No one needs to tell each other that the economy is crummy right now.  You pretty much can't turn around without feeling it tugging at your pursestrings.

Which is why at work today we had a three and a half hour meeting at the Xcel no less to tell us that we shouldn't be spending so much money and that we should be focusing on the right things to get us to our plan.  

Without giving any of the top secret talk away, I will say what I said to pretty much anyone sitting by me today and for what they spent on the webconferencing and renting the show venue I do believe they could have done just as well to type up a three page summarizing memo.  Considering the wage we all gave up, the cost of a film crew, professional lighting, the rental of the venue, busses to bring people over from our outlaying facilities in Eagan, well lets just chalk it up to one of those unexplained waste of time and money that drives me crazy.  (It's not quite as bad as the hot dog stand but it's really really close.)  Not only that but we were barely there for an hour and they had us take a half an hour break to have these obnoxiously large rice krispie treats, brownies and bottled water.  

Save the snacks, type a memo, or if you want the personal touch why not just record a webinar that all of us have to view?  I'm sure that would have cost less than this particular event.