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personal

personal, tourism bc
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
02.11.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments
I know I’ve been light on postings in recent weeks. January and February are busy months here at Tourism BC. I hope to pick up the pace soon.

In the meantime, here’s where you can find me in the next few weeks:
- Vancouver, February 21 – Tourism Industry Conference, Tourism BC concurrent session.
- March 5, Berlin – Phocuswright@ITB, Travel Bloggers Summit
- March 12, Vancouver – Content Convergence and Integration 2008, Changing demands on content in tourism.
Internet, personal, Travel & Tourism
Canada-e-Connect video interview
11.14.07 | Permalink | 4 Comments

Phil from rezgo interviewed me last week at the Canada-E-Connect conference last week. I just walked out of a conversation with another DMO who expressed frustrations about the office politics. That probably skewed my response. And I want to apologize to Jeremy for confusing his trend hunter company with trend watchers.
Internet, personal, Travel & Tourism
Blogging Workshop – Blogging with the long tail of travel
11.13.07 | Permalink | 4 Comments

We just finished our blogging summit and panel at the PhoCusWright conference. Ram Badrinathan, Jens Thraenhart, Kevin May, Stephen Joyce and myself talked about our blogs, the opportunity User Generated Content brings for the travel industry and how blogs can be used in corporate PR. The room was packed, probably 50 people or more. The conversation was very diverse and insightful. Lots of people stayed after the session to ask questions and gave good feedback about the session. I’m very please about it.
Our blogger summit was also a great success. I was wondering how it would unfold. The first session before our panel was attended by about 15 people, most of whom blog. It was very nice to meet some of the people I follow online, and also to meet new people who blog.

The session after our panel was huge. The room was packed with people and was almost a continuation of the panel conversation, but this time with the whole room. Very cool. Lots of travel companies are struggling about developing strategies about how to deal with social media. Marthy from aimClear provided valuable insight and entertainment about social media marketing.
I’m very proud of a new term I invented when we were talking about the Tips from the T-List book; offline link baiting. That’s essentially what the book is.
The hour and a half flew by. I had a great time. Thanks everybody for attending the sessions.
personal
New Look
09.29.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

I just launched the new look for my blog. Only for the homepage; not very professional, but I need to put pressure on myself to finish the other templates. The old template was the default Movable Type template and I wanted something more personal. Some details:

Header
The identification in the header is my own handwriting for a personal touch. The picture on the right is taken by my friend Steve on our trip in Holland, just after we arrived. So it’s me without sleep for 20 hours and a 9 hour flight.

Colour schema
Yes, it’s busy. But that’s intended. I wanted a geeky look and took my inspiration from a Dilbert cartoon and the colour schema of van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Web 2.0
I added two areas above my blog entries that are syndicated from Twitter and del.icio.us. The Twitter box grabs my latest tweed my my latest thoughts. The del.icio.us area displays the last links I’ve bookmarked. There is also a Flickr area in the right column where the last photos I’ve uploaded on Flickr are displayed.

I’m reasonably happy with it.
Internet, personal, tourism bc
Interview on the Canada-e-Connect blog
09.20.07 | Permalink | Comment?
Chris Clarke interviewed me on the Canada-e-Connect blog. If you’re visiting from this blog and are interested in more information, check out these posts:
Karin Schmollgruber from the Fastenyourseatbelts blog also interviewed me a while ago.
personal
A week in Amsterdam
08.18.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

I’m in Amsterdam for a week with my friend Steve. Just a quick break to visit some friends and family and show Steve around. It’s nice to have somebody with you who’s never been here. Makes you appreciate everything more. We’re staying at my Mom’s house at the moment. The first night, Steve suffered through an organized attach by my Mom’s four cats. One after another they decided to wake him up at periodic intervals while one of them tried to stare him down non-stop. It worked, we woke up at 4am (or was it the jet-lag?). We spend they day in Amsterdam were we walked around the city. We watched the sunset on the beach in Noordwijk (how romantic..). The next night Steve got the upper hand on the cats and slept for 15 hours uninterupted (so did I I).

A geek and a photographer at the start of their “Canadian Klootzak Tour”. That can’t be good…

Life imitating art.

Busted. You can’t get a geek away from his email.

Steve brought a camera from the 60′s for special back & white shots.

Amsterdam’s red light district in two words: sex and drugs

People in Amsterdam are strange, everybody that knows me will probably agree.

We also ran into my buddy Darth.

A break from our marathon walk on a patio at a canal, around the corner from the Anne Frank house. We opted not to visit due to the 300 person line-up.
personal, tourism bc, Travel & Tourism
Fasten Your Seatbelts Interview
05.14.07 | Permalink | Comment?

Karin Schmollgruber provides great insights into travel and eBusiness. She also has great interviews. I found her interview with Ian Rumgay from Tripadvisor very interesting.

Karin interviewed me last week about our Blogging and User Generated Content efforts. It’s now published on her website.
personal
Gefeliciteerd Tineke
05.02.07 | Permalink | Comment?

My mother turns 60 today. Happy birthday mom.
My sister, who also lives in Vancouver, and I made a little website for her to mark to occasion.
personal
Home
04.30.07 | Permalink | Comment?

We’ve made it home safe. As I go through our pictures, I might post a few more this week. After that, it’s back to business.
Thanks everybody for emailing us and Jeanine, thanks for looking after Pele and Nala!
personal
London Pride!
04.25.07 | Permalink | Comment?

So we found a good pub to watch the game. We’re in a Chelsea friendly neighbourhoud near Paddington station in a pub called ‘Fountains Abbey’. The place is packed. I think I’m going for Liverpool though. A team that wants to buy a championship doesn’t get my support. But I hope van der Sar can win another Champions League with Man U.

I’m enjoying my luke warm beer, popred with a hand cranck tab. But I’m enjoying it double because it happens to be the beer that was the project name for our UK website we launched last summer.

Game on!