This is sort of off topic, but I was just playing around on this site where you can customize a map of the world (or portions thereof) to show where you’ve been. I never stopped to count it up before, but I’ve been to 16 countries so far.

Any meetings application? Probably not, unless you have a rotating meeting and want to show all the different places it’s gone (you can download the html code to insert the map on your site), and it also has travel guides you can insert into a meeting Web site. Mostly though, it’s just kind of cool to play with.

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…trying to do something fun and interactive and having it fall flat, or not trying at all and sticking with the boring old PowerPoint talking-head lecture that doesn’t do much in terms of helping people actually learn something new?

I got to thinking about this after reading Rich’s blog on playing George in an Apprentice takeoff at IAEM in December–which definitely sounds like a fun to get people thinking, doing, and learning.

But what about when interactivity falls flat, as it did at a meeting I attended (not participated in) this weekend? They kept promising that “this will be different from last year–it’ll be interactive and fun.” But the interactivity consisted of the presenter presenting, then allowing Q&A, for the most part. What’s fun about that? And this was a meeting for adult educators. The content was fantastic, and kept my butt in an incredibly uncomfortable convention center seat all day, but the way they kept hyping how the next session was going to really shake things up format-wise, then didn’t, raised expectations then didn’t fulfill them.

Honestly, I would have been happier just knowing it was going to be the same old same old, instead of getting built up then disappointed. I don’t know why I felt I had to share this, but there you go.

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Mobil Travel Guide has released its latest list of four- and five-star hotels and restaurants. Enjoy!

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If your attendees like beer, if you have a beer tasting (instead of a wine tasting), or if you just are interested in malted beverages, there’s a site for you: mylifeisbeer.com. It includes a comprehensive list of offerings from what looks to me like just about every imaginable brewery, plus ratings, pictures of the beers, and comments from beer connoisseurs. Someone either really, really likes the stuff, or has way too much time on their hands!

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According to eTurbo News, the norovirus outbreak at Vegas’ Flamingo Hotel is starting to wane, after 325 of the 1,252 reported cases were confirmed. The hotel, of course, says it did its best to keep its guests safe. That didn’t stop two Ohio tourists from filing a lawsuit that “alleges that the hotel did not properly alert more than 20 guests who became ill after staying there.”

Robert Stewart, spokesman for the Flamingo, told the Associated Press that besides cleaning and disinfection efforts at the hotel, letters alerting guests were placed last week in the hotel’s 3,455 rooms. The hotel earlier posted information on signs in the hotel lobby and casino.

Short of washing peoples’ hands for them, I don’t know what else the hotel could have done, do you? More importantly, do you have an action plan in case something like this sweeps through your meeting hotel? Hotels aren’t the only ones who can be sued, after all.

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