When the Treasury Department released its new executive compensation rules, I'm sure corporate meeting professionals everywhere joined Krys Slovacek in breathing a small sigh of relief when they found out that, while it requires companies receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to develop a company-wide policy for meetings, events, and other corporate travel expenses, it leaves it up to a company’s board of directors to decide what's frivolous and what's not (i.e., one would hope, meetings).
But is it too little, too late, as Krys worries? As she says, "The public has been led to believe (by the media and politicians alike) that meetings are frivolous, evil things. And those who attend meetings are frivolous, evil people, wasting TARP funds." Which as we all know is not the case.
I know the folks at Meetings Mean Business have been fighting the good fight on this one, but I'm with Krys in my concern that the damage has already been done. Or maybe the pendulum, having hit the wall on the one side, will now start slowly swinging back towards meetings as being the vital business tool we all know them to be?