They’re in: Hotel Chatter’s list of the best WiFi hotels of 2008.

This is day two of the Virtualis convention center grand opening in Second Life, and it’s going a little more smoothly for me than yesterday. First and most importantly, I’ve been able to actually hang out for entire sessions, instead of bopping in and out and all about like I was yesterday. I missed James Hogg’s session this morning on emergent technologies, which from what I hear was really good. But I did get to sit in on CMP Boot Camp by Bonnie Wallsh and Marianne McNulty, which was really informative–I somehow get the impression that they’ve done this topic before! There was someone there who had been doing events in Second Life for a long time (relatively speaking) who had never heard of the Certified Meeting Professional designation, and he sounded interested in it. Actually, this guy says he’s been earning a living putting on events in Second Life for a couple of years now, so if you’re looking for a job, you may want to expand your horizons outside of the usual desired city and state.
Here’s a shot of Joan Eisenstodt’s session yesterday in the Eisenstodt Learning Center, which is so cool.

Anyway, then Joe Pine did a keynote on the experiential economy that came off, I thought, much better than the session he did with his fellow Authenticity and The Experience Economy author Jim Gilmore at PCMA in January. It didn’t cover a lot of new ground for me, but it was really fun to see him talk about virtual experiences from inside a virtual experience. I wish he’d done something a little more experiential than the usual PowerPoint presentation, just to prove the point, but the content was terrific.

Taking a break now before heading back to the Virtualis main ballroom for John Foster’s international contract negotiation session in a few minutes. It’s still a little frustrating for me because my Mac seems to have some sort of firewall built in that won’t allow me to use the Second Life voice chat. So I’m using my PC laptop, which allows the voice chat, but is brought to its knees (ankles? toes?) by the Second Life program; everything (especially my avatar) moves jerkily and in slo-mo, and things take a long time to reach full resolution. But it’s still really cool.

One thing I’m enjoying is being able to comment via text chat as the session goes on. I don’t know if that’s distracting to the speaker or what, but the running commentary added another dimension to it for me. Especially the funny bits.

OK, back to the ballroom…

Check it out–the virtual convention center in Second Life, Virtualis, is having its grand opening today and tomorrow. (For one person’s impression after taking a tour, check out Rob Everton’s review–not much I can add to it, other than you really do have to see it to believe it.)

Anyway, there’s a bunch of good meeting planner info goodies being offered as part of the celebrations. Today I got to check out some of the opening ceremonies, including an address on innovation and education from Stuart Mann, Ph.D, Dean, Harrah College of Hotel Administration, University of Nevada-Las Vegas; and a funny, funny bit from Tim Wilkins. I also made the teleport over from the ballroom to the Eisenstodt learning center (which is unbelievably cool–I have to post some pics from there) for a session by Joan Eisenstodt on learning environments.

I kept having to skip out to get work done (including one time during the keynotes when somehow my mic was apparently transmitting phone-ringing and keyboard tapping noises, even though I and my phone were several rooms and closed doors away. Must have been a ghost in the machine!). But I hope to be able to really get into more of it tomorrow.

If you want to join in the fun, just drop Virtualis founder and President of Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc., Dan Parks an e-mail. (It’s free, but you do have to register with Dan so he can make sure only people who should be there are there–there are some riff-raffy types in Second Life, just like in the real world.)

Tomorrow’s agenda looks really good, too, with sessions on emerging technology with James Hogg; a CMP bootcamp; a keynote by Experience Economy author Joe Pine; legal eagle John Foster on international contracts; and fellow legal eagle Barbara Dunn on meetings-related intellectual property issues.

Then on to fireworks and dancing with live bands. I hope to see you there.

I try to check out all the social networking stuff that’s out there, seeing as it all likely has/will have meetings-related applications. I’ve been resisting Twitter, a micro-blogging application where you can tell others what you’re doing minute to minute in 140 characters or less (more on Twitter here).

I signed up a while back, but have totally ignored it until recently. But I can resist no longer, especially after reading these posts.

In Twitterland, they call me spelletier. Tweet on.

No, you don’t have to know what a Squidoo is. All you have to know is that Marlys K. Arnold put together a great resource for her session, “Podcasts, Wikis & Blogs … Oh My!” recently at a KCMPI Professional Education Conference, then posted it on Squidoo so we all can use it.

