I get to do a good deal of travel annually, both personal and business - but at least 85% of it is business and I continue to make B-team mistakes when it comes to living out of a bag. Travel train wrecks are no fun and for some reason things that happen are more annoying when you’re traveling. I suspect it’s the hurry up and wait thing which exasperates this weird travel “hectic-ness vibe”.
So I’ve spent time identifying a couple of reoccurring scenarios I find myself getting into as a business traveler which need a resolution.
Damn it’s too late/early to call!
I often find myself on other times zones and get goofed up on my schedule and forget to ring home. This scenario’s resolution plan is fairly straight forward - Microsoft Outlook. By using outlook timezones, meetings, and whatever might get in the doesn’t because I have a reminder to call home now. All I did was put an outlook task on my calendar every day at 3:00 PM. I may ultimately need to adjust the timing, but should work everywhere - Europe to San Francisco. The daily task even has utility when I’m home. It becomes the “Do I need to stop and buy something” call.
Holiday, what holiday?
With the near reliance on Outlook for nearly a decade and even more so with the call home task, I hadn’t noticed that US Holidays aren’t enabled by default which has caused me issues multiple times. I attempt to schedule my travel a min 6 weeks out and all I see is a clear calendar, no holidays. Not any more! I was able to easily enable US Holidays in Outlook by going to tools>options>calendar options>add holidays without issue.
With holidays visible now on all of my devices I shouldn’t end up forgetting to plan for long weekends or to not be aware that I’m accidentally traveling on say Mother’s day. It’s not like you have much flexibility on btravel, but it’s helpful to know such context earlier rather than later, just in case you have to buy a bigger gift.
I got my iPhone, I’ll find it
As a geographer and a male, I sometimes find it difficult to acknowledge that paper maps are required at all. Especially if I have already been to the city a couple of time or I have my phone with me. I’ve used my iPhone a couple of times and I can’t seem to orient myself with it while driving. On a recent trip to IAD, I made 1 wrong turn which ate up 8 minutes of time and $6 in unneeded tolls so I’m not to confident in the iPhone as my map/directions provider. So it’s paper directions for me going forward, I’ll just print them out when I print my boarding pass.
A 7:00 am Flight is never a good idea
This concept of taking 7:00 am seems reasonable and actually tempting more often than not, but in practice it never works. You have to wake up at like 3:45 AM, get to the airport and you now catch a hour delay. So I just asked myself 1 question: How cool does one need to be to roll into Mid-Town for a 11:00 am meeting from Atlanta. Quick answer, I’m never going to be that cool so it’s a flight the night before for me.
NOTE: Each region will have a similar scenario - just substitute the city most appropriate for your location to internalize this spatial scenario - 9:30 meeting in Chicago from Detroit. A 10:30 meeting in LA from SFO.
Don’t be the weird old guy at a concert
Sometimes with business travel you get this rare open evening, late morning or an afternoon where you can catch a moving, a leisurely lunch or live music at a local venue. My preference has historically been music on the road as a great way to consume downtime, today I mainly opt for hotel wireless and delivery.
I’ve seen some really good music by happenstance on the road - String Cheese, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Widespread, Derek Trucks, Disco Biscuits….. so it’s your call. I’m just not sure I’m in for hanging with a bunch of kid’s, which is what audiences have essentially become to me.
So why have audiences become a bunch of kids to me? Well I’ve recently noticed that I’m trending towards the weird old guy standing in the back of the venue checking his blackberry.
Dude, I lost my “X”
Let’s just get a baseline on the stuff I’ve lost during travel in the last 3 years or so:
2 iPods - 1 was the victim of a airplane seat pocket and the other a cab I think
3 pairs of sunglasses - 1 hotel, 1 rental car and 1 plane pocket
1 pair of prescription glasses - not really sure
1 jacket - forgot I had it in the overhead compartment, didn’t realize until the next day.
1 set of headphones - combination iPod loss as well in a seat pocket
Socks galore
The only common thing each of these scenarios had was some sort of distraction like being on the phone or a quick turn connection to my final destination. It’s not like I generally don’t like losing stuff and it annoys me for a while. So I’ve decided my Zen-esque path forward is to at peace with my losses. On the pragmatic side I’m going to just budget for losing $600 worth of stuff a year in flight and hope to stay under budget.
With all the focus on the diminishing attention and the general availability of time in my life, I spent some time itemizing what I do and throwing it into a spreadsheet, just to get an idea of how much time I’m investing in social media.
