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.

Google Maps is bringing its helpful blue dot indoors, so you’ll be able to figure out where you are relative to where you want to go inside as well as out. While it looks like it just has some major airports and shopping areas mapped out as of now, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before you can use it at New Orleans’ Morial Convention Center, or even better, Gaylord Opryland. Though with more conference organizers including interactive maps in their show apps, maybe this will be not quite so needed by the time Google gets around to major convention sites?

If you’re looking for spa food like cucumber gazpacho with shrimp and melon on your next flight to Cincinnati, you’re almost definitely going to be out of luck (unless you’re on your billionaire friend’s private jet). But the enterprising souls at DietDetective.com have done some sleuthing to find out which airlines sky snacks are the least (and most) hazardous to your waistline. Now the results are in.

Of the eight airlines whose snacks DietDetective.com analyzed for healthiness, cost, calories, and exercise equivalents, Virgin America and Air Canada provided the healthiest sky snacks; Spirit’s snacks were the least healthy.

However, the company noted in a press release, your best bet is to bring your own food (low-calorie cereals, apples and oranges, salad, energy bars, beef jerky, fruit rollups, nuts, nonfat yogurt, and sandwiches). They also suggest peel-and-eat tuna and salmon cups, which sounds pretty awful to me.

I know I should care about keeping to nice healthy snacks but really, to be truthful, I don’t. I always figure I’m working off so many calories just holding the plane in the sky with my mind that anything I eat is instantly burned off. Calories eaten on the plane, stay on the plane—that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

It’s hard to imagine that the word hasn’t yet gotten out to some meetings professionals that it’s better environmentally, budget-wise, and even logistically, to lose the bottled water habit for meetings. And yet, we still see them on ice at breaks, so I guess the trend toward pitchers and other forms of water dispensers hasn’t quite hit the mainstream (so to speak).

Andy McNeill, principle and CEO, American Meetings, Inc., tackles just this topic in this blog post that covers the topic nicely, including lots of related links to more resources and bottle alternatives AMI has found.

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?

The good folks on MeCo were chatting about swag after reading this Fast Company article about swag, tchotches, and other conference giveaways. Then photographer Brian McCarthy mentioned one of the best giveaway ideas I’ve heard in a long time.

His clients hired him to take portraits of their convention attendees, which he was able to do at a quick clip of a few minutes per portrait (he travels nationally to work with conventions and meetings, he tells me. He also brings his own portable studio, which he specifically designed to meet airline check-in regulations). He said it was a big hit, because people got good shots they could use on their Web site, etc., the other vendors had a line of people to chat with, and the organization got kudos for providing what he says one attendee called the “best swag ever” (he e-mailed the images to each person at the end of the day, which gave the sponsor one more shot to message that person as well).

Is that not a terrific idea?

Speaking of swag, I also just heard that President Obama is not a fan of the stuff, at least not when the federal government is the giver of the swag (the swagger?). More on the ban on government swag here, also courtesy of MeCo.

I was just reading this post on Hotel Chatter about unexpected animal encounters at hotels, from deer to coati to cormorant, and I’m feeling a little deprived. I’ve never encountered any unexpected animals at a nice hotel, and even at the beyond-discount, slightly scary places, the worst I can remember is a gecko, who I actually liked having around in the hopes he’d eat whatever bugs might have been lurking. When I was in the Red Center of Australia, I heard it wasn’t uncommon to find camels hanging out by the swimming pool of one hotel, but I never saw any.

Have you had an unexpected animal encounter at a hotel? Enquiring minds want to know!

If you’ve ever struggled over when, how, and if you should charge for your content, Dan Loomis has put together another really useful post on the Big Ideas blog outlining how you don’t need to pick just one way of pricing content for, in the case of associations, members and nonmembers.

He advocates for what he calls a “hybrid content strategy” that includes a mix of free-to-all content (older evergreen info, teasers for premium content, etc.); free or discounted premium content just for members; premium content for conference attendee eyes only (such as conference content for 90 days post-con); and some fee-only content that anyone can buy.

This is his second post on this topic lately, and I like this one even more than the last one.

Remember the infamous kerfuffle over $16 muffins that happened when the Office of the Inspector General said the Department of Justice was overspending on its conferences. Quickly dubbed “Muffingate,” some deemed that, even though in reality the “muffin” on the invoice was just shorthand for a continental breakfast of sorts for which $16 is a fair price, it still could be called an argument meetings can’t win.

But once The Colbert Report points out the absurdity of the whole thing, well, maybe we actually can call this one a win, at least after the fact?