Category
personal
-
personal
My Olympic Experience #2
Yesterday I went tmy speed skating event. The 10,000 meters for men was supposed to be a guarenteed gold for the Netherlands so we were all ready for it. Well, I once against was thought there’s no sure thing in life.
-
personal
My Olympic Experience
I left our online activities for a day to take in an Olympic event myself. Sheri and I went up to Cypress Mountain to watch the snowboard halfpipe for women today. It was an incredible day. The weather was fantastic, our seats awesome and the athletes unbelievable. Torah Bright from Australia was a great winner.
The event was perfectly organized. Staff and volunteers were incredibly friendly and helpful. The transportation by bus to the mountain was flawless. Hundreds of buses were waiting to drive people back to the transportation points. Cudos to VANOC for this one.
-
Marketing, Travel & Tourism, Uncategorized, personal
I am the media and the message: Remarkable experiences in Riga
Word-of-mouth is the core of tourism marketing. Remarkable tourism product and experiences drive word-of-mouth. No amount of advertising can build credible awareness or brand like word-of-mouth.
While in Riga for the ETC eBusiness academy, I came across a few great examples of remarkable experiences that I’ve told to at least 50 people. Plus the people in my social networks have seen videos and photos. Many of these people asked follow-up questions. What are the people like? Is it expensive? Where is it?
I had dinner in 4 or 5 restaurants while I was there. They were all good. But I don’t remember their names. Except one: Hospitalis, a soviet style hospital themed restaurant. The video I took of my Austrian friend Martin below will explain why.
My new friend Maija from Riga invited me and Martin to “go flying”. No idea what she was talking about but how can you say no to that? About 20 minutes outside Riga was the Aerodium. Hovering 10 meters over a huge ventilator was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I would fly back the 12 hours just to do that again.
I’ve talked to people. I’ve posted photos and videos on Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. I am the media and the message for Latvia Tourism. I wonder how many of the people I’ve connected with have heard of Riga before? And I wonder how many have Googled either Riga, Latvia, Hospitalis of Aerodrome. Will you?
-
personal
Why phone when you don’t have to?
I realized the other day that I don’t check my voicemail that often. After a Twitter post a few people commented they do the same. Made me think.
There are new tools for communications. I use email, instant messenging, Twitter, Skype, Facebook and other social networks for specific types of communication and depending on the situation; both for personal and professional use. Basecamp and Google Docs are other great ways of communicating through collaboration.
Mind you, these tools can be used just as ineffectively as the phone, but that’s what I’d like to focus on for this post.
An unscheduled phone call is an interruption. I’m working on something, and somebody decides that whatever I’m doing is less important than talking to that person. I also don’t know what the topic of conversation is going to be about, I don’t know what we’re trying to achieve and I’m unprepared.
And don’t even get me started on cold-calls.
For me, in a business environment, a phonecall or conference call is like a meeting. There needs to be an objective and purpose. Why do we need to talk and what problem are we trying to solve? That’s why it needs to be scheduled. Everybody is prepared, and we can spent our time efficiently.
An unannounced call should be something like an emergency. Otherwise, drop me an email. It’s 100 times for effective. I will probably send you back an email anyways. -
personal
Sheri graduated!
Yesterday Sheri graduated as a Master Social Worker. Congratulations hunny!
-
Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism, personal, social media, tourism bc
My interview for Online Revealed Caribbean
I was supposed to present with Richard Kunz from T4G, our technology solutions provider, at Online Revealed Caribbean. I couldn’t go unfortunately but Richard interviewed me and incorporated some of the footage in his presentation. I received some good feedback so I decided to put the whole interview online.
We discussed Web 2.0, user generated content, social networks and one-to-one marketing for Destination Marketing Organizations and the tourism industry. I shared some of the things we’re working with T4G on to provide more relevancy to individual consumers on a mass scale.
Richard and I will hopefully be at the next Online Revealed Canada in Niagara Falls on April 13-15. -
Internet, personal
Two Shout Outs
Two friends of mine recently launched some pretty cool websites.
First, Michael Chang, who worked on HelloBC for many years. He is now the owner and operator of El Chango Media launched the new design for Vancouver Trails. This website not only looks gorgeous, it also provides users with tons of information about the plethora of hiking trails around Vancouver.
