It’s not enough that they make us look at ads on tray tables and charge us for food—coming soon to US Airways: Advertising on seatpocket barf bags. From USA Today:

“Little things like that work,” said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting group in Evergreen, Colo. “Barf bags have a lot of shelf life — people aren’t barfing as much in planes as they used to.”

Would someone pass me the dramamine?

More about the “more is better” conference model I wrote about earlier, where the organizers cram so much into the allotted time that there’s no time to reflect, or talk with colleagues, or do anything other than passively sit there and attempt to soak it all in. As always, Kathy Sierra has beautifully encapsulated the problem, and the solution, on this post on Creating Passionate Users.

real learning takes place between exposures to content! Long-term memory from learning happens after the training. The space between the lessons and practice is where the learning is made permanent. If we don’t leave that space, new content keeps rushing in to overwrite the previous content, before the learner’s brain has a chance to pause, reflect, and synthesize the proteins needed for long-term memory storage.

Designers forget this when they use every available bit of white space on a brochure. Writers do it when we go on and on. Even meeting planners do it when they schedule session after grueling session. Let’s respect that white space where real learning happens.

The news that Marriott was implementing a smoking ban in all U.S. and Canadian properties got the meeting industry listservs lighting up this morning, so to speak. I tried to get answers for most of the questions planners were posting in this article, including the impact on groups from other countries where smoking is more the norm, the effect on currently booked groups that have a large smoking contingency, and whether groups or individuals would be charged the cleanup fee if a smoker lit up anyway.

While many are heralding it as an idea that’s long overdue and necessary to preserve the health of guests and hotel workers alike, others aren’t so sure.

The Marriott person I spoke with stressed that they didn’t want smokers to feel like “second-hand citizens,” but the poor guy having a smoke with his morning coffee in the outside smoking area in Boston in January is not going to be feeling the love. There has to be another way to accommodate both smokers and nonsmokers: Souped-up exhaust systems, perhaps? A designated smoking wing? While the fear of having to inhale second-hand smoke of course has to be addressed, until smoking is outlawed outright, it just doesn’t feel very hospitable to essentially tell a percentage of paying guests that their comfort doesn’t matter.

Then again, restaurants, bars, airlines, even some beaches and entire towns haven’t seen much falloff after instituting smoking bans, so my guess is that smokers will grumble, but they’ll comply for the most part. Or book outside the block. Maybe some will even quit for the duration of the meeting, or even for good. But do you really want smokers in withdrawal in your sessions?

I should talk with Westin, which banned smoking in its U.S., Canadian, and Caribbean properties back in January, to see how it’s going, but I can imagine this could be a deal-breaker for some groups, and definitely for some attendees.

Since so many organizations use auctions—silent and otherwise—as fundraisers, I thought I’d share some ideas a brilliant group of planners I’ve been e-chatting with came up with:

*Pie or cake of the month
*A flight for two donated by a member who is also a pilot of a small plane
*Spa packages
*House cleaning
*Limo service
*Offer to scrapbook an event
*Hayrides and tickets to the local haunted house for fall auctions
*Amusement park tickets
*Child’s birthday party at a unique venue, such as a museum or historical site
*Classes from a local potter
*Lessons in clowning
*A day on a working farm
*Anything signed by a celebrity chef
*Donation of a week at a member’s vacation home
*A set of hand-calligraphied note cards
*Six months of free haircuts (by the owner of a salon)
*Some tickets from members who hold season tickets to sports teams
*Internet training
*Lunch with a local celebrity or politician
*Personal tour of a local military base
*Have a sommelier for a great restaurant buy wine with money donated by board members. Include a description of the wines, along with a wine cooler
*Teeth bleaching certificates from local dentists
*Gift baskets
*Luggage
*Dinner at the bidder’s home cooked by a local chef
*A walk-on part in a local concert or theater group
*Portrait of a bidder’s pet, child, or house