ABC News executives told to avoid
deluxe travel and newspapers.

Perhaps you saw where ABC News has instituted new “guidelines” to “reduce administrative costs” during the slow economy. It includes instructions to cancel subscriptions to print media and to travel more down-scale.

After looking at the guidelines, I’ve decided to jump on board:

I will cancel all of my newspaper subscriptions (oh, wait, I did that years ago).

I will make sure my business travel is “one grade below” anything that ABC news executives have ever experienced. (Note: I am, however, an “A-List” passenger on Southwest — so I paid for that free spot at the front of the line by standing in at least 32 previous lines.)

I will continue to stay at “B” hotels — although I think Hampton Inns are a solid A- for providing me with free wifi.

I will cancel subscriptions to general news magazines — or to those not already cancelled.

I will cancel subscriptions to magazines that are poorly designed and written.

I will cancel subscriptions to magazines that contain NO information or insight critical (or even mildly interesting) to my work or life.

I will cancel subscriptions to magazines that do not feed the passions I believe give my life meaning.

However, for those magazines that do: they are a bargain at any price.

Other things I will do to be more productive during the slow economy: Rather than watch any ABC News programming or visit any website related to ABC News, I will do something that is informative and valuable.

Next Wednesday, I’m speaking at the Folio Show in Chicago. I’m part of the Executive Track and my topic is “TrendWatch: Digital Growth and Revenue Opportunities.” It’s a topic about which I know nothing, but I’ll be staying at a Holiday Inn Express the night before so I’m sure I’ll do fine.

Actually, I’m not sure where I’ll be staying the night before, but I’ll be arriving at the conference on Tuesday around mid-day. If there’s a meetup opportunity, I’m game.

[Update: See note at the end of this story.] Following, is an excerpt from the book, Tales from the Titans Sideline, by Jim Wyatt. It’s from a story on page 107 of the book called, “It’s a bird, It’s a plane, It’s a McNair fan”:

“Quaterback Steve McNair hasn’t needed to look high and low for fans in recent years. But when some questioned him early on in the 1999 season, all he had to do was look to the friendly skies one day at pracice. Just a few days after he was booed in the season opener against the Bengals, a small plane flew over the practice field with a message to McNair. The plane was pulling a banner that read: “Fly High Steve — Your Fans.” The flight was sponsored by Hammock Publishing, a company based in Nashville. Several employees chipped in on the $300 cost and Rex Hammock matched the contributions to cover the full cost. “We were somewhat disappointed by the boos and we wanted to show our support of Steve McNair,” said Hammock. The plane circled the field as the Titans were preparing to play Cleveland….The gesture lifted McNair’s spirits but also raised a question from inquisitive teammates. “It showed a lot of class,” Coach Jeff Fisher said. “The team responded very well to that. They were asking Steve how much it cost him.”

Here’s the best part: the story had a very happy ending. Steve McNair went on to lead that 1999 team — the one that started off with him being booed — to an AFC Championship and to within a half-yard of a Superbowl win (or at least a tie to go into overtime).

And no one ever, ever booed him again.

The end.

Or, at least, I wish it were.

Fast forward ten years.

Vince Young, another young Titans quarterback with incredible skills and unlimited potential got booed by some fans during the first game of the season this past Sunday (ironically, a game the Titans won). But unfortunately, I couldn’t find a plane to fly around a banner. And even worse than that, Vince Young’s friends and family and coaches couldn’t find him at all.

And so, the booing by a minority of the fans grew into a big brouhaha that finally led to Vince Young’s mother telling Tennessean sports writer Jim Wyatt (the one who wrote the book) that her son needs the love and support of Titans fans.

Okay, let’s get this straight. NFL fans pay lots of money for tickets and NFL players make millions, so fans have the right to boo whenever they want. But personally, I think it’s crazy for fans to boo their young quarterback. Like Vince’s mom, I think quarterbacks should be loved and supported.

