Brought to you by the always brilliant Lara McCulloch-Carter, the #EventProfs community, and Plan Your Meetings: Stuff Event Planners Say.

Yesterday we gathered in the early morning for the PCMA Fun Run/Walk just as dawn was breaking. It was in the mid- to high-50s, clear and gorgeous—a perfect day for a run (or walk, or whatever).

Then, just one long redeye flight and many thousands of miles later, I come home to this (the photo doesn’t really show it, but the snow was coming down in buckets when I took Mango out for a quick run this morning).

HotelChatter has come up with its top 10 list of resolutions it would like to see hotels make for the coming year, from free and functional WiFi to a plethora of outlets for your plugs to more cool art to new hotel reality shows. I’m on board with all but the last one, I think. Though it is always interesting to see behind the scenes, so maybe hotel reality shows wouldn’t be so bad?

What changes would you most like to see in the hospitality business in 2012?

Let’s not even talk about going to the gym more, getting the right number of hours of sleep each night, and pushing away from the Buche de Noel—despite all our good intentions, we just know those resolutions won’t last past Valentine’s Day.

So instead let’s make some resolutions that will make the meetings industry, and hopefully meetings themselves, slimmer, healthier, and more joyous places to be in 2012. Here are a few off the top of my head (in no particular order):

1. Make meetings smaller. I know, we all like to brag about attracting thousands, tens of thousands, scads and scads of people to our events. But if you want to actually get something done, form real bonds, and really learn from each other, give me a small meeting over a monster mash any day.

2. Adjust the session length to what that session needs, not what slot is available in the schedule. That doesn’t mean cramming in more content, but right-sizing each session so those that need lots of discussion time and followup can have it, while those that would be best served by a Pecha Kucha format can do just that. PCMA plans to do this in January at its Convening Leaders conference, and I can’t wait to see how this works in real life. The concept, IMHO, is awesome.

3. Teach your teachers well. They may know their subject matter cold, but if they’re not also experts in facilitating learning, all that content expertise will likely go to waste.

4. Engage the senses, get interactive, wake up your audience to all those wonderful things you’re trying to let them in on!

5. Allow for some downtime, some blank space, some time to take in, assimilate, and apply what people are learning. Why we just shake our heads and laugh ruefully about how the best conversations take place in the hallways without trying to make them an even easier, more organic part of a conference, I’ve never understood. Give them social objects they will enthusiastically focus their learning around, talk with each other about, make them think about how to apply what they learn to what they do.

6. It’s OK to have fun. Really. I know this is a deadly serious conference about X, and all those Y participants are very, very important people. But the keyword is still “people,” and people who laugh together, learn together.

7. Do well by doing good, be it reducing your meeting’s carbon footprint or finding a way to give back to your meeting’s locale. There are so many great ideas out there at every price point that there’s really no excuse for not doing at least something to make your meeting a greener, better world citizen.

8. Find a way to include your virtual audience (and yes, you likely have a virtual audience whether you planned to have one or not). Unless everyone signs confidentiality agreements on the way in the door, at least some of your participants will be tweeting and Facebooking and whatever else social-networking your conference, even for the most decidedly non-hybrid of meetings. Accept it, embrace it, and help those not in the room get at least a taste of what the on-site goodies are from your organization’s point of view.

9. Have a plan in place going in to a meeting to deal with any possible PR fallout from a meeting. This goes for both hoteliers and meetings managers. Just think how much less ink “Muffingate” would have gotten if both sides could have instantly countered the perception with the reality of what that $16 muffin was all about? How much less a hit this business would have taken from the so-called “AIG Effect” if we had been able to explain a boon from a boondoggle from the get-go?

10. Free WiFi for all, everywhere.

I could go on, but I’m in a post-holiday daze at the moment and need to go replenish my blood sugar levels. So you take the reins—what’s on your list?

I’ve been catching up on my RSS feeds this afternoon, and man are there some interesting things going on. Too many to write a post about each (and I’m feeling a tad lazy), so here’s link roundup instead:

Meetings
Adrian Segar issues this challenge to all meeting organizers: Make the results of your evaluations public I am so behind this idea—why everyone isn’t already doing this, I can’t imagine. It’s not like attendees don’t already know what worked and what didn’t, so what’s the issue? Also, don’t miss his great suggestions on how you can get great attendee evaluation response rates.

