The Slovenia Convention Bureau just announced some high points of its recent MICE marketing campaigns--and upcoming events of note that will surely help drive success for the destination in the turbulent economy.

Push up Slovenia 3.0 and BeBee campaigns raising the meeting destination profile of Slovenia. The BeBee socially responsible initiative attracted support of 821 international meeting industry professionals and generated broad media attention, followed by publication of 16 articles in the leading meeting industry media. During the year-long campaign the percent of RFPs received by the bureau rose 30.7%.

IMEX Challenge 2012 will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, July 2-4, 2012. IMEX Challenge Slovenia will strive to blend environmental objectives with social causes and create positive outcomes for the host community of disabled children and adults in CUDV Draga. The humanitarian project presents Slovenia as a young meeting industry destination where innovative stories are born and there is interest for stakeholders to jointly contribute to a better future.

Conventa brings together more than 140 meeting industry providers from South East Europe and more than 300 carefully selected hosted buyers from all over Europe. Conventa has thus far selected 35% of the received applications for hosted buyer status. The biggest part of the selected hosted buyers currently comes from the United Kingdom and Russia (16%), followed by Belgium (11%), Netherlands (10%), France, Austria and Germany (5%). Slovenia is one of the meeting suppliers planning involvement with the event.

Source: The Slovenia Convention Bureau, (CC) Husond

The Novotel Auckland Airport officially opened last week. The launch of the hotel--just 50 meters from the international terminal--comes just more than 100 days from the kick-off of the 2011 Rugby World Cup and will provide a huge confidence boost to New Zealand tourism after the Christchurch earthquake earlier this year.

“For the majority of visitors to New Zealand, the Novotel is the first and last impression they have of the country, so the design of the Novotel has been infused with subtle references to New Zealand’s natural environment, culture, art and heritage,” said General Manager Paul Columbus. “Part of the New Zealand experience is the close encounter with nature, so the hotel has been surrounded with distinctive indigenous plants, including Pohutakawa trees, while the triangular architectural features of the building are designed to reflect the bows of traditional Maori ‘waka’ canoes.”

A major feature of the 263-room hotel is its conference center, with 12 meeting rooms capable of playing host to conferences for up to 315 delegates. 

Columbus says the hotel is aiming to become a major center of conferences and events in the Pacific.

"Auckland Airport has the benefit of extended operating hours, so it is ideal for hosting delegations from all around New Zealand and Australia, and there are excellent connections to Asia, the Middle East, South and North America and Europe," he said. "Downtown Auckland can be up to an hour away by car, so for important meetings where time and accessibility are important, the Novotel is an ideal solution for meetings organizers."

A new study from MIT neuroscientists shows that the most memorable photos are those that contain people, followed by static indoor scenes and human-scale objects. However, landscape photos are mostly forgettable. This is something to seriously consider when marketing your destination or event.

The new study is the first to model what makes an image memorable—a trait long thought to be impenetrable to scientific study, because visual memory can be so subjective. 

“People did not think it was possible to find anything consistent,” said Aude Oliva, associate professor of cognitive science and a senior author of the paper.

However, the MIT team, which also included Antonio Torralba, and one of his graduate students, Jianxiong Xiao, was surprised to see remarkable consistency among hundreds of people who participated in the memory experiments. 

Using their findings from humans, the researchers developed a computer algorithm that can rank images based on memorability. Such an algorithm could be useful to graphic designers, photo editors or anyone trying to decide which of their vacation photos to post on Facebook, Oliva says.

Oliva’s previous research has shown that the human brain can remember thousands of images, with a surprising level of detail. However, not all images are equally memorable. 

For the new study, researchers built a collection of about 10,000 images of all kinds—interior-design photos, nature scenes, streetscapes and others. Human subjects in the study (who participated through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program, which farms tasks out to people sitting at their own computers) were shown a series of images, some of which were repeated. Their task was to indicate, by pressing a key on their keyboard, when an image appeared that they had already seen.

Each image’s memorability rating was determined by how many participants correctly remembered seeing it, and different research subjects tended to produce similar memorability ratings. 

“There are always differences between observers, but on average, there is very high consistency,” Oliva said. 

After gathering their data, the researchers made “memorability maps” of each image by asking people to label all the objects in the images. A computer model can then analyze those maps to determine which objects make an image memorable. 

In general, images with people in them are the most memorable, followed by images of human-scale space—such as the produce aisle of a grocery store—and close-ups of objects. Least memorable are natural landscapes, although those can be memorable if they feature an unexpected element, such as shrubbery trimmed into an unusual shape.

