Which is why I loved this post on inspiring meeting participants to take action by Adrian Segar. I’ve seen what he calls the personal introspective in play at many conferences now (where people are given some time to think about and write down what they’ve learned and how they plan to implement it), and he’s right, it definitely does help you filter through everything you learned to see which bits you can actually apply, and how. But it’s the plus/delta that really got me, because that’s where we so often fall short.

As he explains it (and do go read the post—I’m really short-changing it here), after people do their individual ruminating, they regather as a group and list the pluses (actions they want to work on) and deltas (issues that concern them but they don’t know how to address). I think we can get so bogged down in the latter that we kind of forget to do what we actually can do. And publicly sharing both would help solidify the intention to actually do something with what was learned.

I like Adrian’s simple, easy-to-do and I’d bet pretty effective approach. Another thing I saw once was a presenter had us write down what we intended to do on a postcard, which we self-addressed. He collected the cards, then mailed them to us three months later. I know, that gets expensive, but there are so many other ways we can do something similar electronically.

What do you do to encourage people to take action after they get back to the office?

Or, if you’re like me, the idea makes going vegan sound really, really good.

But what really creeps me out is the way it flirts with you. Sample quotes from the video: “I’m so versatile, I could be used for just about anything.” Um, OK, but all I really need to know is which baggage claim my suitcase will be coming in on. “I can say what you want, dress the way you want”—say what? What does your blouse have to do with my baggage claim question? And then there’s “…and be just about anything you want me to be.” Eeek! OK, if I take that at face value, can you be Darth Vader and aim a death star at the person who kicked my seat for the past five hours? I didn’t think so.

Anyway, check it out, and if you can explain why these things are worth $180,000 apiece for six months of rental time, please let me know. All I can envision is more noise pollution, probably crowding as people play with its outfits and try to get it to be things other than an airport info dispenser. Ick.

The biggest issue I have with the example Elliott gives is that the hotel offered the guest a chance to accept or deny the fee, then charged him anyway after he declined it. That’s just wrong on every front.

What’s really interesting, though, is a poll he has that, at the time I took it, showed 81 percent saying hotels should not be allowed to break out mandatory costs when they quote a room rate. IMHO, they can break it out all they like, as long as it’s all disclosed up front so people know what they’ll have to pay at the end of their stay. Would I prefer to have it all rolled into the price? Of course—it’s borderline bizarre to break out the costs for heat, water, and electricity (I won’t go into the mandatory fees for things that should be optional, such as resort fees). But if a hotel feels it’s better customer service to make the customers do math, so be it. Just as long as it’s all disclosed and all the numbers add up.

FYI, If you’re looking for more on international meetings, we have some exhaustive resources on MeetingsNet.com as well, from international destination updates to tips, trends, and how-tos; cost-saving strategies; legal advice; research and white papers; holiday, currency and time-zone resources; and customs and government resources on our International Meeting Guide.

What A/B testing is, according to Wired: “Using A/B, new ideas can be essentially focus-group tested in real time: Without being told, a fraction of users are diverted to a slightly different version of a given web page and their behavior compared against the mass of users on the standard site. If the new version proves superior—gaining more clicks, longer visits, more purchases—it will displace the original; if the new version is inferior, it’s quietly phased out without most users ever seeing it. A/B allows seemingly subjective questions of design—color, layout, image selection, text—to become incontrovertible matters of data-driven social science.”

If you can use this technology to maximize your meeting (and organizational) Web site, wouldn’t that just be the bee’s knees? But what’s easy to do on the Web is a little harder in real life. You can’t control all the variables or truly randomize the testing in the same way. But still, it’s the same concept that has meetings professionals use when they break their marketing program into pieces to address their niches, isn’t it? And when they tweak a piece of the program, introduce something new in formatting without doing away with the old first, then gauge which “works” best (with “works” meaning whatever it means for you, be it learning achieved, new behaviors cemented, information shared, etc.)?

While it makes me uncomfortable to think that it’s not important to understand why certain things work better than others, as the article notes, maybe I need to just let go of that and trust that if the data says something is better, it just is even if I can never figure out why? That has to be better than relying on HiPPOs, right? (HiPPOs being “highest-paid person’s opinion,” as defined in the Wired article.)

Like it or not, we’re living in an increasingly data-driven world, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think we just have to be careful not to lose the meaning behind the numbers. Anyway, it’s a fascinating read, and a reminder that, whether we know it or not, we’re all both the scientists and the guinea pigs in the great experiment of life.