Seth Godin has his wish-list for an iPod app for meetings, but some are taking it beyond the staff meeting type of thing Godin talks about and using the gizmos for annual conventions. Take the American Association of Neurological Surgeons’ 78th Annual Meeting at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which totally did away with its usual program book by giving (yes, giving!) an iPod touch with a specially made AANS app to each and every attendee (more on what all the association did with its app here). How cool is that?

I’m betting we’ll see more of this in the future. Well, maybe not the giveaway part, but now that the iPod or its equivalent is so ubiquitous, I can hear all the developers smacking their lips in anticipation of customizing for each and every group that wants to meet.

I love these tips from a suitcase-packing ninja, aka Heather Poole, a flight attendant from Los Angeles. I’ve been rolling my own (clothes, that is) for a long time, but I like the tip about what to do with dressy items. My problem is that, once I’ve squished in all the necessaries, if there’s an atom of extra space, I stuff in something else. Then another little item, until I end up having to sit on the suitcase anyway. I must have been a squirrel in another life.

Reading this article from the June 1939 issue of Popular Mechanics made me both pine for the olden days (whoa, big old recliners, and sleeper cabins!), and feel very fortunate we don’t fly like that anymore (double-whoa, public weigh-ins at that gate).

(via BoingBoing)

Click through to this Gizmodo post to see photos of the first-class section of Lufthansa’s new Airbus A380. As their headline says, its bathroom is bigger than mine! I think I could live on one of those planes, as long as I could stay in first-class.

If you’ve ever tried to book meeting space for one of those meetings that require limited sleeping rooms, you know it is not always easy. If you’re in the Virginia area, you’re in luck–the Virginia Association of Hospitality Sales and Meeting Professionals are putting on a seminar called “Tips and Tricks for Booking Meetings with Little or No Sleeping Rooms” on June 3 in Richmond.

Hosted by the panelists will include Nancy Bass, Richmond Metropolitan CVB; Megan Copeland, Richmond International Raceway; Katharine Garner, CMP, Virginia Association of Community Banks; Cathy Grieve, Norfolk Waterside Marriott; and Dee Dee White, Covington Meeting Management. Go to the VHSMP Web site for details.

If you can’t make the meeting, check out this article: The Unloved Day Meeting for some tips.

Meet TIM, the “Time is Money” clock that multiplies the number of people in a meeting by their average hourly wage and time spent in the meeting. If anyone in your meetings is even thinking this is a cute idea, some serious revamping is in order.

(Via BoingBoing)

Just read this post by Philippa Gamse if you want to know what does and, importantly, what does not work when it comes to online satisfaction surveys (a must-read if you do your post-con surveys via the Web).

What does work is dangling a carrot to give people a reason to keep on slogging, in Philippa’s case, free miles for completing an airline frequent flier program survey. She gives four examples of things that do not work as well, which to me range from 8 to 10+ on a 1 -10 scale of annoyingness. Can I add one? I hate it when, after actually going through the whole thing, I continue to get e-mails reminding me to complete the survey for weeks afterward. C’mon, have a mechanism to take those who did the right thing off the reminder list.

If you’ve lost your mummified falcon, live rattlesnake, or Naval guidance system, you might want to check the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. Just what other strange and bizarre things might reside there, along with the aforementioned and lots of toiletries? Check out this item from Mental Floss to find out.

(Thanks to MeCo for the pointer.)

Just read this article about hotel add-on fees being on the rise, and came across one I hadn’t heard of before: “Baggage hold fee ($1 per bag or $5 flat fee): Most hotels used to keep your luggage locked after you checked out for free. Now many make you pay, and you’re still expected to tip the attendant.”

As noted in the article, fees like this one (and housekeeping add-on charges) likely will reduce or eliminate tips for the people who perform these duties, like automatic service charges have for room-service deliverers (if I’m already paying a 20 percent service charge, my likelihood of taking on another 20 percent — bringing the price of that already pricey, not-so-delicious piece of chicken up by 40 percent — is about nil. I feel bad about it, but can’t justify it. I just hope that at least some of that service charge makes its way to the server).

Congratulations to the award-winners of Event Marketers experiential marketing awards, including Cisco, which beat out some worthy competitors to win the 2010 Grand Ex.