Alexei Efros, associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, says the study offers a novel way to characterize images.

“There has been a lot of work in trying to understand what makes an image interesting, or appealing, or what makes people like a particular image. But all of those questions are really hard to answer,” said Efros, who was not involved in this research. “What [the MIT researchers] did was basically approach the problem from a very scientific point of view and say that one thing we can measure is memorability.”

The researchers are now doing a follow-up study to test longer-term memorability of images. They are also working on adding more detailed descriptions of image content, such as “two people shaking hands,” or “people looking at each other,” to each image’s memorability map, in an effort to find out more about what makes the image memorable.

(Story material provided by MIT/Anne Trafton.)

The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) has identified 9,120 events that took place in 2010, 826 events more than were identified last year and an all-time record. Partly this reflects the strength of the association meetings market despite the recent economic downturn; partly it is thanks to a record number of ICCA members sending in their calendar information to help identify new events.

“Some of this significant increase in numbers of association meetings in 2010 is certainly due to our continued investment in research and the great feedback from ICCA members, but it seems clear to me that we’re in the midst of an extended period of astonishing dynamism: 2009 and 2008 were similarly buoyant in terms of new association event creation," said ICCA CEO Martin Sirk. "This surely has to be driven by the acceleration of new scientific and technological developments and the need to discuss these complex changes face-to-face. Anyone who wants to understand what the information revolution really looks like just needs to consider how the association meetings sector is evolving.”

As has been the case since 2004, the U.S. and Germany are the number one and two countries respectively measured by the number of international meetings organised in 2010. The gap between the U.S. and Germany is shrinking from 137 to 81 meetings, compared to the 2009 figures. Spain, third country in the ranking since 2007, remains third. The U.K. and France both climb one place to respectively fourth and fifth at the cost of Italy, which now ranks sixth. Japan and China-P.R. both also climb one place and Brazil drops two places and is now ninth. Switzerland is a newcomer in the top 10.

The top five cities are the same as in the 2009 ranking: For the sixth year in a row, Vienna is the most popular city, even though it organized six meetings less compared to 2009, which means other cities are gaining ground on Vienna. Like last year, Barcelona, Paris, Berlin and Singapore make up the top five cities. Remarkable climbers are Madrid (jumps from 13 to six), Istanbul (from 17 to seven), Sydney (from 27 to 10) and Taipei (from 25 to 11). Copenhagen and Stockholm dropped out of the top 10 and Bangkok dropped out of the top 20. For Bangkok, political unrest can clearly be appointed as a cause for this drop. When creating a city ranking measured by total number of participants hosted at all meetings in 2010, Stockholm is third, which means it has hosted less but bigger meetings.

The full ICCA statistics report for 2010 will be released end of June. The 10 Year statistics report covering 2001-2010 will be published late July.

Paper books (hard copy) are still alive and well.  What better way to browse through them than in an inspiring setting such as these bookstores?  I've been to Powell's (massive!).  Our family always seeks out bookstores and libraries on our travels.  Now I have some additional destinations to consider. Maybe I should add the rest of these to my bucket list!  Have you been to any of these?  

Ruth A. Hill with Meetings Focus posted an interesting article about beach meetings and how they promote team building, are CSR friendly, etc. She listed a number of beaches on the Southeast coast (because I was looking at the South Newsline edition), but what are some you can think of? I think the beaches in the Pacific Northwest are lovely, as well as any number of beaches on the West coast, Hawai'i or numerous other countries outside the U.S. 

Europe’s largest congress center opens its doors on May 7 in Milano, Italy. The new structure, managed by Fiera Milano Congressi, will accommodate up to 18,000 people and will include a 1,500-seat auditorium, meeting space with 4,500 seats, 64 meeting rooms and 54,000 square meters of exhibition area. On its opening day, the congress center's name and logo will be announced.

The project, designed by architects Mario Bellini for the exterior and Pierluigi Nicolin for the interior, reuses for congress purposes part of the exhibition space (Halls 5 and 6) no longer used by Fiera Milano in the city and integrates them with the already existing Milano Convention Center (MIC), which was already Italy's largest congress center. 

“The decision to triple the size of the MIC is derived from the demands of the market," said Francesco Conci, executive director of Fiera Milano Congressi. "There are international conferences of more than 10,000 delegates taking place, for which we are now—with the new complex—able to compete. And the extension project has immediately been successful, as we already have international events booked in the new center up until 2017, for between 5,000 and 20,000 delegates. In effect, we thought immediately of international congresses with large numbers, but we have also had strong interest from the corporate sector, which likes the design and the high standard of technology available.”

