I love it when people live what they are passionate about. Take my colleague Barbara Scofidio, editor of Corporate Meetings & Incentives,. She has been writing about meetings that give back to their host communities, and meetings-related organizations that help their local communities, for what seems like forever.

Now she’s put together a microsite where planners who want to incorporate giving back into their meetings and incentives can go for ideas, tips, how to’s, case studies, resources — and she is committed to continue adding to the site any time she hears of a new idea to share. Go ahead, check out http://meetingsnet.com/give-back/, and if you have anything to share, drop Barbara an e-mail.

Mike McCallen offers some interesting insights on events he gleaned from the gazillion-ticket-selling movie Avatar. Just what you need to know to make your next meeting a blockbuster (well, this info plus a few hundred million ought to do it).

We all want ‘em, we all need ‘em: Here’s one planner’s top 10 cost-cutting tips. For a boatload more, check out our budget-buster special section. I also went to a good session on cost-cutting (one of those roundtable/brainstorming ones) that I hope to post something about soon. There were even a few ideas I hadn’t heard before, which is always great.

If you haven’t dropped your cell phone into a punch bowl, puddle, half-full sink, or other electronically hostile place of excessive dampness, you’re lucky. For the rest of us, there’s this article from the Wired Wiki: Save a Wet Cell Phone. Thanks, Wired!

We know by now to thoroughly wash out hotel in-room coffee pots and to hit the TV remote with sanitizer before picking it up, but it doesn’t end there for true germophobics. Check out this article for more things to gross out over in your hotel room, from water glasses to doorknobs.

Picking an e-community tool to use in conjunction with an event can be tough, and it’s getting tougher all the time as new things come onto the market all the time. Thanks to Jeff Hurt, who goes through 14 online e-community options for events.

The only bad thing about reading his post is that I found a few I haven’t explored yet. Oh no!

By now everyone’s heard about, talked about, and probably are sick of, the party crashers at the recent White House state dinner. While that turned out to be pretty innocuous, having uninvited attendees at any event is at best going to throw off your F&B, and at worst could be a real security concern. I just read Crush Party Crashing with Tips from Security Experts from Special Events, and it has some good tips to keep this from happening to your event.

No seriously, plug your name into Google and see what comes up, especially if you’re among the meeting professionals on the job hunt these days. Chances are, those looking to employ you (or give you a raise, or invite you to speak, or give you whatever it is you desire) will check you out on the Internet, so you might as well know what they’ll be seeing. And while it’s true that once something is on the Web, it’s forever, there are ways to manage what will come up in a Google search. Or so says Wired. I haven’t tried it, but Wireds How-to blog includes a step-by-step on how to disengage yourself from some less-than-complimentary Internet content.

Just now finally getting caught up on my RSS feeds, and ran across this must-read post by (who else?) Jeff Hurt: 8 Ways to Provide Remarkable, Purple Cow, Unique Conference Experiences.

Read it. Then do it. On behalf of your attendees, I beg you.

And pinching the pennies harder than ever, according to this writeup of a PKF report: Meeting Planners Struggle To Control Costs. While I don’t often toot our horn here, MeetingsNet does have a great collection of cost-saving tips and budget advice in our Cost Savings/Budgets Special Report. Here are two of my favorites (both were written before the current economic slump, but the ideas are evergreen):

125 Ways to Save on Meetings

99 ways to improve your meeting’s bottom line