Maybe it was the 6-month-old strapped to my chest in the baby carrier, but the service I encountered while traveling was unexpectedly above par. It was so good, in fact, that my husband, who’s not a comment card kind of guy, actually filled out a feedback form when the airline sent the request to his email. We even had a slight delay, and it still didn’t matter, because the desk agents, flight attendants and other people we encountered on our trip left us feeling very positive.

Customer service is the practice of treating people as individuals with different needs. As meeting planners, you are providers and your attendees are your customers. By focusing on them as individuals, you may be able to plan better events. In our first issue of 2012, we’re focusing on trends in meetings in the coming year, and one of them is focusing on your customers, not yourself. It’s time to make it about them.

We want to know what changes you’re making to your meetings and events in 2012. Comment here, or email your ideas to me at lhoppe@collinsonmedia.com.

The co-founder and CEO (he defines his title as chief executive optimist) of the Life is Good Co. pushed his message about the power of optimism to a packed room at the San Diego Convention Center, Jan. 11. “It’s not just what you have, where you are, what your title is, what kind of car you drive, or anything else—it’s the way you view your world,” Jacobs said. “When we see what’s right with the world rather than what’s wrong with the world, possibilities open up.”

It’s a welcome message, especially as the national media hammers away at negative news coming from the Republican primaries and continued reports about a stagnant economy. Even more heartening was Jacob’s call to find a cause and weave it into your work every day. “Selfishly, it puts a bounce in your step,” he said. “It’s the reason I want to work—because you can do something meaningful.”

Jacobs started the company with his brother, John, in Boston in 1994 with $78 in the bank, building it to the $100 million privately held business it is today, by promoting an optimistic message on T-shirts, hats and other products.

Meeting planners are an optimistic lot. (Actually, it would seem to be a requirement for a job that involves juggling many tasks while dealing with sometimes disgruntled or difficult people.) They have been in the forefront of the movement to involve event participants in activities that benefit the needy in host cities. Today, planners regularly incorporate programs or align with groups to raise money or support for worldwide causes as part of every meeting. These efforts contribute a broader meaning to the Meetings Mean Business campaign created by the industry a few years ago. What began as a marketing message to focus attention on the positive contributions of events to the economy and jobs has almost been co-opted by planners and their attendees, who have taken their events to a higher level that delivers rewards to them as well as the groups they adopt.

Looking for more optimism and inspiration to kick off your planning year? Our first-ever Cool Issue is chock-full of the wonderful, weird, exciting, creative concepts, places and trends from our meeting world in the January/February 2012 edition of Connect magazine.

Beyond my personal property, I should also protect myself. I recently read about a hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, that conducted a study group, and half of the “influential and well-traveled Danish women” responding said they’d prefer to stay on a women-only floor because it provides both a sense of security and it feels more hygienic. The Bella Sky Comwell hotel opened in May and it features a women-only floor with a slight upcharge for rooms.

A few hotels in the U.S. also have all-female floors, including the Premier Hotel in New York City, Ellis Hotel in Atlanta, and Crowne Plaza properties in Washington, D.C., and Bloomington, Minn. The rooms have amenities you don’t find in most rooms, including flat irons, curling irons, yoga mats and kiss cams to say hello to family back home. As planners, you’re always trying to figure out what will make your attendees’ stay—or your own—more pleasant. Offering female attendees the safety, security and amenities of a women-only floor is an interesting thought.

What they haven’t done is change the age-old structure of meetings, something pointed out in a couple of recent meeting industry blogs.

The same almost sacrilegious thought struck me while looking through some photos from TEDGlobal2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland, in July. There are the talking heads on stage; there are the people in their seats, clapping on cue: top speakers, time limits, intriguing subjects, but still top down. They’re lecturing to their subjects.

Instead of planning the production of meetings, we need to start with the involvement of the participants. (Change the language from “attendees” and consider the impact.) How do our colleagues, associates, clients feel about traveling to a gathering? What is their emotional connection? How do they want to engage with others? How can you involve them?

Rethinking meetings means ground-up work. You might be asking why: Your meetings might still be producing results that you and your organization want. Will they two or five or more years from now?

Innovation has almost become a tired word, but it does not mean simply refining or upgrading or improving something that already exists. Innovation means a truly new idea. That is something that is rare and difficult—and worth thinking about and discussing.

Our new special series, “Rethinking Meetings,” explores these questions, presenting ideas from inside and outside the meetings industry, beginning in the January 2012 issue of Connect.

This week The National Conference Center in Leesburg, Va., released information about EventCamp East Coast 2011, scheduled at the D.C.-area center, Nov. 4-6. The conference will use a BarCamp-style format in which there are no predetermined topics and presenters.

Participants share learning goals during the opening roundtable session and later suggest topics and cast votes on what sessions they would like to see given. “Sessions are facilitated by your fellow EventCampers and bring out the many years of experiences of fellow attendees,” says event organizer Traci Browne, president of Red Cedar Marketing.

Sound a bit reminiscent of the crowd-determined (and shouted) agendas at the Occupy Wall Street gatherings? In some ways, it is. BarCamps, MashUp Camps and other unconference-style gatherings are often organized over social networks and tap into crowd-sourced expertise and energy.

We currently are working on a series titled “Rethinking Meetings” that will look at the changing nature of conferences, conventions and meeting planning from the spaces we meet in to the strategies employed in planning and presenting events. We’ll explore the subject with experts from every discipline in and out of the industry: business, design, education, social media, technology and more. As always, we invite you to share your experience, intelligence, comments or opinions.