Why? Because as a fan, I want to win. For that reason, I don’t want fans — even though they have the right to do so — to do something to a young quarterback that opposing teams in junior high, high school and college have never been able to do: get into his head and make him start questioning his abilities.

So here’s my advice to sports fans everywhere: Boo the referees. Boo the other team. But love and support the quarterback…at least until the team doesn’t make it into the playoffs.

(Note: For another post — sometime in February, I hope — I’ll share my theory regarding the dangers of drafting quarterbacks who’ve never played on a losing team in junior high, high school or college.)

[Update: A few days after this post, police reports indicated that the time during which Young was missing was more serious than early indications. Indeed, Young was displaying some classic symptoms of clinical depression. Several people who have had personal experience with depression have emailed or contacted me via Twitter to indicate their empathy for Young. "His success, wealth and fame," one person told me, "provides no protection from depression."]

View as a flickr slideshow.

I’ve posted a set of photos on Flickr that follow my seven-day adventure of making a loopback Windsor chair at the John Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. Never have I worked so hard while on vacation, nor found it so relaxing and fulfilling. Spending 60 or so hours shaping into an 18th-century styled chair something that starts out looking like white oak firewood and a beautiful piece of butternut is — to me, at least — an intensive therapeutic (even meditative) experience. (To each his own, I guess). Pleasant mountain weather, delicious food and an annual gathering of dance-oriented folk musicians at the school during the week we were there also made for a unique experience that my wife and I will remember forever.

It’s Friday morning and I’m in the office all day today. Sometime after work, I’m flying to Austin for three days of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. I say sometime because it’s supposed to be at 7:30 p.m., but the weather predictions here in Nashville are calling for a “Winter Storm Warning” starting around 6 p.m. Having lived in Nashville most of my life, I ignore such warnings until I can confirm them with my own eyes, so I’m still planning on leaving at that time.

I won’t be blogging about SXSW on this blog, although later today, I’ll point to a URL where, however I will be blogging at Hammock.com/SXSW2008 along with other people from Hammock who will be there. We’re going to be aggregating all our posts and Twitter “tweets” and photos and videos at one spot this year.

My friend Taylor McKnight has created a really cool scheduling tool so I can point to a page that shows the panels I may attend, although I always tend to change my mind.

I haven’t packed yet, so maybe I’ll find Tantek Çelik’s SXSW packing tips helpful.

Stickers: If you see me (or anyone from Hammock), ask for a sticker — it’s what one does at SXSW.

More to come…

For the past 30 years, I have been traveling in and out of Tampa regularly (I married into the area). Almost every good practice or design I’ve seen in any U.S. airport, I’ve seen at Tampa’s first. Other than a glitchy car rental system (okay, I’m spoiled by the way Hertz Gold works and Tampa is the only place where you have to stand in line), Tampa’s airport seems to be designed by people who actually think as passengers. It has a great “user-interface” with signage at the right spots, saying the right thing. It has public spaces that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing. And it is the first airport I know that has redesigned its security check-in area in a way that expedites flow in a space that seems intended to comfort the checking-in passenger with reassuring grandeur.

I often see Tampa’s influence in other airports — some of the most striking examples are in other Florida cities, especially Orlando — but for the most part, airport planners seem more focused on the logistics of moving people around, rather than on the experience people have in the airport space.

Oh, and one last thing. Tampa’s airport was one of the first I encountered that offered FREE wifi to passengers. They don’t (like Nashville’s BNA, for example) try to hijack passengers into paying several dollars for a few minutes of checking e-mail or altering travel plans, they understand that free wifi should be an infrastructure convenience like air-conditioning that can be used as a competitive advantage.

Also, if your airport has free wifi, I’ll almost always give it a shout-out love post if I’m sitting in it waiting for a plane (like now). Oh, yeah. And someone will likely add a love-link to your airport at the SmallBusiness.com directory of airports with free wifi.

[Note: For the record, I now travel with a USB device (Sierra Wireless is the brand) that allows me (or others in my office who travel and who can use it, as it's not tied to one computer) to tap into AT&T's 3G network.]

