Jeff Hurt is hitting it out of the ballpark again (sorry, been watching the Red Sox a lot lately). If you just read one thing today, make this it: four things that will shape the conferences of the future. If you have time for another one, check out Dear Association Executive: That Is Not Education.

The Center for Exhibition Industry Research has been putting together a performance index of the various industry sectors for 12 years now. This year they put together an infographic that shows how key indicators (attendees, exhibitors, square footage, revenue) stack up for each market niche, and includes some predictions on how things may be going in those niches over the next few years (click on the graphic to enlarge it to an almost readable size).

So if you’re in the consumer goods/retail trade, food, or government sector, pull out your shades because things are getting brighter all the time for trade shows in those areas. Healthcare, which happens to be my niche, is looking a lot iffier. We’ll have to see how this all plays out to see if they’re right or not, but it’s interesting.

(Thanks to Defying Convention for the pointer!)

Hospitality workers who want a break can get an especially good deal at the Downtown Disney® Resort Area Hotels from August 1, 2011 through September 30, 2011. The company is giving them the lowest rates of the year “as a special salute to the front-line ranks who make vacation wishes come true for millions of travelers each year,” according to a press release.

“Travel industry employees work hard year-round to ensure that visitors enjoy their travel experiences, and they certainly deserve recognition for their contributions to the traveling public,” said Marti Alexander, chairperson of the Downtown Disney Resort Area Hotel’s marketing committee. “There’s no better way to salute them than with special savings for their own travel.”

The offer’s good for employees from hotels, restaurants, airlines, airports, attractions, rental car companies, cruise lines, tour operators, and other travel companies. Isn’t that nice? I hope lots of people are able to take them up on it, though times are still pretty tight for everyone, but especially for those who work in some of the hospitality industry’s hardest and lowest paying jobs.

More event organizers have been stepping up their use of QR codes, be it for scavenger hunt clues or in the conference book or networking on the show floor.

But if you want to really get your QR code creative juices flowing, check out this post on Mental Floss. While you probably wouldn’t want to go so far as tattoo attendees with a code linking to something fun and event-related, I can see t-shirt giveaways incorporate QR codes and logos, or make a piece of interactive art composed of QR codes linking to various bits of info about your organization. Oh the fun we could have…

Have you seen anyone do anything really interesting with these things at a conference?

Thanks to the always interesting Keith Johnston for digging this one up!

I thought that tip in this post’s heading would go without saying, but I guess not, since it’s one of the tips outlined in this CNN article on business traveler tips. But it did get me to thinking about feet and planes, and all the conundrums the mixture of the two can bring up. Such as:

1. Sandals in the security line—easy to slip on and off, but who wants to walk around barefoot on those floors?

2. If you do wear sandals on the plane, is it weird to bring socks to wear during the flight? And is it weirder to take the socks off and put your sandals back on before visiting the lav, or should you go for the geek socks-and-sandals look?

3. How far can a small child put their feet up in between the crack of the seat and seatback? From personal experience, about to the small of my back, but I’m betting there are even more agile kids out there.

4. What, if anything, do you do if your seatmate takes off his shoes for the flight and has awful foot odor? If it’s their shoes that stink, and you have an empty seat between you, is it okay to protest if they put their shoes under the empty seat that’s that much closer to you (and your gag reflex)?

5. If your seatmate takes off his shoes for the flight and puts them in the overhead bin, do you warn him that he’ll want to retrieve them to go to the lav and they’ll likely fall on his head when he opens the bin?

6. If a small child takes to drumming her feet on your seat back and the parent refuses to do anything about it, is it okay
to pop up over the back of the seat and make a really scary face in hopes of shocking said kid into paralysis?

7. Who owns the space under your seat when it comes to feet? I had a guy sitting behind me on a recent flight whose feet came all the way out in front of my seat who got really angry when I accidentally bumped his foot, which I could see when I looked down. He seemed really irrational and probably drunk, so I let it go and just sat on my feet to keep them out of his way, but I do think he was encroaching on my space, not vice versa.

Yes, these are things that great minds spend time thinking about when they’ve spent a few too many hours in the air…

I spent way too much time over the weekend devouring this article: 47 Mind-Blowing Psychology-Proven Facts You Should Know About Yourself. Some—like the fact that we’re actually pretty lousy at multitasking—I knew. Then there’s things like the relationship between dopamine and Twitter that I had no idea about. It’s all fascinating, and it’s all germane to how people learn.

(Cross-posted on Capsules)

And boy do they live up to the label they’re given in this Life.com gallery of weird hotels! Like one made of sand, or the one that resembles stacked dog crates, or the one with the flying bed…though I do like the enviro-friendly vibe of the hotel made out of key cards!

I know I tend to rush to check out the latest gadget, site, social media platform—Google+, anyone?—and conference format. But it’s one thing to check something out, and quite another to use it indiscriminately without first understanding how it works. As the brilliant Jeffrey Cufaude points out in this post, you can do more harm than good if you rush to incorporate the latest fad, in this case, conference format, without 1) ensuring that the shiny new format will do more to enhance your goals and objectives than something that may be less flashy but more effective; and 2) making sure you’re doing it correctly.

While I’ve seen this more with social media than with conference formats (you know, the “we must have a Facebook page, even if we never do anything with it” syndrome), but I have suffered through a few ill-advised sessions that actually turn people off to the format because it was done so badly and/or did not advance the learning. In one case, the format actually got in the way of the learning.

And it can be costly: I have heard of more than one association that got so burned by the expense of going all-out making their meetings hybrid last year that they decided not to include any live remote-learning aspects at all this year. Not taking the time to figure out exactly what they needed to further their goals ended up causing them to chuck the whole enchilada when maybe just omitting the onions and going lighter on the hot sauce would have made a delicious addition to their meetings.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone, wanting to dive into everything new and then not taking the time to learn how to use it effectively (again, Google+, anyone?), but let’s all try to remember, as Jeffrey says,

“Our mantra as planners or presenters needs to be: It’s about the learning.

“As minimum we must consider if the format is appropriate for the participants, the content, and the overall learning experience we are designing. We also need to examine if our intended use reflects the format’s true methodology and principles, or if what we are planning is really ‘in name only.’”

The tendency seems to be either to be an early adopter who likes to rush in and try the new thing no matter what, or to sit back and wait until the new thing has been so thoroughly vetted that it’s lost its novelty fun factor. I think we need to not be afraid to try something new, but, as Joan Eisenstodt says in a comment on Jeffrey’s post, “Meetings still need objectives and goals and formats need to be thought through for the audience and content.”

And look at all the formats there are to think through! Peter Straube has thoughtfully pulled some of the coolest into this handy list. They may not all be shiny and new, but I’d be willing to bet they’re all too new to your attendees. Just please, use them wisely.

Corbin Ball’s latest e-newsletter linked to this article on mobile apps for meetings, which is worth clicking through to just for the list of features an mobile meeting app can have—while perhaps not the most practical, I think my favorite is “treasure hunts and other games to stimulate exhibit hall flow.” I haven’t been to a meeting yet that uses that feature, but it has to just be a matter of time before it becomes as standard as the passport game. Just be sure that whatever you do, you don’t get so caught up in the coolness of it all that you forget to make sure it aligns with your exhibitors’ strategic goals.

We did what I humbly would like to say was an awesome free webinar on mobile apps for meetings not long ago. It’s still available on demand; Jessica Levin, Midori Connolly, and Elizabeth Summy provide all kinds of practical information on both the strategic and logistical levels. If you don’t have time for the whole webinar, our presenters very kindly answered the top 10 questions people had for them.