23 hours in London – WTF?

Family commitments and an important sales call put me in London overnight.  I think I spent more time on the plane than I did on the ground! You know it’s insane when you have the same flight crew that took you returning to the US the next day.  All this international travel is filling up my passport.  A couple more trips and it’s renewal time.  Anyhow, the trip was successful, but I’m glad to sleep in my own bed. Jet lag? I think that’s a benefit – I haven’t stayed in one place long enough to be affected.

Anyhow, I learned a few more travel tips that to share:

• More Skype:
  • A new feature with Boingo, pay by the minute.  When you just need to have a quick chat, SMS, or send an email.  Just connect to Boingo via Skype and voila.  Much easier than connecting to Boingo directly and cheaper if you are only connected for a few minutes.
  • Get a free Skype phone number from Ring2Skype. This allows people to call you on Skype from a local landline.  Most cities and countries are covered.
• Helpful iPhone Apps:
  • Travel Tools
    • GateGuru shows food, shops and services for every domestic airport. It even has a social networking component by allowing you to share your location, tips and reviews with friends.  Although I prefer to use Foursquare for that.
    • USA Today Auto Pilot – The swiss army knife of travel apps. Integrated with Tripit, this app also provides weather information for your destination as well as flight tracking, delays, a directory of travel phone numbers, and travel content from USA today.
  • London Specific
    • Lonely Planet’s London Guidebook is comprehensive with coverage of every neighborhood.  Integrated with the GPS, it shows you points of interest nearby with tips and maps.
    • TubeMap is a great free app that will give you the quickest or simplest route from one station to another.  No more standing in the station and staring at the map!
    • Heathrow Airport Guide: Current flight info, shopping, airport maps and transportation guidelines to the city.
• Airline Elite tips:
  • Join one, join them all.  You don’t have to be George Clooney in Up in the Air to become elite with your favorite airline.  But once you become a well-respected road warrior by your favorite airline, contact the others to match.  I’ve been able to parlay my Alaska Gold MVP status to comparable elite on Delta and United.  Other domestic airlines also run similar elite match or challenge programs.  Just ask the frequent flyer desk and send them a copy of your statement.
  • United Premier Executive allows its members traveling internationally to use its Red Carpet Lounges and SkyAlliance Lounges.  Free wifi, food, and drinks in a comfortable, relaxing setting.  Especially since the status came from the match game above!

Helpful?  What are some of your road warrior tips?

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iPhone- Why are you so temperamental?

My recent trip to London started off with a bang. All kinds of iPhone issues - First, foursquare crashes, then it hangs in the appstore.  Of course it got worse: refusal to shut off and then finally, total failure – the device wouldn’t turn on.  It seems like this only happens to me when I’m on the road. I’ve had the hat trick of iPhone travel disasters.  A flight to LA with a device that wouldn’t shut off got fixed with a restore through iTunes in my hotel room. A wasted day in San Francisco playing service provider ping pong between the AT&T store and the Apple store down the street until it got fixed.  And now an international outage.  I was envisioning a night with the Genius on my return home.  And then I remembered.  Aaron Strout had a similar problem with his iPhone.  Thanks to Aaron’s description of his problem and how his wife helped him fix it, I was in luck.  I was able to put my phone into restore mode and synced everything up through iTunes. Good as new. But it was looking bleak for awhile.

Oh my beloved iPhone, why do you tease me so.  Hello Droid, can we talk?  What do you think, is it time to switch?

Travel Tips

I’ve been in Vietnam for the last ten days or so, visiting our Lift9 team and taking in the beautiful beach at Hoi An.  That’s why I haven’t posted in awhile – yeah right. I’ve posted a few photo albums on Posterous, one of the fabulous Thi Nhan restaurant in Hoi An that was featured on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and another one of a fantastic seafood dinner that the Lift9 team had in Ho Chi Minh City. I’ll be posting another big one of Hoi An when I get home.

Anyhow, I figured out a few good travel tips on this trip, although they will probably go further in describing my ignorance rather than sharing anything that seasoned travelers don’t know. Traveling overseas can be difficult on communications based on distance, time zones, and costs.  I learned a few things about improving communications that I wanted to share.

Tip 1 – In my effort to avoid the usurious international data roaming rates that At&T charges ($20/MB), I typically keep my iPhone on airplane mode rather than than changing all of the push settings. Whenever I used the wifi, I would turn airplane mode off and go wifi.  Of course, in the past this created a couple of mishaps when the wifi didn’t really kick in, but the international data roaming did.  Last trip to Vietnam was an expensive 2 minute charge on a layover in Tokyo, for example.  So imagine my surprise when I tried the wifi with the phone still in airplane mode…and it worked! From now on, airplane mode is always on, with wi-fi.

 

Tip 2 – I use Skype to communicate back home, making PC to PC calls (or with the iPhone app). It’s a great service and free. This trip I had to participate on a conference call, so figured I’d try Skype’s paid VOIP service for calling land lines. Of course, the process of purchasing Skype credit was arduous with Skype’s agent,  Moneybookers. It seemed like they would throw up any security road blocks they could to inhibit my ability to purchase.  After finally setting up my account, Skype worked like a charm.  I called home and elsewhere for peanuts! And no more 30 minute setup times at home while my family would get things ready.  I know my wife prefers it this way.  I even got a Skype online number!

 

These tips have certainly made keeping in touch and communicating from overseas so much easier.  What tools and tips do you use when you’re traveling internationally to ease your communications?

How’s your bracket?

We’ve reached the Sweet 16 in the NCAA College Basketball March Madness tournament. Although, I’m ecstatic that the University of Washington Huskies are still alive, my bracket is limping along as I only have two final four picks still alive. But it’s been great entertainment.