Putting perspective on yet-another media brouhaha over money spent at meetings held by federal agencies, the Convention Industry Council released a statement highlighting facts and putting a damper on the shock factor of $16 muffins.

The muffins, served at a 2009 Justice Department meeting, were just one of the items that caught media attention after an audit called the $121 million spend on conferences in 2008-2009 “extravagant and wasteful.” Other items cited included snacks for $32 per person, $10 brownies, $8 coffee and nearly $600,000 for event planning services for five conferences. Last week, President Obama ordered federal agencies to review expenses for government conferences.

The CIC response explains to those outside the industry what planners would recognize immediately: The price of the muffins actually included fresh fruit, coffee, juice and muffins, as well as tax and gratuity, and was comparable to the U.S. Senate caterer’s breakfast cost of $12 to $20. The CIC response also points out the cost-cutting measures described in the audit, which media reports left out.

More resources from the CIC about the importance of meetings can be found through its “Face Time. It Matters.” campaign.

Update: Meeting planners aren’t the only ones who could see flaws in the muffin-gate uproar. Read Patrick B. Pexton’s take on his colleague’s original story about the extravagant muffins.

BeRemedy has helped 115,000 people, giving everything from beds to school supplies, in the past 18 months. Better World Books has converted 53 million books into more than $8.6 million in funding for literacy and education, diverted more than 26,000 tons of books from landfills and donated 3.3 million books to partner programs around the world since 2002. Both organizations leverage social media to create good.

Last month, Mashable has hosted the Social Good Summit at the 92 Street Y in New York City featuring speakers such as Lance Armstrong, Geena Davis and Mandy Moore, as well as representatives from GE, MTV Networks and other prominent organizations, alongside start-ups and entrepreneurs.

The conference is an example of the doors social media opens: Organizations with massive pocketbooks and celebrities with large social reach are using the same technologies individuals are using to help people around the world. At a local meet-up inspired by the Summit and Social Good Day on Sept. 21, beremedy relayed the need for pots and pans, a vacuum and a washing machine through its social media networks, and those of the 18 social good junkies who had gathered for the happy hour. Each need was met within minutes.

“It’s up to big companies to use our power, our access to scale, and connect it with those who have great ideas,” Beth Comstock, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of GE, said during her presentation at the Summit. While that’s true, technology puts a similar power at everyone’s fingertips, allowing them to connect to forward-thinkers.

There are startups and exciting endeavors launching in every community everyday. Are there organizations with creative ideas and similar vision to yours you can partner with through your meetings? How can you leverage your meetings and events for social good? (Trying to figure that out? Here are five practical tips for building a social good strategy.)

Listening to opinions, evaluating information and weighing choices are critical skills when making decisions that influence our performance and our meetings and events. As the stakes go up (especially the demands to reevaluate how we organize meetings to improve ROI), so does the likelihood that you’ll get mired down in objections (an unfortunate example is the political impasse in Congress). Here are three common decision traps to avoid, as suggested in “Making Smart Decisions” from Harvard Business Review:

1. Anchoring. Many people give disproportionate weight to the first information they receive. Be sure to pursue other lines of thinking, even if the first one seems right.
2. Status quo. Change can be unsettling and it’s easy to favor alternatives that keep things the same. Ask yourself if the status quo truly serves your objectives and downplay the urge to stay in your current state.
3. Confirming evidence. If you find that new information continually validates your existing point of view, ask a respected colleague to argue against your perspective. Also try to avoid working with people who always agree with you.

Has your decision-making process changed? As a leader, how do you evaluate your strategic meetings management plans, especially when a major departure is called for?

Giving up some control to attendees can be scary. However, a theme resonating throughout Connect Marketplace in Chicago last month was: Try something new. Jeff Hurt challenged those attending his session to rethink how they present conference education; Jim Spellos urged planners to adopt tools for their event attendees even if they themselves did not use them. Examples of tools and strategies outside many people’s comfort zones might be geo-location based apps or electronic handouts.

CollinsonTV’s video interviews, which the editorial staff conducted with presenters and uploaded to YouTube throughout the conference, challenged me. I learned that when you are trying out a new strategy, you often have to work out the kinks as you go. And while you don’t have to abandon other formats, you do need to try and think like your attendees might. When choosing the medium and content make sure it provides value and you aren’t simply trying out a new tool for the fun of it.

What new strategies are you implementing as a result of something you learned at Connect Marketplace? Are you trying new ways to give attendees ownership? Is there an extra step you can take to put attendees in the spotlight?

You expect top service from your meeting providers, but it is as important to make sure your meeting staff meets your expectations. When you start planning how you’re going to market your event to prospective attendees, you also need to think about the internal message you want to send. If your event team and organization’s staff don’t believe in the importance of your event and attendee satisfaction, the whole plan falls apart.

That’s one reason why companies like Apple, Starbucks and Zappos sell to their employees as strongly as they sell to their customers. These companies do an excellent job of marketing to their staffs, which keeps the enthusiasm high and contagious. When the employees are excited about the product (in your case, the meeting), the customers (attendees) are going to be excited as well.

Benchmark Hospitality’s CEO Burt Cabanas recently told us that motivating employees was one of the most important factors in customer service. “If you have a hotel that needs renovation but your employees know they are the difference in the customer experience, no one will notice the slightly frayed carpet,” he said.

Want your attendees to be excited about your upcoming event? Start by making sure your team is excited about it.