That sleep bar continues to shrink - can’t be good.
Legend:
Travel - Commute, Air travel
Friends - Directly engaged and interacting in person
Family - Engaged as a dad, husband, son, brother, uncle, cousin
TV - Various - family overlay most of the time
Sleep - dreaming, REM, tossing, turning
Email - Personal - private, Personal - public, Spam, Work
Social Media - Reading, writing, searching, thinking, posting
Work - Thinking, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, speaking
So I’m on the lookout for a new productivity tool for social media and this whole FriendFeed is a great candidate for my new social interface. Can’t imagine the time slice of social media Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell or Erin Kotecki Vest have on their spreadsheets, I bet their sleep bar is considerably smaller than mine.
That’s right - honesty is the best policy. So in full disclose this is Just a traffic update, yesterday was the worst traffic this blog has had since I’ve been paying attention! (Nov. 07). That’s right, celebrate the little things, because it appears y’all are transitioning to rss readers. Thanks team!
Maybe it is that no one is searching of relevant terms for what I’m writing about, so let’s highlight the top 10 search items, since we have analytics.
bob’s ichthyosaur - A Great book and apparently the top search term.
what is scientific management - High school students everywhere are googling.
mbifm - A made up acronynm, which apparently means Member of the British Institute of Facilities Management.
calculating gross margin
danielle pribbernow - Chick on the Check out blog, wonder if it’s just her searching on herself? Way too much traffic for a Wal-Mart employee. No I mean WAY TOO MUCH.
dijouri - I made up this name for my second son, 12 years old. I think this IS my son searching on himself or people trying to figure out if I made up his name or people looking for movie made in 2003.
things i am thankful - This is encouraging.
afro - Right on.
giggly quotes - Who searches on giggly quotes?
So if you don’t find anything interesting above interesting, perhaps one of the top 10 “trafficked” pieces, mainly produced via keywords - which you will notice via the relationships between keywords above and titles below. That being said,I REALLY am partial to the Stuck in the Middle series — and — I like the Mosaic piece the most, mainly because it plays well in my head. Yup, I’ve sucked you into a replay post, but a replay of posts everyone else seemed to like too, or at least this is 10 most visited posts here.
This is essentially a list of some ideas which have been sitting on my iPhone for a while. I’ve even gone as far as crafting 3 drafts which have been drafts for over 6 months. To that end, I would like to share these blog project concepts for YOU to use. Below are the ideas for you to blog on.
Can sales grow a market? - A concept of how sales activity can influence not only a single entities execution in the market, but actually GROW a market. This could be any functional group - marketing, customer support…
Marketing as Geography - What are the common themes and areas of expertise shared across discipline.
Business Travel Best Practices - Would be cool to have some very bTravel oriented lifehacks. I bet other people would dig this as well.
How do you explain social media to friends? - What is your elevator pitch when explaining social media. Can you get it narrowed down to 140 characters?
The 3 differences between product management and product marketing - plus or minus 2.
Share YOUR 3 Favorite blogs no one knows about - Who, Where and Why
The current state of X is unsustainable - Business practices, political activities, environmental actions…..
My favorite country to visit is XXX? Business travel or vacation destination, you don’t even have to have been there, just explain.
Share 3 wordpress template authors: Finding templates are a bear, who do you like? let folks know.
Is business blogging effective? How do you see this phenomenon? What are the key metrics to track? Is the ROI really the return on influence?
If you find one of these useful, consider linking back to spatially relevant as I would like to see what great ideas you share.
So I continue to just be amazed with the increasing value of Twitter for me as a person. Twitter is helping me be less verbose, although you can’t tell from my posts and it continues to expose me to new folks, ideas and online resources I would have never known about without Twitter. That being said, the Big Bang of the Twitterverse continues to expand the population at an amazing rate, it is increasingly becoming a the platform of choice for communication for many folks.
Twitter-centric content is everywhere! I am easily able to find posts on Twitter which are rewarding and provide for a better understanding of the value of the platform, but there are increasing number of ideas around effective Twitter management which is an interesting twist. The growing number of how to better manage the stream recommendations are not only interesting, but confirmation that the community is evolving. Perhaps the most honest piece on managing the stream I have read is Dopp’s. (If you haven’t read the Juice you should, the content is amazingly honest and insightful - not the kinda stuff you will find here.) Tips, tricks and how to’s are becoming a staple when it comes to Twitter references online.
