Christian Renaud's Blog

Reisen Bildet

I don't exactly recall when I first heard the the German aphorism 'Reisen Bildet', which is generally translated as 'Travel educates the mind'.  I know that it was sometime in my teens, when I had not yet sated my wanderlust. 

The saying came up again during breakfast in Barcelona early last month while sitting next to a lovely German couple. They struck up a conversation with our daughters, and asked them why they were not in school as they should be this time of year. My eldest daughter responded that travel was it's own sort of education.

And it really is.  Think about the major events of your life, and how many of those were experiential versus 'I acquired new stuff''?  I think about the 30+ years I planned to purchase my first Porsche, and pick it up from the factory.  I yearned for that day.  When it finally came, timed to coincide with our honeymoon in Europe, it was the experience of picking up the car and the unbelievable trip around Europe that followed that are permanent imprints on my memory and life, long after the car has made it's exit.

In the last month or so, our daughters have watched the sunset and sunrise over the Atlantic, experienced cultures and history on a level that were new even to a veteran traveler like myself, and have noticeably changed as a result.  They view the world through a different lens than they had at the end of October.  Their worldview (and culinary tastes) have expanded far beyond anything I could have imagined at 30, much less 20 or 10 years old.  While her classmates were in a classroom learning about Christopher Columbus in preparation for American Thanksgiving, Emma was standing in the very room in the Alhambra where Isabella gave Columbus his final permission (and monies) to launch the journey.

I received a letter from Emma's school this weekend with a note saying that she had been absent for over 14 days this school year.  She is ahead on her homework (she does homework diligently whilst traveling), and is in the top of her class, however they are legally obligated to track her attendance and report us to the proper authorities should it exceed a certain number.

What do you think the odds are that these 'proper authorities' know any German aphorisms?

Traveling Well

"It is better to travel well than to arrive" - Buddha

In the last year or so, I've spoken with a number of soon-to-be-frequent travelers, and passed along a bit of accumulated travel wisdom to each. My wife and I were talking about the merits of travel tactics at lunch again today, and it occurred to me how many tips and tricks you aggregate over the years. I've been a 'frequent traveler' (defined as being in the gold/executive tier of airline loyalty programs) for just shy of half of my life.

For what it's worth, and there are plenty of websites who would probably argue with me on each of the following points, but here are the rules I travel by and am rarely disappointed.

[Disclaimer, if you are traveling as a group tour or with children, these may be of considerably less utility to you, but you'll know which ones apply to your own circumstances]

Long before:  Pick an airline that goes to your expected most-frequent destinations, or the one with the largest presence in your local airport.  Sign up for their loyalty program (but not their credit card, they are not competitive for interest rates).  Stick with this airline.  Fly them whenever possible unless they are much more expensive than the competition (and consider shifting your loyalty to the competition). 

Why?  This is the latter half of the 'fly early, fly often' motto of travel.  The more you fly, the more frequent flyer miles you accumulate (useful for free trips and upgrades) but more importantly, the higher status with the airline you accrue.  Status = priority boarding, priority for standby lists (this will show up later), and priority for requested & impromptu upgrades to higher classes of service.

Ode to the Kindle

This isn't my first electronic book reader.  I have been reading books on laptops, my old Newton, various Palm and CE-based PDAs, Smartphones (including my iPhones), and my Sony Reader.  I think the idea of electronic access to my absurdly large library of books makes as much sense as electronic access (via my iPhone/iPod) to my library of music.

I think the Kindle, as aesthetically unpleasing as it is, may finally be a step in the right direction.

Rather than sprout a bunch of platitudes about how fantastic it is, let me just illustrate some uses I have put it to and let those speak for themselves:

Catch me if you can- August and September edition [Crosspost from TIG blog]

Over the next two months, I will be doing a fair bit of  speaking regarding the future of the virtual workforce and workspaces, which will coincide with the release of Technology Intelligence Group's Industry Outlook 2008-2009.

Tomorrow, I am virtually participating on the "Future of Virtual Worlds" panel as part of the vBusinessExpo in Forterra OLIVE, organized by Clever Zebra.  I will be joining Bruce Joy of VastPark, Nicole Yankelovich of Sun's Project Wonderland, Darius Lahoutifard of 3DXplorer, Corey Bridges of Multiverse, and John Swords of the Electric Sheep Company.  I guess I am the only non-platform person there.  :-)

Next week, I am traveling to Los Angeles (and bringing my children to the House of Mouse) to speak on Rita Turkowski's panel at the Web3D conference attached to SIGGRAPH.  The panel, on Sunday August 10th, is entitled "I see Web3D's Future in..." and will have panelists from diverse parts of industry so it should be an interesting cocktail.

