The future has arrived: Take a look at the hotel room of tomorrow, brought to you by MSNBC. I love the idea of having an in-room Wii to play with, and an alarm clock that not only works but is cool as well? Who could say no to that?

Nancy Wilson, CMP, who authors one of my favorite new blogs offers this cautionary tale about why you should check to make sure the facility you’re using is actually living up to its green promises. I don’t know why this shocked me so badly, given that housekeeping always washes my towels even when I give them the secret “leave-’em-on-the-rack” signal, but it did. Wow.

Reading this post on Acronym reminds me of a meeting I went to years ago where the speaker kept saying that people could be frank because everything said in the room was “just between us.” But I was there, as an invited journalist, to report on the meeting. It was, needless to say, wicked awkward.

Now that the world is blogging and Twittering and otherwise baring every experience in cyberspace, Scott’s right, we do need to think about how to balance confidentiality and transparency. In some meetings, people do need to know that what is said will be kept off YouTube–I can think of many circumstances where recording and/or repeating confidential information imparted at a meeting could border on illegal.

A meeting I reported on for a few years included a session that was very closed-door, so people in that industry (a rightfully paranoid industry) could share freely without having to worry about word getting out to their bosses or the public at large. Here’s how we handled it: They were told at the beginning that there was a journalist in their midst, and that I would not quote anyone without their express permission. But they also were warned that I was going to write about the general issues they brought up. No one seemed to be fazed at all. And the articles turned out to be pretty interesting, I thought.

I think that the only fair way to handle it these days is to do something similar: Set out the ground rules from the start so everyone knows what’s going on and can behave accordingly. Then if someone does cross the line, the wrath of the others will fall upon him/her, and rightfully so.

I worry that if we don’t put up some conditions on what should and should not leave the room, meetings will end up being so safe and boring that nothing important is accomplished. Or we can all stop worrying so much and just say what we need to say and let it all land where it may. With so much chatter already on the Web, chances are it’ll get lost in the clutter anyway–yeah, right.

While for now we do need to create safe zones in at least meetings, I do foresee a society where we really won’t care about confidentiality, where we live our personal and professional lives in the public realm. We’re already well on the way. The question is, is that a good thing?

Here’s an interesting idea from Seth Godin: Run an auction for events with limited seating. Inspired by this new Google Documents feature, Godin says,

Say you want 200 people to come to a networking event, the sort of thing that’s no fun if only a dozen or two show up… Instead of charging $50 a ticket, why not charge $1 for the first five tickets, $2 for the next five, and on to $500 for the last ten? You’ll earn just as much (if not more) but reward the brave who sign up early. (The folks who like to wait until the last minute ‘to be sure’ end up paying for the privilege). It’s easy to imagine a simple interface to set up whatever graduated pricing model you’d like…

Why don’t airlines have tools in place to make it easy to integrate charter flights with conventions so flights run when (and where) people are going? Flights for passengers instead of passengers for flights…

He winds up by saying, “I guess my point is that this is just the beginning of using internet tools to change the world we interact with, as opposed to trying to make it easy to interact with the standard world using the Internet.” Which really struck me, having tried to put exactly this thought into words over at this post on Acronym about Web 2.0.

Here’s an interesting articlein today’s Boston Globe about how conventions here in the hub of the universe are getting pretty star-studded these days. This is mainly because of the size of conventions the city is bringing in now with the new convention center, it says. From the article:

There was a time when meeting organizers thought less about “exciting” than “useful.” Professionals attended conferences to network, stay current, maybe get a break from the routine. But at a time when conferences in this city are growing both in number and size, professional groups are vying with one another to grab celebrities - both as speak ers and performers - to increase their chance of drawing a crowd.

“What drives the conference business is attendance and corporate sponsorship,” says Joyce Kolligian, executive director of the annual Simmons School of Management Leadership Conference in Boston, which has signed up singer Gloria Estefan as the May 3 keynote speaker. “And if you are going to do the record-breaking numbers . . . you need celebrated names to get the draw.”

“Everything is about what speaker can you get, what political leader can you get, what entertainer can you get,” said Pat Moscaritolo, president of Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Unless there is real sizzle, people don’t think there is any steak there.”

I’d like to think it’s still about the steak, not just the sizzle, but Pat may have a point. While it’s been going on forever, now that people expect to be entertained along with their education, the star-studded convention is likely to keep growing, even when the stars chosen have absolutely nothing to do with what the conference is about.

But it was interesting to hear that Oprah can be a stage hog: One conference organizer said she just went on and on until her friend Gayle King got out the hook.

