Recorded in the St Louis Airport Marriott courtesy of a blown connection by Southwest. We clean out the TravelCommons mail bag, going through listener comments on disabling in-flight electronics, eating alone, and finding good non-chain food on the road. We talk about the sudden collapse of the CLEAR registered traveler program and if in-flight WiFi will really improve frequent traveler productivity. I also give a little personal history about how I came to travel so much. Here’s a direct link to the podcast file.


Here are the show notes from TravelCommons podcast #75:

  • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
  • Recorded in the St Louis Airport Marriott due to a missed connection courtesy of Southwest Airlines
  • This is a pretty big miss by Southwest. It’ll be a while before they see me at Midway again
  • Haven’t been doing quite as much travel as usual. Passenger traffic in May was down over 9% , and I personally contributed to that trend
  • Bridge Music — Ice Hotel by Mario Grigorov

Following Up

  • Thanks to everyone for the best wishes tweets, e-mails and website comments on last month’s 4th anniversary show
  • Simon Mikkelsen provided a nice fact-based response to my rant about the mess of in-flight electronics regulations
  • The CLEAR registered traveler program replaced its web site with a single white page announced its immediate shutdown. Guess I made the right decision not renewing my membership
  • Bridge Music — Giving In by Brad Senne

Can’t I Fly Unplugged?

  • Joint American Airlines/HP survey says most ” tech-savvy frequent flyers” think WiFi is more important than food.
  • A not-so-surprising coincidence given AA’s recent announcement of their roll-out of the Gogo inflight Internet service.
  • I rate airport food availability much higher than WiFi — especially if I’m getting on a flight heading to or from the West Coast.
  • I think my productivity increases without inflight WiFi, but that’s because I use a full-featured laptop
  • However, the emerging class of netbooks, with their corollary assumption of constant Internet connectivity – the model of a low-powered client leveraging the power and storage of the cloud — would need in-flight WiFi to be productive
  • Bridge Music — Traveling Light by Adam Fielding

How I Got Here

  • Simon Mikkelsen wrote “I’ve had a question for a long time. What is your job? We’ve heard a bit from time to time, but what requires so much travel?”
  • Have tended not put too much of my personal background into TravelCommons. Kind of a corollary tag line – it’s more about the journey than the presenter. But after so many of you have stuck it out through 4 years and now 75 episodes, I thought I owed you a bit of background.
  • I’m in consulting now, but traveled a lot even when I had real jobs
  • When I joined Deloitte Consulting in Detroit, the real travel began. I made it to Northwest’s top tier in 9 months and had 750,000 miles in 4 years

Closing

  • Closing music — iTunes link to iconPictures of You by Evangeline
  • Bridge music from Magnatune
  • Feedback at comments@travelcommons.com or right here in the comments section below
  • Follow me on Twitter
  • Direct link to the show

4 comments on “Podcast #75 – Can’t I Fly Unplugged, How I Got Here

  1. The best resource for me for finding great local fare are the clients. I can count on one hand the number of bad meals I’ve had at recommended restaurants.

    Google Earth is another great resource, with restaurant reviews that are fairly reliable. One thing negative though is that many local joints aren’t listed in Google Earth.

    Finding a good local place helps to inject some variety into an otherwise mundane routine. It’s a bit like a scavenger hunt.

  2. Zach says:

    Great podcast.. wanted to share my other main travel resource with everyone. It has been instrumental for my last few trips.

    http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2072193&trk=anet_ug_grppro

  3. Mikko says:

    Hey Mark, I believe #76 has a silent section for a minute or two at around 12 minutes.

    Thanks and cheers from Finland.

    I’ve been a fan of TC for years, keep it up.

  4. mark says:

    Mikko –

    Thanks for pointing out the gap of silence in T/C #75. Somehow the ghost of Rosemary Woods took over my version of Adobe Audition. I’ve uploaded a fixed version. I’m now flogging the TravelCommons QA elf.

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