Meeting News - September 22, 2008 - (Page 26) MN Exclusive Research Thy Neighbor’s Planner on significant religious or secular holidays, and organizers steer clear of the mine field, or try to. 31 percent cite poor judgment. Some survey (See accompanying charts.) respondents are even more pejorative—includ“We hold international events and spend a ing corporate planners (42%), thirtysomethings great deal of time working around multiple cal- (39%), and fortysomethings (40%). endars to avoid any such conflicts,” said Stella Said Joan Eisenstodt, of Washington, DC-based DeJean Lowe, corporate communications man- Eisenstodt & Associates, scheduling meetings that ager at Phoenix-based IT company NetPro. conflict with religious or secular holidays displays However, said Sarah Meyer, conference and “either total meeting planning incompetence or meeting planner/education coordinator for total disregard for one’s constituents, staff, etc. I Topeka-based Kansas Association of Coundon’t know which is worse.” MN ties, “We always have somebody unhappy Exclusive Eisenstodt, who once chaired Meeting that we start on Sunday—but most of our Research Professionals International’s (MPI) Task attendees appreciate us not eating up all of Force on Diversity, has taken the organizatheir work week.” tion to task on several occasions over scheduling Even secular holidays can offend. Said Michael snafus. Thomas, an IT consultant currently residing in “For many years, MPI has held meetings and the United Arab Emirates: “When I was a fresh events over Jewish and other religious and graduate, I let myself be bullied into attending a national holidays,” she said. “Each time, it was conference and training session that not only brought to the association’s attention, and reprewent over the weekend but took up a public hol- sentatives said ‘never again.’ Alas, this year, the iday. I quit a week later and have never done it European Conference was held during Passover. since; nor will I make my staff do it. Ever. It’s just I wrote to the association and I got excuses, like wrong.” ‘Passover doesn’t matter in Europe.’” Forty percent of all planners believe poor In fact, the planner organization has struck planning to be the reason that meetings are held again. An upcoming familiarization tour, or “Destination Summit” of Colorado, is slated to be held Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, coinciding both with Rosh Hashanah—the beginning of the Jewish New Year and one of Judaism’s holiest days—and What do you think of meetings that are held on significant religious or secular holidays? Eid al-Fitr, the end of the month of Ramadan, a significant Moslem holiday. Poor In a written statement on the association’s 39.9% planning website, MPI’s chief business architect Katie involved 38.5% (didn’t look at Callahan-Giobbi said: “MPI has had in place a a calendar) 39.3% vigorous date selection and finalization process around events we control and manage since early last year. We are continuously updating it to Poor 31.0% continued from cover Stay Away, On Holiday If a meeting were to be held over a religious or secular holiday, how would it affect your attendance? Religious holiday 57.2% No impact; 8.2% holidays are value times Have never scheduled meeting over religious holiday 34.6% Very much, if it were an important religious holiday Secular holiday Have never scheduled meeting over secular holiday 55.5% 28.7% Very much, if it were an important secular holiday 15.8% No impact; holidays are value times Source: 338 of MeetingNews survey respondents Failure to Plan judgment involved (didn’t think it mattered) ensure we demonstrate best practices within our global community and beyond.” But MPI is not alone among industry associations. ASAE’s Springtime 2009, a one-day event, will take place at the end of Passover. “It was not our wish to book our event then,” said Amy Ledoux, vice president of meetings and expositions, “but it was the only time between February and June when space was available at the convention center. Could we maybe lose an exhibitor or two? That’s a risk we have to take.” continued on page 41 42.2% 29.5% Getting the Facts About Religion in the United States Getting a true picture of the U.S.’ religious demographic is difficult, since the U.S. Census does not collect such information. MPI and ASAE do not survey their members for this information. The most comprehensive survey, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), was conducted by the Graduate Center of the City of New York in 2001. This survey benchmarked the selfdescribed religious identification of 50,000 randomly selected U.S. households against a similar survey conducted in 1990. ARIS discovered that 76.5 percent of respondents identified themselves as Christians, 1.3 percent as Jewish, 0.5 percent as Moslem, and 0.4 percent as Hindu. ARIS, which also surveyed the racial and ethnic makeup of the self-identified religious groups, determined that, for example, one in four African Americans (27 percent) and one in three Asians (34 percent) identified themselves as Moslem—compared with one in six non-Hispanic Caucasians. Thus, scheduling events that conflict with Moslem holidays (which limits participation by observant Moslems) could be construed as a form of racial and ethnic profiling. www.meetingnews.com Have never considered it an issue 18.5% 13.8% 18.9% Total Corporate Planners Association Planners Holidays are value times; I understand the strategy of meeting during them. 0% 10.7% 5.5% 12.3% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Source: 336 of MeetingNews survey respondents 26 MeetingNews September 22, 2008 http://www.mimegasite.com/mimegasite/research/index.jsp http://www.mimegasite.com/mimegasite/research/index.jsp http://www.meetingnews.com
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