Remember the day when you had to beg and cajole to get conference attendees to give you compelling feedback about your meetings? No, not the ones who complain … they've always been able to find you and let you know what was on their mind. The other ones (most of your audience) … the ones who never filled out evaluations and didn't have time for your focus groups.

Of course, I know that this question isn't limited to planners. Hoteliers and all industry suppliers need ongoing feedback so their product/service can evolve to meet or exceed the needs of their clients.

The Web has given us a mechanism for an ongoing dialogue with all of our customers - yet many of us still refuse to use it. It's simple, free, and can create an instant communication line with the world.

The tool is, of course, the blog. Now, I can hear some of you snickering. "Blogs are not legitimate communication tools." "Blog posts can be so immature."

Perhaps that is so for some blogs. Yet, we can say that about any communication medium. Just because the National Enquirer gets published, does that mean all newspapers are bad? How about condemning all restaurants just because some serve unhealthy fast food?

Blog information site Technorati (www. technorati.com) reports as of 2006, more than 50 million blogs exist. That's a hefty number. As a comparison, various sources estimate the total number of evening network news viewers is around 25 million. To say that more people get their news from their favorite blogs than from Katie Couric isn't that much of a stretch.

To me, the issue isn't whether there are credible blogs, nor whether there is a critical mass of bloggers. The real question is to find some hospitality industry blogs to give us an example of what we should be doing.

Bill Marriott blogs (www.blogs.marriott.com). Now, I'm sure that Mr. Marriott may not have come up with the idea of doing it himself (perhaps he did - I don't really want to sell him short). Posted every few days, he writes short, succinct posts about various hotels and information from the world of Marriott. A perfect use of blogging.

Sue Pelletier blogs (http://blog.meetingsnet.com/face2face). She is the Web editor of Meetings Net, an industry publication. Her Face2Face blog is to me a must-read every post. I even subscribe to it from my blog reader (oops…that's for another issue).

The Minneapolis Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.minneapolis.org). makes both traditional (text) and audioblogs (podcasts) available on its Web site. Like MeetingsNet, the Meetings Industry Soapbox (www.misoapbox.com) is a daily posting of observations and information about our industry. However, this one has multiple authors posting information on an almost daily basis.

Finding blogs is as easy as using Google, which has one of the best blog search engines - Google Blog Search (www.blogsearch.google.com), dedicated solely to locating blogs. Do a search for your competitors. Are they blogging? If so, you're missing out on keeping up with them. If not, then wouldn't that be a great opportunity to better interact with your customers?

Built into the blogging mechanism is the ability for an ongoing conversation to occur about any topic. These threads of discussion can allow for an exchange of ideas, and provide you with feedback you might never have traditionally received.

Fifty million blogs (and bloggers) can't be wrong. It may take some time to get our audience accustomed to the process (though not as long as we might think). But avoiding a free tool that creates an ongoing dialogue with your customers? That doesn't seem to be a marketing strategy for this millennium.

° James Spellos, CMP, (jspellos@meeting-u.com) is founder and president of Meeting U., which provides customized training solutions for the meeting professional. A certified Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS), he has 15-plus years of computer training, software training, meeting planning education, and technology consulting experience. Working Smarter is sponsored by PSAV Presentation Services. Visit its Web site at www.psav.com.