Ken Molay over at the Webinar blog offers up why webinar registration is like Christmas shopping. I’d expand it to encompass any type of event registration.

Brains and Behavior
You really are what you know (Slashdot) This one is pretty cool—MRI scans of London cabbie brains show that the brains physically change after training. Wouldn’t you love to be able to scan to see what your sessions are doing to your attendees?

The Meeting Space Should Not Define The Use, The Behavior Should While he doesn’t cite any MRI data, Jeff Hurt does talk about how behavior and learning are affected by the physical space in which we expect people to learn (and, theoretically, behave).

Travel
TSA Facing Death By 1,000 Cuts (Slashdot) This fall has not been without incident for our screeners.

XL passengers invade my economy class seat — and airlines let them
(Elliott.org) Not sure how I feel about this one. I’ve been painfully squished by oversized seatmates, and it’s not fun. Then again, it’s not fun for them, either. I’d like to see airlines set aside a certain portion of seats designed specifically for larger folks, but in this era of “cram ‘em in and forget about passenger comfort,” I can’t really see it happening. But to ask someone to buy two seats also doesn’t seem all that fair either.

Just Because I Found Them Interesting and Hope You Do Too

Most hated buzzwords (MeetingBoy via BoingBoing) I know it is what it is, but we probably should circle back to find some robust, no-brainer ways to work smarter so that, at the end of the day, we take it to the next level to a 30,000-foot view of a paradigm shift.

2012 color of the year: tangerine tango
(Special Events). It’s actually a very striking color, if it actually looks anything like it renders on my netbook. Plus, what a great name! Brochure designers, take heed!

This story is so sweet and charming and wonderful that I had to share it: Who left a tree, then a coffin in the library?

Last but by no means least, check out this list of the 56 best/worst similes. Prepare to laugh until the dog looks at you funny if you click this link! Among my faves:

6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
18. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
48. I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.

I love this notebook! How much do you want to bet that the number of interruptions you’d get would go way, way down if you carry this into your next staff meeting and plop it down on the table in front of you…

You knew how to get Google to do a barrel roll, but did you know that if you type in “The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything,” the answer comes back as “42″ (in homage to one of my all-time favorite books, Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)?

Seems the merry pranksters at Google have hidden a bunch of these so-called Easter Eggs, and I recently stumbled upon the Wikipedia page that lists a bunch of them. Don’t click the link unless you’re prepared to waste some serious time!

If you think you’re pretty conversant in Googlisms already, I dare you to take the Does Google Really Do That challenge.

And I thought this 3D projection used at the AdobeMax 2011 conference opener was amazing: Check out this ad projected onto a building in Germany—and this was just an ad. Can you imagine what you could do with your organization’s message?

I’d give a lot to be able to go to the Machine Project Benefit. To be held at a faux Department of Motor Vehicles, this “evening of unbridled confusion” features “car horn fanfare; competitive sobriety tests; workshops on breaking into and hot-wiring cars, as well as how to escape from a locked trunk; home-made beers brewed by members of the Machine Project community; heavy metal polka; surrealistic eye charts; ’secret pancakes’; a human vending machine which dispenses delicious food prepared by Donna Coppola of Auntie Em’s Kitchen fame.”

It sounds as eclectic, interesting, and fun as the Machine Project itself. How well do you special events reflect not just your organization’s mission, but also its organizational soul?

Wow, hard to imagine that Cvent got more than 1,400 photo submissions for its Great Event Photo Contest. Then again, maybe not, since the grand prize was $10,000, and we all think our events look the best, don’t we?

Well, the judges have done their judging, and the company just announced that the World Balloon Convention had the $10k shot. Congratulations! The venue that hosted the event, the Sheraton Dallas, also scored $8k worth of free ads on Cvent’s Supplier Network, and the finalists get $1k and a mention on the Cvent blog for their efforts.

Behold the WBC 2010 Land of Enchantment Gateway

The Facebook entry says of the photo: “The WBC 2010 brought more than 600 balloon professionals from all over the world together for top-quality education, dyamic competitions, powerful networking, and amazing parties. Over 46 different countries were represented in the delegation and more than 500,000 Qualatex balloons were used over the course of this premiere, 5-day convention.”

And afterward, did the planner get to pop them all?