Gettin’ Carried Away

… you adjust!

This past week, I was bombarded with work, the weather took a turn for the worse and my mother and I didn’t think that road trippin’ to Kentucky would be a good idea.

First of all we had the whole work issue. I really needed to be by my computer at any given moment. While my laptop is portable, we had planned on spending a lot of time on the road and on foot. And even though I could carry it around with me, that’s unnecessary weight, especially for a road trip. Also, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of leaving it inside the hot trunk (it IS summer, you know).

When we checked the weather, it seemed as though most of the country would be battling some storms throughout the week. I know I’m not going to melt if I get wet, but I also don’t want to bring a ton of clothing with me when I’m on a road trip. I mean, have you ever tried to air dry completely soaked clothing? It takes hours, perhaps even 24 of them!

However, just because we opted to stay home, it didn’t mean we couldn’t travel. So far, we’ve driven up north to the outlet mall in Gurnee, we saw a movie and we went to a baseball game. We are still going strong, as we have even more plans for the weekend to see some museums and other Chicago attractions. To tell you the truth, I don’t think either of us have been to the Field Museum since I was five years old… when I threw up in the parking lot because I was car sick. Believe it or not, I used to loathe traveling. I was the total “are-we-there-yet?” kid.

~* Mom and Carrie enjoy some dessert from their favorite pie shop, Bakers Square *~

As the saying goes, “When one door closes, another one opens.” So, if we’re not going to Kentucky, we’re going somewhere: to the Northwest suburbs, to Chicago’s Loop, down the street, etc. You don’t always have to stay home. In this case, I needed to be close to home. But there’s nothing that can keep me from traveling and exploring, whether it’s 50 or 5,000 miles away.

Sunday, July 26, 2009 marked a pretty momentous occasion for travel bloggers everywhere. Over 100 people met at the Chicago Cultural Center for the Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) to share ideas, ask questions and meet the real people behind the websites and Twitter avatars.

TBEX was created by Kim Mance and Debbie Dubrow as a forum where travel bloggers could showcase their work and pick the brains of other travel bloggers to find better ways to create and maintain a successful travel blog. Before the forum went live, Kim sent me an email asking if I would be the Community Manager of the site, welcoming new members and checking the site regularly for anything offensive (hello, spammers) to be removed. In the first day (maybe even the first few hours), TBEX had over 30 members!

As the forum attracted member after member (500+), the idea of a meetup seemed very possible. Knowing there were so many travel bloggers out there, Kim and Debbie got the ball rolling and found several companies to sponsor the event. Chicago seemed like an easy choice for TBEX, seeing as Kim lives there and that it’s a pretty central location. Kim and Debbie thought that piggybacking the BlogHer convention would be ideal, since tons of TBEX people would already be in town for that.

Fast forward a few months to the day of TBEX ‘09! After people signed in and posed for some free headshots–courtesy of Peter West Carey–they shuffled into the main room where super cool swag bags sat on each chair. (Thanks to Shanna Quinn for sleeping upon boxes and boxes of swag and putting the bags together.) The bloggers anxiously awaited the day’s events, which were divided into four discussion panels: creating a lively and successful travel blog, working with PR, travel journalism vs. blogging and podcasting/video.

Each member of the four panels had something unique to offer. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Nomadic Matt, aka Matt Kepnes, a successful travel blogger, briefly touched upon monetizing your blog by offering this tip: “Be niche.” Basically, he said that whether you have 100 followers or a million, if you’re the only one blogging about the topic, you’re number one. “Everybody wants to be number one.”
• Heather Poole, flight attendant and blogger said, “Don’t just write travel. LIVE travel.” I feel the same way. However, people like Heather and Matt really do live travel every day because, well, she’s a flight attendant and he’s a “professional” nomad. Unfortunately, with the jobs I have right now, I can’t live either life. Yet, I think what this statement really means is that you should participate in the experiences that you talk about in your blog. If you want to write about Paris, go there. Make your readers trust you.
• Wendy Perrin of Conde Nast Traveler says that bloggers shouldn’t just link to a story or a comment. She was once quoted (correctly), but the rest of the story made untrue inferences. Lesson learned: do some research and get the facts.

While there wasn’t enough time to talk about monetization, a topic that a lot of new bloggers (including myself) seemed very interested in learning about, I think that it will probably be a topic for TBEX 2010. Debbie hinted to that, and more, when she said that TBEX was “only the first part of a long conversation.” And I think that’s exactly what will happen. Why? I have a huge stack of business cards, I got 20+ new followers on Twitter (and I followed them back) and everyone was talking about where we could have TBEX 2010… possibly New York? That’s where BlogHer is going next year, and I’m all for TBEX following.

How lucky am I to have been in the presence of such influential bloggers and industry people? I can only hope that all of them, and many more, will come to TBEX 2010.

It was like a movie…

Earlier this afternoon, about half way through my flight home from Denver to Chicago, I heard an attendant come over the PA system saying, “Is there a medical type person… uh… a doctor or nurse or someone… on board the flight? If so, please ring your call button and we’ll come to you.”

I could tell that the flight attendant sounded a bit nervous. A passenger seated about 10 rows behind me needed immediate medical attention, apparently. To my surprise, a few people buzzed their call buttons. The entire flight crew responded to the distress calmly and efficiently. I later saw that man was given oxygen and an IV (pictured below).

After we landed, we were all asked to stay seated once we arrived at the gate, as there was an emergency on board, and medical personnel would be entering the plane once it stopped. Sure enough, a fire truck and an ambulance were waiting for us as we taxied into the gate, and five people came on board right away.

The man was escorted off the plane by the sweet woman who stepped up and administered some mild treatments while we were in the air. As she made her way back to her seat, everyone gave her a big round of applause. I admit, the journalist in me wanted to interview the flight crew once we de-planed, but my kind heart ached for the man and kept me from poking my nose into his business. He was probably embarking on a great vacation or returning home from a business trip or visiting old friends or reconnecting with family. All he wanted to do was get to Chicago, not the hospital. So instead… I blog.

Props to the Southwest Airlines crew of flight 779 DEN to MDW. They never panicked and they handled the situation with the utmost poise and urgency.