Great article in the 2010 HSMAI Sourcebook for Meeting Planners.  The article, entitled "Dispelling Misconceptions About Online Reps - Uniting Planners and Suppliers to Increase Industry Efficiency," specifically mentions Unique Venues as a tool planners should use for finding venues efficiently, and also a tool that venues should use for targeted online presence with planners.

Of all the social media tools out there, I prefer FaceBook. Probably because it's the first social networking site I started using and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

It's Thanksgiving Day and I'd like to give thanks to Delta Airlines (bet you haven't read that one on FB or Twitter in the last few days).  I'm on a Delta flight to Boston (for my high school reunion) after having just spent 5 days in Florida with my family. Our pilot just gave us all a free connection to the Internet and I couldn't be happier!

I've been IM'ing some friends on FaceBook, catching up on my email and I even sent my in-laws a thank you email for hosting my family for five days.

Although I’ve been promoting Unique Venues for over 12 years, I haven’t had much first hand experience with holding events at one.

All that changed last month when our son got married at the University of Colorado in Boulder. When he and his wife became engaged they looked at several traditional venues and either found them to be too expensive or they just didn’t ‘feel right’ to them.

Many of us think that facebook, flickr and youtube are programs that only our teenage children and our twenty something office interns use. I have noticed however, that many of my 30 and 40 something colleagues and friends have truly embraced this technology.

Let me be the first to comment on how utterly ridiculous I find the IOC's decision to be regarding the selection of Rio for the 2016 summer Olympics.

Last weekend, my oldest son turned 16. In a weak and sentimental moment, my husband and I decided to throw him a surprise party at our house. With the help of his best friend, we put together a guest list with a dozen names on it. Throughout the week, I extended invitations in a variety of ways to those on the list...emailing parents, texting the kids, yelling out my car window in the high school parking lot. You get the idea. Not exactly a Martha Stewart invitation.

Well, it’s the time of year we all have to face, The End of Summer. For some of you, you are just finishing up a busy summer conference season and taking time to reflect as you prepare for students to arrive back on campus. For others, you are preparing for a busy season of holiday parties (are there really only 133 days until Christmas?). On a personal side, some of you are becoming empty nesters (and empty walleters) as your children head off to college.

Have you ever been searching for specific information online only to find pages of information to wade through before finding it? Sometimes, after scrolling through page after page, you realize that what you’re looking for isn’t there. Frustrating, isn’t it?

When you call a business, what is the average time it takes to actually talk to a human being? How much  business do you think is lost due to frustrated callers who eventually hang up? I have spent years of my life transferring through phone systems and once I reach a human, they can typically answer my question in two seconds flat!