Best meetings I've ever been to aren't because of the food, booze, surroundings or anything else. It was because there was someone there that changed what I/we thought about some aspect of farming in such fundamental ways, it was shockingly clear that we had to re-think what we were doing.

Case in point: We Diamond Valley hay growers were seeing terrible problems with declining yields in timothy hay, as well as mite population explosions. So we ponied up some money, searched for, retained and brought in a guy from Washington who knows grass. I mean, really knows grass.

After a half-day spend tromping around (ie, this was a "moving meeting" -- moving from field to field to field, then to a meeting room with lunch and some overheads), the management practices of grass hay growers in this valley changed completely in the space of one month.

That one day meeting was no-frills, nothing fancy in terms of facilities, food, or surroundings, but everyone who attended considered it to have been a highly productive use of their time to attend.