Despite the Twitter land grab underway, the utility of Twitter is still non-trivial. With the recent increase in reliability and the platform stabilization of late, which is much needed with the increasing visibility; there is a growing need to understand the use of the platform by new folks. The community does self-monitor and reject poor form, but it will take some time for users to push back against the over crowding, so anything that help improve the usage hopefully is a good thing. So how can you use twitter as a tool for more effective communication? Below are 5 areas for consideration to improve your Twitter experience:
Listen and Participate: People are on Twitter to connect. No, really… use twitter to express and share. If someone in your group asks a question and you have input, respond - that’s sorta why they asked. You may want to listen for a while until you participate, your call.
Use it for a Place to Get Ideas: The people in your stream will amaze you with their creativity and insight in <140 characters. Actively use the information and the links shared to understand more about what interest you and your followers. You just might find a topic or two which you can share with others or even blog about.
Meet New People and Develop Relationships: You will find people on Twitter who will expand your network and your understanding of a topic or a region - it will also expand others views of you and your region.
A Place to Find Stuff: This could be content you are looking for or other stuff, such as restaurants or other things to do. I’ve been reminded I need to go see a movie and how much fun an afternoon at a museum can be.
People Watch: Sometimes passive is good. More than likely there will be many folks in your network that you won’t engage, but just watch. That’s ok, just because I don’t play with some of my kid’s toys, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching them play with them.
Need to understand a little more about twitter? Here’s a brief little video for you:
Have fun with your new shiny toy and find a way to make it useful and productive for your and your friends.
Twitter is most certainly one of the more interesting tools in social media. Small- terse messages of random interaction. My specific twitter network is just a little more eclectic than other social segments I frequent.
Twitter just like any social network continues to evolve to include an increasingly diverse set of media snacks for a growing cross section of the population. With the recent service/scale issues and exponential references on television, it is becoming increasing evident that the twitter stream is mainstream. Just as in any type of social network - you need to tend to the stream to maintain quality, conversational purity and value requirements.
5 Ways to Initiate a Stream Remediation Program
Identify the maximum thread of velocity and prioritize it’s value. High velocity twitter-ers can rapidly obscure the conversation. Bye BBC!
Contribute and interact to enable conversations. The size and shape of your Tweets significantly impacts the conversational velocity.
Channel friction and boundary shear are givens - so add new folk and erode others out.
Various conversations depths exist and the variability is driven by network depth. Engage people - not the just the network to identify YOUR thread of maximum value.
Business travel represents one of the most challenging things for most folks when it comes to time management.Whether it’s a conference, an off site or customer visit, being on the road can pile up work and that’s just not good.I’ve just finished one the biggest travel years yet and 2008 has risk of being even more travel and effective time management is becoming far more important than ever.
Don’t get me wrong – the security lines, delayed flights and airports lines are fun and all, but work continues to accrue when in transit and it is effectively a continuous reality. I don’t have a list of tips per se only areas for consideration:
Work doesn’t Stop – This is a common pitfall, some folks think that being on the road alleviates, or at least postpones the daily administivia – wrong!Your customers still need service.Carve out time to email, return calls and touch base with key workplace constituents.
You Can Take a Meeting – This is the most interesting one to me.I find than many folks don’t take meetings on the road.Why not?8 out 10 conference tracks are useless, 30 minutes out of an all day meeting can be refreshing and being on mute most of the time is ok.So why is it you decline most requests? Diversify and balance your day when possible.
Be the Timezones – If you are typically an East Coast worker and you go west you have at least 2 hours of free time in the morning to stay on top of things.If you go from the west coast to the east coast you can wrap up yesterday’s west coast work by 10AM ET.The challenging ones are the 5+ hour time changes, it almost seems that the work never ends - so pick a time to end and manage to it.
have you ever just wanted a snapshot at what’s going on in your twitter-verse? Not my, phrase - the marketing team at Gridjit, not just known for centering on such a simple name, but also for thier key differentiation message:
Gridjit Features:
Visualize your conversations in a clean layout
Drill through other people’s view on the Twitter-verse by clicking on their profile names and the people they “@” tag
Regular updates with more goodies to come!
I use it only for the quick view. ThinCloud has a great iPhone web application for Twitter, much nicer posting.
HINT TO BLOGGERS
Nothing good can ever come from a cron job during a maintenance window. Complex autoposting anyone? Not a good idea.
