Oh, this post on Creating Passionate Users—A Crash Course in Adult Learning—is a must-print-and-send-to-everyone-involved-in-meetings thing. Author Kathy Sierra romps through the basics, with lots of great visuals, and gives you a good time while you learn. Which, of course, is one of her points. She shows while telling. It’s just brilliant. And while you’re there, check out some of the other posts. There are so many great ideas for meeting planners who, of course, would love to create some passion about the event in their attendees.

For travel and hospitality, here’s USA Today’s pick of the five biggest trends in 2006:

1. A-380, a mammoth new plane from Airbus, takes to the air. “Longer, taller, and wider than the White House,” the article says. Wow.

2: New Orleans returns, with predictions for a strong fall comeback for meetings. We’ll see.

3: Registered travelers get rolling. They predict the new TSA security program that allows some passengers to trade a background check for shorter lines will prove popular. But: “Some people, such as former TSA administrator John Magaw, have warned that terrorists could enroll and bypass rigorous scrutiny.” Sigh.

4: New rooms in New York—and even higher rates than ever.

5: Atlanta gets a new runway, a move that hopefully will cut down on flight delays.

I’m still mulling over my own top whatever list of predictions for the meetings business…

From Epicurious, this year’s best and worst food and beverage trends of 2005. The best of the best, IMHO:

The Death of Fancy Raw Cuisine: There’s a wonderful cooking tool called fire, and for the most part, haute cuisine tastes better when it’s employed — chefs across the country came to their senses about this fact in 2005.

The worst of the worst:

Edible Menus: Another spawn-of-Ferran phenomenon, menus printed on edible paper just seem silly, though we suppose astronauts and mountain climbers might appreciate light, foldable gourmet meals-on-the-go.