And second, Dave Wight, who spend many hours cataloging, selecting and manipulating images for HelloBC launched a redesigned website for the Calgary Stampede. I had coffee with him in Calgary a couple of weeks ago when I was there for Online Revealed and I’m happy to hear he’s enjoying his new position and the result shows.
Congratulations guys. -
Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism, personal, tourism bc
Couple of recent panel apperances
I had the opportunity to join two panel conversations the last few weeks.
The first one was at the Online Revealed conference in Calgary where I joined Terri McCulloch, Tom Wilson,
Jens Thraenhart and Stephen Joyce. Alicia Whalen and Phil Caines did a great job moderating. I particularly like Phil’s live web servicing to show the websites we talked about. This was the third time we took the Tips from the T-List on the road and it was another great session where we discussed and debated the opportunities blogs, User Generated Content and Social Networks provide for the tourism industry. I like these sessions because I represent myself as a travel blogger and Tourism BC for our HelloBC Blogs initiative. It was the first time I met Terri and Tom, and they provided great insights. I’ve been a fan of Terri’s blog for a while now and Tom’s work is a great example of maximizing the medium with limited resources.
Thank you Patricia and Alicia from a Couple of Chicks marketing for inviting me. You’ve done a great job again.
Today I joined Ben Stringfellow (Director of Internal Communications, McDonalds USA), Thierry Hay-Sabourin (Senior Ecommerce Manager, Future Shop), William Azaroff (Interactive Marketing & Channel Manager, Vancity) on a panel called ‘Giving Your Brand Away’ at the Convergence 2008 conference. It was a pleasure to share the stage with this diverse group who’ve all done great things with building communities.
Ben gave us the story and result from a brand new closed community for McDonalds’ staff, reducing cost of printing newletters and creating efficiencies through shared learning between the restaurants. William gave us the remarkable story behind the Change Everything community while Thierry provide insights into Futureshop message boards, including Aaron, the search guy.
The biggest take-away I got from the session was that the first 500 members of your community will set the tone. So it’s important that the first members set the right tone, otherwise it will be hard to recover from that. Thierry shared that the tone on the English boards is very different from the French boards for example. At our HelloBC Blogs, we accidentallyThak did the right thing by starting our efforts with staff and our visitor centres, who set the right tone for consumers. Sometimes you need a bit of luck.
Thank you Sandy from Fjord Interactive for inviting me and a great conference. -
personal
Awesome Touch Screen Interface from Tokyo’s UT store
While looking for a cool Japanese t-shirt last week I came across this touch screen interface at Tokyo’s UT store. This store is awesome. They sell designs for only a month. The shirts are sold in tubes and the store layout and artworks are replaced every month as well. This touch screen allows you to browse the store inventory in a very cool and interactive way. Their website is pretty interesting as well.
-
personal
The unfair process of the US primary
Once in a while I’d like to digress from travel, technology and marketing on my blog. I have other interests and one of them is politics.
The US presidential election fascinates me on a lot of levels. In a lot of ways its great. It takes so long that there’s no way you won’t understand the differences between the candidates at the end of the process. Compared to Dutch and Canadian politics where election season is limited to a couple of months or so.
What I don’t understand is why I haven’t heard anybody talk about the complete unfairness of spreading the primary elections over months. Currently, there’s a lot of talk that Clinton should quit the process so the democrats can focus on the general elections. The reasons for this is that Obama is ahead in the delegate race, has won more states and has a majority lead in the popular vote.
This is based on the schedule of the elections. A candidates momentum is based on the last primary. Take the democrats for example. Obama won the first, causing huge media attention. Clinton won the second, and the momentum shifted to her. And on and on it went. Then other candidates started dropping out.
Maybe one of the other candidates could have won a state with an election months later. Just because Iowa and New Hampshire are first, it means that if you don’t appeal to these states, you’re done because the momentum has now swung to other candidates. Not fair to people living in other states who might like that candidate.
And imagine if the schedule of the primaries would have been something like New Hampshire, Arizona, Ohio, Rhode Island, California. These states were all won by Clinton. Obama would probably been forced to drop out; Clinton’s momentum would have been to much.
Montana and South Dakota (the last democratic primaries on June 3) probably won’t matter anymore. And if they do, it’s because of the extraordinary year for the democrats. The voters in these state essentially don’t have a say in the election of their party’s candidate. I seriously don’t get it.
Social Links Sidebar