travel

Where to go

In addition to newspapers and radio stations, my employer has been quite busy in the travel media business. Over the last couple of years, Morris Communications has acquired several companies, combined them with existing assets, and realigned them all under a coherent brand identity: Where Guestbooks, Where Magazines, Where Quick Guides, and Where Maps. But there was no unified Web presence for all of the above ... until last Friday, when the "Local Guides. Worldwide." WhereTraveler.com launched in "beta test" form.

Back to the future

There's just no way to think about the future and get it right. The other night we were all watching "Back to the Future, Part 2" for about the 900th time. I got a chuckle out of the "Surf Vietnam" poster on a wall in 2015 Hill Valley. In the 1980s, when the film was made, the idea of tourism in Vietnam was about as futuristic as flying cars and hoverboards. Somehow I doubt that we'll have flying cars or hoverboards in the next seven years. But Vietnam tourism? Of course. Why not?

Back in the online world

I'm back in the online world after two weeks in which I was not completely offline, but nearly so. I spoke and moderated a session at the Ifra PublishAsia conference in Macao, toured Bangkok's canals, and spent a week on Phuket Island with my wife, where we rode an elephant, paddled through bat-filled caves on tiny islands in the Gulf of Thailand, snorkeled, swam, and somehow managed to avoid sunburn.

Back from the far side of the world

I'm back from nearly two weeks on the far side of the world: southeast Asia.

Being a lazy blogger, I sat back and didn't bother blogging from the Ifra citizen media workshop last week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Kevin Anderson and Robb Montgomery were singing, dancing, spinning plates, shooting videos and live-blogging like mad. I took it easy.

Past, present, and future

I haven't posted much lately due to a heavy work/travel schedule ending in several days of vacation in Istanbul. At the moment I'm burning some time in an expat bar near the Sultan Ahmet mosque. My plane leaves at 5 a.m., so I'm closing down the bars and not bothering with a hotel tonight.

Bonsoir from Paris

I've been very quiet lately as I rushed to get some real work done against a hard deadline. My friends in colder climates will appreciate the sacrifice I made in spending some time in Florida. MyClaySun.com launches later this week and it seems to be coming together nicely, and the staff has labeled Jonathan Bennett, the site's community content coordinator fresh out of University of South Carolina, as "our very enthusiastic," which is somewhat more restrained than the sign I saw on his door last week, which I think read "Captain Awesome" or something like that.

Self-inflicted travel pain

It always happens this way, and it's always my own darn fault: travel comes in unreasonable bursts.

I've done little blogging lately because I've been on the road, and I rarely have the combination of quiet thinking time and a good Internet connection that I need to construct a meaningful blog post.

So far this year I've been in Los Angeles, Memphis, St. Petersburg (Florida, not the colder one) and now Jacksonville, where I'm doing some work with one of our newspapers that I'll be able to discuss once the project is made public.