TBEX ‘11 Preso: Tools for Time Management & Organization

Presented at TBEX ‘11 for PR-types (and a handful of brave bloggers), this preso  focuses on everyday tools that keep us sane, save time, and and appeal to our geeky nature. Courtesy of Ryan Whaley and moi, enjoy.

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Startup Love: Fortnighter

A coworker recently stumbled across a website called Fortnighter (he may have seen it on Gadling last week), and sent it my way knowing my obsession with online travel-related sites. In short: travel writers (unbiased, qualified editorial sources who know the destination well and aren’t being subsidized to promote a specific hotel/restaurant/shop) provide a customized itinerary for your upcoming trip, for a nominal fee. They take into account variables like who you are traveling with, cuisine & hotel preferences, etc. I tested a few rough trip ideas, and pricing ranged from $100 - $200; substantially more than buying a guidebook, but still not unreasonable when calculating the amount of time I generally spend obsessively researching in advance of trips.

Thrilled to see another potential revenue stream for freelance travel writers, who’ve seen paying content gigs dwindle over the last decade. Not yet sure how they will stack up in a world where content has become widespread, easy to access, and largely free for consumers. Playing into the weakness of all that free travel content (there’s just SO MUCH online these days, it’s hard to sort out relevant details) by creating a service for personalized data intuitively feels like a great idea, and I’ll be watching to see how it evolves. There’s a lack of social media integration in the site, but it just launched and assume this will be worked into future web phases - if only because this seems like the type of service that will live or die based on word-of-mouth endorsements from people who have used it. Also, would love to have a point-to-point map included in the itinerary (and maybe a link to a google map, so I can navigate from my phone on the ground. Because I do that too. A lot.) a la Tripwiser. 

Bottom line: smart concept, with a site that is clean and easy to navigate, and room to grow. 

Crash Course: 8 Things to Know if This is Your First TBEX

If you’re heading to TBEX for the first time this year (and judging by the registration numbers, there will be some new faces), here are a few tips gleaned from previous conferences. If you’ve been before, feel free to add your own at the end:

1.  If you arrive to Vancouver early, there will be a flurry of casual #tweetups that are worth checking out. Just follow the #tbex11 hashtag and you should be able to figure out where people are at (also, FourSquare was pretty invaluable late night in NYC). On a related note, TBEX straddles the middle ground of a conference and an “un-conference” (like Podcamp). While the TBEX crew does an amazing job organizing a deep array of formal programming and events, there are a lot of self-starters in the mix. Everything from a morning run to a late night mechanical bull outing will pop up. Go with it. Some of the most interesting, fun parts of TBEX happen outside of anything on the formal schedule.
2. Be prepared for people to look NOTHING like their Twitter avatar. While there are exceptions (@EverywhereTrip and @mikebarish, for example, are pretty easy to pick out - although the line of people waiting for autographs helps), many people use funny or quirky images on Twitter. Sometimes it took me most of the conference to connect a face with a Twitter handle, and I wished I paid closer attention to names the first time I met people. On a related note:
3. Not everyone will respond to a Twitter handle in conversation. Referring to people that way can be awkward. This year’s name badges will have both real names and Twitter handles, but for the newbies: it can be a little disconcerting when people walk up and say things like “Hey, NerdsEyeView, I love your Penguin posts!” It’s worth spending time pre-conference figuring out real names of people you want to connect with. Think of it as the difference between “Lady Gaga” and “Stephanie.”
4. Just because you follow someone online and know a lot about them does not mean you automatically have an IRL connection. Don’t be a creeper and start a conversation with someone you just met with something intensely personal.
5. Anyone who makes a living full-time travel writing/blogging is likely to have a genetic mutation that results in a spare liver. The rest of us mere mortals should not – under any circumstances – try to keep up with them at the open bar (photo courtesy of @Italylogue). Related:
6.  If you do something goofy/stupid/involving too much alcohol, it will be photographed, blogged, tweeted, tagged and will make it around the world long before you have time to apologize to your mom for being a very public idiot (she will have seen it on Facebook hours before, trust me). Remember how wired TBEX’ers are before any bad decision making.
7. If you can afford it, buy a lithium battery charger so that you can keep your laptop/phone/iPad/whatever charged. There’s just no way for any host to have enough electrical outlets for TBEX.
8. This year’s conference is going to have concurrent sessions (meaning unrelated, simultaneous live-tweeting), and I’m already seeing a lot of spam using the conference hashtag. Be prepared for Twitter to be less useful during the actual conference than in the past.