Later: Speaking of free wifi, JetBlue, Yahoo! and RIM have announced an in-air means to access IM and email during flights. Doesn’t sound like full-fledged web-access, but it sounds like it’s worth the price.

I’ve got a few things in the “want to blog about that” queue, but, alas, duty calls. In the meantime, here’s a photo of the globe-trotting Joi Ito I took at a dinner party last night. (I told Joi I get jet-lag from following him on Twitter.) And here’s a photo of me shooting back. Joi has posted several wonderful shots taken at the dinner with his (camera-geek-alert) Leica M8, wow. I’m in New York in meetings all day today and will be flying back to Nashville tonight.

On the Southwest “Biz” page, the airlines is announcing some rather radical new features related to its new boarding policy.

They include some perks for hardcore SWA fliers (like me) so it will be interesting to see how they position these baby-steps toward tiering their seating policy away from the “egalitarian” system of old.

Here are the components of their, hmm, what to call it, “We don’t have first class, but how about this class?” (Later: Or, “It’s not first class, but you can move to the front of the class” fare)

Business Select: When you purchase this new fare, they’ll guarantee you’ll be among the first to board and you’ll also get extra Rapid Rewards credit and a free drink.

The Rapid Rewards A-List: Fly 16 roundtrips in 12 months and you get on the SWA A-List where they’ll reserve you the best boarding pass available on all your flights for an entire year, which means you’ll most likely get an A boarding pass. (Note: Finally, an A-List on which I’ll be included.)

Freedom Awards: Rapid Rewards Members can now convert two Standard Awards into one Freedom Award. With the exception of a few blackout dates, Freedom Awards are not subject to seat restrictions.

Later: The Dallas Morning news has details about the new “perks to lure business travelers”.

(Thanks, Lewis)

Technorati Tags: southwest, swa

I guess my regular use of JetBlue to fly from Nashville to JFK is not enough to keep the route profitable. The service ends on January 6. I think I’ve written here that Delta has done what it can to match the route — and under-price it. As soon as JetBlue pulls the plug, Delta will increase their price. I guess I’ll be doing the SWA Islip/LIRR thing again. Not my favorite, but by the time one hassles with Delta’s JFK operation, flying SWA into Islip is a pleasure.

Speaking of Jeff Jarvis (see previous post), I am looking forward to participating in Wednesday’s “Networked Journalism Summit” that Jeff and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism (Jeff heads its interactive journalism program) has organized with a grant from the MacAurther Foundation. The summit is designed to “bring together the best practices and practitioners in collaborative, pro-am journalism.” (I’m hoping it’s like a pro-am golf tournament as I’d like to be paired with a really good pro.)

The premise of the summit:

“…even as journalistic organizations may shrink, along with their revenue bases, journalism itself can and must expand and it will do that through collaborative work. The internet makes that collaboration possible and we’ve barely begun to explore the opportunities it affords. A year or two ago, the point of such a meeting might have been evangelizing this idea. But in that time, a number of great projects in collaborative, networked journalism have taken off. So now is the time to share the lessons — success and failures — from these efforts and to determine what’s needed to move on to the next goals. By bringing together about 150 practitioners from all sides, we hope that the meeting itself can spark new partnerships and projects.”

Several people whose RSS feeds I follow are participating. Knowing the organizers had extremely limited space, I’m very honored to be a part of the day-long event Wednesday.

Sidenote: I’ll be arriving in NYC Tuesday mid-afternoon and heading back to Nashville very early Thursday.

Unlike rumors from a few months ago, Southwest will not abandon its open-seating policy. According to the company, their passengers didn’t want them to change. However, they will be tweaking their system so that each passenger will get an assigned spot in the line. According to the carrier, this will help cut down on the way passengers congregate in line for an hour in order to make sure they get at the front of their boarding group.