Disney's Aulani Resort and Spa in Hawaii officially completed construction, and final preparations are under way for an August 29, 2011, opening. 

The resort will feature 460 Disney Vacation Club Villas, including 21 Grand Villas; 359 hotel rooms, including 16 suites; four restaurants; two lounges; 10 recreation facilities; an 18,000-square-foot spa with 15 treatment rooms and fitness center; four whirlpool spas; a 14,545-square-foot conference center; 36,695 square feet of outdoor venues; and a storytelling fire pit. 

In celebration of the completed construction, the cast members decided to have some fun, as you can see in the video below. 

If you want to live a longer life, move to Salt Lake City, Utah. Or San Francisco, California, or Austin, Texas.

Those three cities lead RealAge's top 10 list of the "youngest" cities in America—metropolitan areas with such healthy lifestyles that on average their residents are physically at least two years younger than their chronological age, and many are years younger than that. RealAge analyzed data from the largest 50 metropolitan areas to compile the rankings.

A passion for fitness and a loathing for smoking are key factors in Salt Lake City’s No. 1 ranking. At the other extreme, residents of Knoxville, Tennessee; Greensboro/Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Nashville, Tennessee, are aging faster than they should.

Here are the 10 metro areas where you have the best odds of staying young:

1. Salt Lake City, Utah
2. San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, Calif
3. Austin, Texas
4. Denver, Colo.
5. Boston, Mass.
6. Washington, DC/Baltimore, Md.
7. San Diego, Calif.
8. Raleigh-Durham/Chapel Hill, N.C.
9. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.

10. Seattle/Tacoma/Bremerton, Wash.

And here are the metro areas likely to make you old before your time:

1. Knoxville, Tenn.
2. Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point, N.C.
3. Nashville, Tenn.
4. Saginaw/Bay City/Midland, Mich.
5. Cincinnati, Ohio
6. Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla.
7. Oklahoma City, Okla.
8. Las Vegas, Nev.
9. Jacksonville, Fla.

10. Tulsa, Okla.

“Each city’s ranking is more than just a number,” said Keith Roach, M.D., chief medical officer of RealAge and a co-creator of its test. “It’s a unique assessment of the healthy lifestyles, or lack of them, in each metro area—of how people live there, what they’re doing right and what they need to change.”

It's interesting that half of the 10 youngest cities are in the Western U.S., from Denver to Seattle.

“Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the mountains, but Western cities have adopted active lifestyles that can slow down the aging process,” Roach said.

To compile the rankings, RealAge analyzed data for America’s 50 largest metropolitan areas generated by its landmark online assessment, the RealAge Test, taken by more than 27 million people. This is the first time the company has analyzed aggregated results on a city-by-city basis.

A random sample of 1,000 RealAge members was drawn from each city. The sample data was adjusted for age differences, so a metropolitan area that's a magnet for retirees wasn't penalized, and a city jammed with university students didn't benefit.

The test uses a powerful algorithm that combines the latest scientific studies with lifestyle, genetics and medical history to calculate your RealAge—how old your body thinks you are.

While multiple lifestyle factors are involved, here are four big ones that help people in Boston (the fifth youngest city), for example, stay younger and healthier than those in Cincinnati (the fifth oldest):

1. Getting the right amount of sleep. Six of the 10 youngest cities are among those with stellar sleep habits. And (surprise) New York isn't the city that never sleeps—the Big Apple ranks second in ZZZ's; Austin is first. Sleeping six to nine hours a night can make your RealAge as much as three years younger.

2. Stubbing out cigarettes for good. Four of the five fastest-aging cities have the highest percentage of smokers.

3. Not sitting around. Six of the 10 youngest cities are among the most physically active in the country. A daily 30-minute walk can make your RealAge up to 3.5 years younger.

4. Controlling your blood pressure. Five of the 10 fastest-aging cities—Knoxville, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville and Tulsa—are among the worst for high blood pressure. Nothing ages you faster.

For a little Friday afternoon fun, I'd like to share with some interesting videos. They're actually commercials for EF Language Schools. The beautiful shots, the great topography and the music all work well together to convince viewers to visit these destinations and learn another language at the same time. The only negative I find is that the words go by too fast, so you may have to pause the video on each word if you want to learn it. Then again, that's probably not the main point of the commercials, which is to entice you to take a language course.

EF - Live The Language - Paris from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

EF - Live The Language - Barcelona from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

EF - Live The Language - Beijing from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

EF - Live The Language - London from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.