antidote to the frenetic pace for the modern traveler, rushing off to airports, cramming uncomfortably into a crowded plane then speeding off to your final destination (to more crowded hotels) once you land. Designed with a large internal space for a small number of passengers, the Aircruise will have a dramatic and open common space, four duplex apartments, five smaller apartments, a penthouse and a bar/lounge.

Developed by British company Seymourpowell, helping produce the airship will be Samsung Construction and Trading. It’s expected to come on line by 2015. And while there’s word yet on meeting space, the Aircruise seems ideal for a buyout, especially for the executive retreat. After all, some of the best ideas are floating around in front of us.

“We had our first meeting crashers,” Ben tells me with a huge, excited grin on his face as we’re going up the elevator to where our attendees are mingling for dessert and after-dinner drinks.

We were staying at Montage Beverly Hills, which is sleek and elegant, gorgeous and well put-together. Our event, which is designed to get (and successfully does get) business done, was attracting random hotel guests.

And why not? It was our biggest event ever, with nearly 100 attendees filling the stunning 5,000-square-foot Marquesa Ballroom for a dinner that felt like a Nordic hall decorated with elegant Beverly Hills style and a $300,000 painted ceiling.

During our meal (oh, that coffee-crusted steak!), we planned a surprise game of switcheroo. Hotel representatives and our staff, after the first course, picked up our name tags and found a new seat, expanding the networking opportunities that can be limited by an hour-long stationary meal and keeping the “speed-dating” element going.

After the switch, the jazz trio, part of music by MG Music Events, Inc., launched into a subtle and relaxing version of “Stairway to Heaven,” which I was particularly fond of. But the musical highlight was upstairs after dessert. We were being serenaded by a solo guitarist and singer, when our event planner, Ben Partin, slipped him a few notes about our founder and publisher Marin Bright. He came up with a song on the spot that had the whole crowd in stitches. We’ll try and get an MP3 of it up soon.

We’ll be talking about this event for a while yet to come. All the planners we spoke with were excited at the opportunity to meet so many properties at once and connect with people they’d been eager but unable to see. So we brought them together. (Because, put simply, it’s just what we do.)

And no, the party crashers were not allowed in. It was an exclusive affair.

We’d also like to give a huge thanks to our Smart Mart sponsors and partners who helped make the night so great:

Montage Beverly Hills
South Coast Winery Resort & Spa
CJ Matsumoto & Sons
MG Music Events, Inc.
Albert Postel Photography
PSAV Presentation Services

Next week I am heading off to the Green Meetings Industry Council's Sustainable Meetings Conference in Denver. I am looking forward to what I will be learning about more sustainable meetings and meeting the people who make them happen. In order to give you, our readers, more green coverage we have partnered with the Green Meetings Industry Council to help us stay informed on the hottest topics in sustainability both online in our monthly Green Scene with the GMIC column and in the magazine. This month’s column takes a look at planning and implementing a sustainable meetings strategy. For advice on this sticky subject, we spoke with Oracle’s Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Paul Salinger. (Read the article here).

Being in the Northern California bubble, it’s hard to realize how far we have come and how much more work we have to do. We have been recycling bottles and cans here since I was in grade school and I am still very surprised when I travel somewhere and they don’t even recycle glass (yes glass, this happened two weeks ago!) let alone plastic. People get tired of hearing about green this and sustainability that, but the truth is we still have a long way to go. Many states don’t even have in-depth recycling programs let alone composting initiatives. Most hotels still offer bottled water in guest rooms and regular flow showerheads, faucets and toilets. I have even stayed in a few hotels that changed my towels anyways even though I had requested to re-use them.

This is not to say that there aren’t people, properties, cities and states making huge strides in sustainability, it’s just to say that it’s a constant process. There are always small things that we can do in our daily lives and we can always get better. I admit on most days I drive to work as it’s the most cost-effective option for my commute, but I try to make up for it in other ways. I hope with all of the work that the industry is doing for a more sustainable future that we will just incorporate these measures as part of a standard practice and then we can finally change the green dialogue into routine.