I would talk about the macro trends Peter Yesawich talked about at the PCMA Annual Meeting luncheon yesterday, except we already covered them pretty well when he gave about the same talk last year (article is here).

Yup, looks like the economy,changing demographics, time crunch, and technology changes still may impact meetings. Yawn. The panel afterward was ok, but didn’t add much to the party. Except at the very end, when Yesawich asked the panelists who they thought would be elected U.S. president, and what that person’s election would mean to the hospitality/travel/meetings industry. It was really interesting because two of the four panelists were Canadian, but I digress.

All four panelists (Chris Cahill from Fairmont, Rick Meadows from Holland America, Christine Duffy from Maritz, and Gregg Saretsky from Alaska Airlines) seemed to think the Democrats would win the presidency, though which specific Democrat was up for grabs. And they seemed pretty united also in the belief that economic and international challenges will be the key factors, whoever is at the helm.

While some cities are pulling back on their convention center expansion plans, Corporate Planners Unlimited has no such qualms—at least not in cyberspace.

Pictured: Dan Parks and Joan Eisenstodt breaking virtual ground

In January Dan Parks of Corporate Planners Unlimited will launch the Virtualis Convention Center in the online world Second Life. (This is in addition to the MeCo mansion, a Second Life gathering place Parks helped to launch for the MeCo listserv that has so many interesting nooks, crannies, and meetings-related information that it’s worth saddling up your avatar and taking a gander around.) From the press release:

Virtualis is the largest public convention center in Second Life and boasts state-of-the art virtual facilities with educational breakout rooms, a grand ballroom, exhibition hall and the Eisenstodt Learning and Community Matters Center…

[Virtualis creator Dan Parks, CPU President/Creative Director, says,] “When our society is full of security and cost issues in the world of travel, this is the optimum time to expand into the safe and exciting new world of Virtualis. Virtual technology is not new to our younger generation and the transition of learning modules into the Second Life setting will be natural and expected.”

Click here for the specs, and more about the center. Sounds very cool to me!

P.S. This post has been updated: Shame on me for not paying closer attention when I read the release. I initially thought this was another MeCo endeavor a la the Mansion, but it’s Dan and his company flying solo on this one. The energy this guy is putting into Second Life just amazes me.

The December cover story series of Association Meetings just hit the Internet, and I have to say they were the hardest articles I have ever written (they are called Bias? What Bias?, 17 Ways to Be More Inclusive, and Can’t We All Get Along?.

I did more thinking about my ways of doing things while writing this series than I can even begin to explain. I agonized over this series, because I knew that no matter what I did, it wasn’t going to satisfy everyone—I couldn’t be totally inclusive even in my writing. So how could you possibly manage it in your meetings? And a lot of what I heard from one person would be negated by another; what one found offensive, another did not; what one person thought would be inclusive, another found exclusionary. And there was a tendency to focus on race, when there are so many other ways in which we categorize ourselves. I talk about some of this in my editor’s note, which also involved a lot of soul-searching.

Anyway, I’d love to get your take on these articles, my editor’s note, or the topic in general. Please leave a comment below (you can register as anonymous if you prefer), or if you’d be more comfortable, feel free to drop me an e-mail. This is too big, and too important, of a topic to cover in the pages of a magazine. Let’s talk.

for the annual holiday party report. Here’s one from the Boston Globe that has some interesting nuggets, such as some companies are foregoing the gala in favor of an extra day off, or holding it in January. From the article:

According to a national survey of 100 human resources executives by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago-based consultancy, three of five companies say they’re spending the same or less on holiday parties this year than in the past. Additionally, twice as many companies as in 2006 are not allowing employees to bring guests, 80 percent more are holding parties at the office, 60 percent more are scheduling them during the workday, and 35 percent more are axing alcohol.

The changes are as much about employee perception as they are about the bottom line.

Maybe it’s because I’m a telecommuter and don’t get to socialize much with colleagues, but I really look forward to any get-together we have, whether it’s during the holidays or not. Then again, if I worked in an office that celebrated every birthday, I’d probably feel very differently about it.

Fed chief Ben Bernanke is predicting a worsening economy, and rising oil prices are causing airlines to hike prices and tack on fuel surcharges&8212;how could all this not affect meeting attendance? I’ve been hearing a lot anecdotally about companies cutting back on their internal meetings, and I’m guessing that they may not be so willing to pay for employees to go to association meetings, either.

Not to sound panicky or anything, but I think we all need to prepare ourselves for some tough times ahead.