While my travel icon is a Southwest plane, I’m scheduled on some other carriers over the next few days. (Update: Over the past two weeks, I’ve been on five different SWA flights, all of which arrived early.) I’m flying Northwest for a quick meeting in Minneapolis tomorrow. On Friday, I’m back in Nashville and am appearing on a panel at the Vanderbilt Law School on the topic: “The Emerging Long Tail of Creative Content Distribution: Implications for the Entertainment Industries.” I can’t wait to hear what I have to say on the topic — but the professor who invited me claims to read this blog and insisted that something I’ve ranted about is applicable to what they’re discussing.

On Sunday, I’m flying Delta to New York (they matched JetBlue’s fare and had a schedule that better matched my needs) and will be at the Folio: Show on Monday speaking about ethical issues magazine publishers (really, everyone) face online. Preview: I’m in the “transparency” camp — and I hate those text ads that Paul Conley is down on. Also, I can’t stand pay-per-post advertising if it’s not clearly labeled as such — I don’t like it then, either, but I think labeling advertising “advertising” and sponsored content “sponsored” is defendable. Also, as long as it’s clearly disclosed, I think “cap-per-post” marketing is ethical, as well.

Don’t know how much blogging I’ll be doing. These days, Twitter seems to be my publishing platform of choice while traveling.

In April, 2006, I blogged about the company, DayJet, the “world’s first ‘per-seat, on-demand’ jet service.” While the roll-out of the service is slower than indicated in the item I pointed to (the tests in Florida start soon), the company is still moving forward with its plans. And Nashville’s general aviation John Tune airport is still on the list of potential roll-out test “dayports.” (Self-interest note: the airport is about a ten-minute drive from my house.) Today, Jon Udell has a post about Ed Iacobucci, DayJet’s co-founder and CEO. Jon also has a 52-minute ITConversations podcast interview with Iacobucci. While not the ever-promised “flying car,” the “jet taxi” movement is one that fascinates me. If this stuff interests you, Udell’s post and interview is an intriguing look at the peer-to-peer network analogies applicable in this context.

Today, I noticed from Facebook status updates and Twitter posts (tweets) that a few of my acquaintances were, like me, flying today. They noted what I did in my flights from Nashville to Oakland (via a change in San Diego): airports were quiet and the flights are less than half full. Out of a potential 137 passengers, my flight from Nashville to San Diego had 58 and my San Diego to Oakland flight had 44. As I have noted from experience, the first weeks of September are not heavy flying times in general as the vacation season has ended. However, today, it seemed an especially somber-flying day for airline passengers.

I can understand the trepidation. The date 9/11 means many things to us — in both a collective way and with each of us, in a uniquely personal way. I travelled today with my colleague John Lavey, who is the person who, six years ago, stuck his head in my office door and told me to head to the TV. This morning, we tried to recall how that morning went our office. I know several people who will read this post can remember our shared dismay as we followed the events unfold on a TV in our break room.

As our offices are in an 11-story building that also houses several regional and field offices of federal agencies including, at the time, the FBI, by mid-day we were told the building was going to be “secured” and were encouraged to send our staff home. A couple of our employees were in DC along with two clients who were traveling with them. The four of them wisely determined to use their rental car to immediately drive down to Nashville — Hertz and other rental agencies, you’ll recall, announced later they would waive all drop-off fees for customers who were in such circumstances.

As I headed out of our office building that early afternoon, the building was being guarded by, I assume, FBI agents, in full flak-gear with machine gun ready. It was, for me, a personal surreal moment in a collective surreal experience.

I think we all have our personal impressions of horror from that day. So, in no way am I suggesting that anyone should fly on a commercial aircraft on the anniversary of 9/11/2001 if it conjures up fear.

As for me, however, I hope there is something respectful in flying on this day. I know there are many ways this day is being remembered. For me, in a very small, personal way, flying cross-country was a way to say I won’t be intimidated by the heinous act of terrorists.

I’m attending Federated Media’s Conversational Marketing Summit in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon and Wednesday. I’ll also be in the Bay area Thursday and will return to Nashville Friday morning. I’ll be online much of the time, but won’t be updating this blog with the typical prolificacy.