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Travel

6 Sure Fire Scenarios to Make Business Travel Suck Less

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.

May 10, 2008 by
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It’s a small and hectic social world

Back on this whole blogging thing after a whole bunch of slacking caused by just a little too much travel. This week’s travel is just the beginning of my Spring Tour which will take me to Chicago this weekend, Boston, Dallas, Calgary, New Orleans, Scottsdale, and Detroit. Trust me this will change and grow, but that’s only the parts I know of between now and June 11, I have a couple of 2 or 3 day holes to fill in still and they WILL. I can only hope that these future trips bring as much rewarding feedback and opportunity as the last 2 trips have to Austin.

Austin has been a whirlwind set of activities over the past two weeks, caught up with folks I haven’t seen in a while and was able to meet a person that I was hoping to meet a long time ago, Michael Wilson, CEO of Small World Labs. I spent some time last night getting the opportunity to better understand where they from a product perspective and was clearly impressed with thier strategic take on Social Networking. Social network technologies are what they are, but the easy to identify differentiation of SML is their understanding of how to effectively plan and implement thriving communities via their expertise and customer engagement processes leveraged for every implementation.

The team’s passion and understanding isn’t contained to Michael, but everyone I’ve had the opportunity to interact with at Small World. Even the newest guy I’ve met, Sam Eder, is emblematic of the folks at SML -he is this high energy creative believer of the good things the team can do for organizations to improve customer relations, drive loyalty and increase companies revenues.

There is good reason for the energy and optimism they have a stable of easily recognizable customer logos and a fairly recently announced funding round to drive out their strategy.

Based on the organization I’ve worked with, it is clear that the success of a community is less about implementing a technology platform but a more a partnership with a vendor which develops a strategy for enablement and community engagement. Unequivocally these guys are positioned to continue to lead the market for social networking platforms, so if you are looking for a social media platform to develop an engaging community you have to put them on the shortlist.

That’s more or less all I got to say about that – on to SOBCon and Chicago where I will finally meet this Brogan cat…. I think.

April 30, 2008 by
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Shows on a Plane: Top 5

Business travel isn’t that great deal of fun so I make the best of it. Flights are my dedicated reading time – real books the whole tactile experience and everything. The book is a fairly elegant and enduring technology which I enjoy to use a must as possible. Ultimately I finish a book every now and again mid-flight, but I could always read the in flight magazine until recently, Delta Sky now has an RSS feed which reduces the reading options for me now since I read online.  To that end, I suspect I will see more movies and cooking shows when I finish a book mid-flight in future. To date, I’ve seen a good deal of blockbusters and crap (Hot Rod), but mainly it’s middle of the road stuff – not too good, not too bad TV or movies.

The mix of programming ranges from sitcoms to in-flight shorts, Delta created perhaps up to 4 fairly entertaining cartoons on being on a plane, 3-4 minute vignettes. Overall the in flight programing has a general audience feel about it and which makes sense since it’s a captive audience of unknown passenger make up. Apparently planes are a tertiary market for film targeting business travelers and vacationers.

So I spent some time thinking about what I have seen on a plane. To be exactly: What semi-precious gemstones of media have I picked up on along the way at 32,000 ft.? So here’s 5 items which I put at the top for various reasons:

  1. Notting Hill – I saw this on the way to the UK – this film is just one of those neat coincidences which burns into one’s memory. While this would be a movie I would never have thought I would watch, ultimately I would be wrong. Emily loves it and I’ve now watched it like 10 times. Damn you TBS!
  2. The Spiderman(s) – I watched ALL 3 for the first time on a plane. #3 wasn’t that entertaining, but the trip to Italy was great.
  3. The Wonder Boys – There is no other way to see this movie but on a trip to Seattle and a forgotten book.
  4. Becker – While not a movie, it was a really good thing to watch repeatedly on my way to New York a couple of times. It was like prep work, I guess that’s why I never really “fit in” in mid-town.
  5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets – I’ve seen the first one like 45 times, so catching it this month was cool. A reasonably good sequel.
April 20, 2008 by
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