 

Yes Tim, it’s been a fun $10! This year has been a crazy tournament with so many upsets and the conversation has been enhanced via Twitter. I’ve written before how Twitter enhances the sports experience, whether talking about the Red Sox, Shaq, or the NFL.

Since those early posts, athletes from all sports, professionals and amateurs have joined Twitter to speak with their fans.  There have been so many athletes on Twitter that you may not be able to track all of your favorites. So I was quite pleased to learn of this fantastic site from the Wall Street Journal that allows you to follow the tweets of players and coaches in the tournament.

 

The site is organized like a bracket so that you can see the most recent tweets for the two opponents in each game.  It even enables you to follow a list of your favorite team’s players. Of course, I followed the Huskies.

So how is your bracket doing and who are you following?

 

 

 

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Speaking out

Yesterday I spoke on a panel about How to Use Social Media at MarketMix 2010 which was produced by the local Seattle chapters of the AMA and DMA. Our panel was well attended and it was great to engage with people at a conference from outside the social media fish bowl.  Since many of us have been deeply immersed in social media for what seems like a long time, it’s always surprising to find other marketers that are just starting out. There were many great questions, both from the crowd and our uber-moderator, Kunal Muzumdar, who kept things moving.  One of the most popular questions was for a book recommendation on learning about social media.  Although it seems like everyone in social media has a book (or at least an upcoming book deal), the one book that has had staying power for me is Join the Conversation by the inestimable Joseph Jaffe. Published 3 years ago, this book still resonates.  Jaffe is very passionate about the subject and gives  great examples of how companies are doing things right in conversational marketing.  And that means giving up control, not always being right, respecting people building relationships instead of running campaigns, listening and acting like caring human beings. And since I’ve now outed myself as a true Jaffe fan-boy, his new book, Flip the Funnel is a fantastic take on loyalty and Retention Marketing. A Must Read!

Now back to the conference

Seattle Chef Tom Douglas gave a fascinating lunch keynote in which he shared his approach to branding while he prepped a beautiful king salmon as a metaphor for his branding and connection to the local market. Fascinating speech with some great sound bites:

The conference was a big success with over 400 people in attendance, the most popular conference that we’ve had in a month of marketing/ social media conferences in Seattle.  Congratulations to conference organizer Brian Ratzliff for a splendid event.  At the end of the month, I will also be speaking on Listening at the Social Media Conference NW at Western Washington University.  I hope to see you there.

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A little payback

I’m starting the New Year feeling pretty damn lucky. I have a job I love, we’ve got great energy, and the company has tremendous upside. As you may have seen in a previous post, much has changed for me over the past year.  Although the economy has improved, unfortunately there are still many friends who are in transition. I am so grateful for the help and support that many friends gave me during my jobless period. Today, it is time to give back.

Doug Haslam is making a career transition.  This is the first time in about ten years that he’s left one job without immediately having another to go to. Doug is truly one of the nicest guys in social media. He was one of my first friends on Twitter.  Doug is generous by being helpful to all he “meets” online. He is so witty that it’s no surprise that he had a ton of followers when the Twitter universe was small and that actually meant something. With his Boston references and Sox chatter, he always helps me stay connected to the Hub of the Universe, even from 3000 miles away. I am confident that Doug will find a great opportunity that suits him soon.  He is just too bright, too connected, and too much of a real PR professional that understands social media as well as traditional media. As you can imagine, Doug has a wealth of social capital that will no doubt help him. He’s also got some pretty good insights on using social media to find a job.  Having been through it myself, I know he’s got the right approach that will propel his career. Still, I know that a little help from his friends will be appreciated.

So how can you help Doug? Even if you don’t live near him or work in his industry? If we’ve learned anything from social media over these last few years, it’s the importance of community and the connections we make within that community. In my experience, there are three things that will always help and always be appreciated.

1. Reach out to him and make an introduction that you think will be meaningful.
2. Write a Linkedin recommendation for Doug.
3. Write a blog post like this one which will introduce Doug to your blog community.

These actions are not hard to do and take it from me, not only are they appreciated greatly, but they do help.

 

 

A new brilliant character campaign

Image via Wikipedia

Back in the old days of Twitter (last year), we were all enthralled with the Madmen characters.  Fans were taking up the personas of Don Draper, Peggy Olson and the other members of Sterling Cooper. It was fun to receive tweets from the characters as their responses were influenced  by the characters personalities and the time frame they represented.  We even debated whether the characters were sponsored by Madmen producer, AMC, or directly by fans; and then whether fans had the right to tweet. Of course, it proved to be a fan driven exercise that many of us enjoyed.

Last night, Shel Israel pointed out another Twitter character campaign, this one more factual and based on history.  In honor of the 50th anniversary of his presidential campaign, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum has created Twitter characters to relive the historic campaign that most were too young to follow.  The JFK Library will use campaign documents to follow the trail and provide daily updates that will tell followers exactly what occurred on the corresponding day in 1960.

Presently we can follow JFK, President Eisenhower, and Kennedy opponent, VP Richard Nixon, Nixon’s running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge, JFK’s eventual running mate and then rival, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. It will be interesting to see which other characters join the reenactment.  Shortly, I expect to see JFK’s father, Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, and first brother, Robert F. Kennedy. I’ve set up a Twitter list to follow all of the “action”.

I am very excited about this approach. What a fantastic way to educate people who were born after that period about JFK’s meteoric rise and what political campaigns were like then.  Could this be the basis trend for educating people about historical pre-internet events? Given our need for interaction and engagement, is this the way to educate people in a fun and interactive way?  What other activities/events could be adapted to this style?

 

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