Hope to see you next week in Denver at the Colorado Convention Center!

San Diego seduces visitors with its balmy, sunny weather—a daytime high of 68 degrees in winter and 78 degrees in summer (40s to mid 60s at night). That may be the first of the city’s attractions for meeting planners, followed by an infrastructure that supports group business with a state-of-the-art convention center, an easily accessible airport (really accessible, as it’s also right downtown) and hotel properties that offer plenty of event space and breakouts, many within walking distance of the convention center.

They fringe a big, beautiful bay that, surprisingly, is also a dynamic working port. And it’s this port that was the focus of a recent press trip I attended, hosted by the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Unified Port of San Diego. What an eye opener (the point of first-hand visits)!  For planners, the area has myriad opportunities for meeting venues and intriguing off-sites.


   The San Diego harbor.

All manner of ferries, water taxis, fishing boats, sightseeing and whale-watching boats and other watercraft (not to mention cruise ships) dock on the bay. The Navy has a huge presence in San Diego, and seeing the imposing ships en route or in dry-dock is a timely reminder of their service.

The waterfront is also home to Seaport Village, a dining and retail complex, the USS Midway aircraft carrier museum and the Maritime Museum of San Diego, a collection of historic ships, including the Star of India, the steam ferry Berkeley and the B-39, a Russian submarine, among others. All are available for tours, and both the Midway and Berkeley can host groups for receptions, dinners and other events.


  The flight deck of the Midway.

Our host hotel was the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, a new convention hotel that’s as sleek as the yachts that also sail the bay. It totals 1,190 guest rooms and more than 165,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, and is located only steps from the convention center and the Gaslamp District.

But downtown isn’t the only bay option for groups. Tony Coronado Island, only a quick ride over the Coronado Bridge, is where you’ll find the Loews Coronado Bay Resort & Spa, an elegant California-Mediterranean property with 440 guest rooms, 65,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, a spa and Mistral, its signature, sustainably-focused restaurant.


  Our sunset Gondola cruise (photo courtesy of Peter Lowy).

And if you want a real treat for your small group (or VIPs), the hotel can arrange gondola rides (complete with singing gondoliers) through the Coronado Cays, another—unexpected—watercraft experience. You can rent one or any number of the fleet (for up to 44 passengers) for sunset excursions or create-your-own regattas.

If your group is more nature-minded, the South Bay is home to the Chula Vista Nature Center, showcasing the geology, ecology and natural history of the area’s wetlands. You can also host events here, complemented by educational opportunities presented by docents.

All too soon, it seemed, the trip to sunny San Diego was over and the journalists were returning to their homes in Boston, Chicago, Kentucky, Pittsburgh, Vancouver—snow-covered or rain-dampened places where the wind-chill factor was bone-numbing. The most overheard remark when it was time to leave? “Do we have to?”
    

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that parodies have a large place in my heart. It could be because I grew up with a brother who constantly cranked up Weird Al Yankovic (I love Rocky Road!), or it could be for another reason altogether. Either way, I am so excited to have discovered woofertime.com—a Twitter parody site that requires posts to be a minimum of 1,400 characters. The definition of a woofer? “When 140 characters is not nearly enough,” the website states. Popular posts begin with “Four scores and seven years ago” and “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

All fun and games aside, these communication parodies are actually a proposed trend for the 2010 year ahead. Slow Communication, as it’s referred to, is making way its in our tech-crazy, overstressed society. And as our Associate Editor, Talia Salem, spoke about last week in her blog post, sometimes you just need to let it go and disconnect. And she’s not the only one that thinks we need to slow it down a tad. Even Google Labs has a product called Email Addict that forces users to take 15-minute e-mail breaks from their work.

Maybe it is time to slow things down a bit—or at least pick up a Weird Al CD and get a little laugh. I highly recommend it.