Here’s the link–enjoy!

Boy, talk about timing! I just finished publishing this post and its musings about technology adoption etc., etc., when I ran across this post on A Wider Net about attendees basically hijacking a keynote interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the SXSW media and music conference. Holy cannoli–check out the video.

Here’s the short form: Basically, the audience wasn’t happy with the way the interview was going, and instead of walking out, they took over. Here’s Rob’s description:

Fueled by Twittr, the mobile phone networked community of people constantly twittering (text messaging meets a chat room) about what they’re doing at any given time, the crowd started to build up a hearty amount of disdain over the content on stage. Soon all of Twittr was dominated with conversations about this train wreck of an interview. Then, the worst of social media took over - the crowd simply started shouting out questions and took over the interview.

Frankly, I don’t think this was a bad thing, though I’m sure the journalist doing the interview would disagree. She was asking dumb, self-aggrandizing questions, and that the crowd took her to task for it, well, just think of it as a real-time evaluation, combined with a chance to salvage the keynote and give people what they wanted. (Some people point out that Zucherberg is a notoriously difficult interview and she did the best she could. In that case, perhaps he wasn’t the best choice for an interview-format keynote, eh?).

Was it rude? Oh yeah. Did it hurt the interviewer’s feelings? Probably. But this is just a high-tech version of the tomato-throwing that’s been going on as long as acts have been on a stage, IMHO. It’s just that the reach is longer now that it extends beyond the auditorium and into cyberspace.

All I can say is: The buyers are no longer willing to put up with goods they deem unworthy of their time and attention when it comes to conferences, and they may not be shy about letting the speaker know it. Caveat orator.

Mike Mason from the Farm Credit Council again is posting lessons learned from this year’s meeting. I especially like that he actually tried some of the meeting print program improvements he posted about last year, even if they didn’t always work out quite like he thought they would.

Sadly, two things he learned are 1) that attendees don’t like change, and 2) the tech corollary that those who are on board with technology already still are up on the latest, while those who aren’t, aren’t. This may just be specific to his market, but I don’t think so.

We may be at the point where the digital divide is pretty much set. I mean, social networking has been around long enough now that those who are interested have already given it a shot, and those who aren’t have already marshaled their arguments against it (see Ben’s synoposis of these arguments here). We may be able to nudge a few more holdouts over the fence, but my feeling is that the lines are already drawn.

But, believe it or not, I have been wrong. Maybe there just hasn’t been enough time yet to win over the luddites. With the pace of change in technology, though, those who aren’t on the bus may find themselves too far behind to catch up even if they do have a change of heart. My feeling is that they are missing out, but who knows, maybe they’re right and all this blog/Wiki/LinkedIn/Twitter stuff isn’t ultimately worth paying attention to. Naw.

The South By Southwest media and music conference, aka SXSW, is getting a reputation for using the latest technology to enhance the experience for attendees. This year, according to this Wired article, the technology was Sched.org, a scheduling application that sounds like a godsend for meetings. From the article:

The login is simple — just pick a user name and password and Sched.org sets up your account. Each day’s festival events are laid out in their own tab. Click on a tab to browse the events and pick which panel, film or music show you want to attend. One click adds the item to a personalized page with a unique URL, which can be bookmarked on a mobile device (it looks great on an iPhone) or printed out. You can also see who is attending which event, and sort the events by popularity.

I have got to check this out for myself!

The list of best geek hotels is in: Here they are. Figures, I haven’t stayed in any of them. Yet.

Here are a couple of good Web sites for planners, courtesy of Jim Spellos of Meeting-U’s Techniques e-newsletter:

The first one is just for those looking for a new job: Indeed, which Spellos calls “a search engine for jobs” where you can browse what sounds like a big assortment of Web-based job listings. And you can subscribe to an RSS feed for your specific job results so you can stay updated.

This one could come in handy for meetings: Walk Score, where you can find out what’s within walking distance of your meeting.

Thanks as always to Jim for collecting a wide variety of interesting tips and sites! If you don’t subscribe to MeetingU Techniques, I highly recommend you do–you can sign up here.