Next week's annual shareholder's meeting in Fayetteville should once again be more spectacle that business.Last year, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) seemed to spend more money lining up speakers, having pieces of its global operations dance with flags and having a pep rally rather that digging into issues.This year, expect the same -- as the retailer has already opposed all the shareholder proposals anyway, so it should be a nice, big party full of entertainment. Nothing else.

But Wal-Mart is enhancing one of its corporate messages this year: the way shareholders vote on the proposals. The annual report this year will include less pages and will be printed on lighter, recycled paper with Wal-Mart's investor relations website printed on it to direct shareholders there for further reading. This is an area where Wal-Mart can afford to be not so green. If you're like me, you may prefer annual reports on printed paper. Call me old fashioned, but a highlight marker, a quiet desk and a good reading light comprise the best environment for reading an annual shareholder report.

Wal-Mart, of course, defended its action to sway more shareholders to its IR website for the full annual report by stating that "we're glad that an increasing number of our shareholders worldwide have joined us in that effort ... by filing their proxy ballots electronically." Seems there is little choice for the alternative to me. If you're interested, head over here and read the proxy statement. If you're a shareholder, you can go ahead and vote on the web as well. Put away the highlighter, though.

Witnessing a Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) annual shareholder meeting is not to be taken lightly. The four-hour meeting was more like an entertainment venue and circus more than anything, and in between the festivities, the chairman of the board and other executives slipped in the proposed shareholder proposals for consideration by the proxy holders in attendance. This year's meeting featured 13 proposals, with 11 of those being submitted by smaller and much larger institutional shareholders.

In the midst of covering this, it was amazing to see that 6 of the 11 shareholder-submitted proposals featured the theme of limiting executive and/or board compensation or executive/worker pay equity proposals. In other words, some shareholders want workers to be paid more and executives less, even though these executive pay packages are generally based on peer group measurements -- or so the board of the world's largest retailer would have you think.