Shortly thereafter, I return to the City of Angels (fulfilling the curse laid upon me when I moved from there in 1996 warning that people can never actually escape) to speak at the Virtual Worlds Expo 2008, where I will be participating on the September 3rd "Technical Visionaries Discuss and Debate The Future of Virtual World Technologies" panel with an august group of visionaries including John Swords, Ian Hughes (epredator), and Mark Wallace.  This one should be fun to watch, and if it wasn't so early in the morning, I'd bring a bottle of Tequila to get things rolling properly.

To round out September, I will be returning to beautiful Coventry England to keynote the Serious Virtual Worlds conference held by David Wortley of the Coventry University Serious Games Institute.  If  you haven't followed the work they are doing there, and those that are working closely with SGI, you should take the time to do so.

The good news is that all of my other engagements during August and September are virtual in nature and will not be emitting the carbon of actual air travel.  Now, I'm off to go plant a forest in my backyard to offset these trips.

On the road again...

Well, the best laid plans of mice and men....

I will save you the specifics, however the exigencies of the office demand that I again shed whatever self-respect I have accumulated and suffer the indignities of domestic U.S. air travel for a quick business trip in San Jose.

For those of you who are keeping score (or keeping me honest), I had promised in October to use virtual meeting technologies as a substitute for live meetings, which I have successfully done on no less than eight occasions over the last two months, preventing environment damaging, time consuming and esteem sapping travel. I have presented to small and large teams using web collaboration tools, video-conferences, and virtual worlds with successful results.

There does appear, however, to be a strong correlation between the seniority of the meeting attendees and the necessity to attend in person. I will be briefing some senior executives tomorrow at my own company as well as a strategic partner of ours on Tuesday in San Jose, thus I have been unsuccessful in accomplishing my goal of not traveling any more for CY07, and that means......

The Nature Conservancy has received an early Christmas present of $1,000, as promised, for me violating my pledge not to travel. To further make their Christmas holiday a special one, it turns out that TNC is one of the approved charities on Cisco's gift-matching program, so they received an additional 'k' from my esteemed employer.

They will, no doubt, find good use in their excellent programs and research. Hopefully enough to offset any emissions I create tomorrow on United Airlines.

(Mirror) E-Meetings and the Environment

It's Blog Action Day!

I had written previously about the opportunities to reduce air travel by substituting virtual meetings for physical meetings, however reading through the excellent work already being done for Blog Action day has really got me motivated to make a change today.

I'd like to make a bargain with you......

For the remainder of the year, don't fly. Neither will I. Instead, we will use the amazing array of tools at our disposal, from Telepresence to WebEx to avatar-mediated communications, to approximate the magic of physical proximity.

What's the bargain? I promise to pay $1000 out of my own pocket per airline trip that I take between now and the end of the year. Where does that $1000 go? The Nature Conservancy. So the result is a win-win, either I fund the Nature Conservancy to look into solutions for combating rising emissions, or I reduce my share of airline-related emissions. I don't drive to work or else I'd suggest the same for cars. If you are game, then publicly promise to do the same.

There are a number of us in the virtual world space that travel from virtual world event to virtual world event to speak and do business, and the question always arises 'why cant we do this virtually?'. Well, if 30 or more speakers were looking at $1000 fines each for flying, I bet you'd see a really big virtual world event conducted in the virtual world.

Feel free to track me on Dopplr to confirm I am keeping my side of the bargain. How do I reach you again?

On the road again

Tomorrow I am heading out again for ten days of business travel (eight airports in ten days, not counting a few trains, a bus, and some autos).

When I take some time off the road, as I did over the last month, it gives me the time to get some perspective on how I travel. I constantly try to optimize the amount of weight I carry, how I pack, where I stay, how I get to and fro.

In the last month, I have systematically consolidated the quantity and mass of 'travel gear' that I will be taking with me. I have reduced roughly 40% of the total weight (including over 50% on my briefcase, and almost half the physical dimensions) of my travel baggage. The consolidation of devices (substituted one iPod and one iPhone for two other iPods, my Razr, etc.) has also consolidated the accessories (power cables, usb cables) which is where much of the space savings occurred.

Ten days away will be a good test to see if I cut too deep, and will be scrambling around trying to find clothiers and Apple stores. :-)

Today's moment of Zen

"There is much profit from seeing new lands and new houses, in seeing beautiful gardens and fields, in seeing different faces and coming across different languages and colors, and in witnessing the wonders of different countries.....The traveler befriends all those whom he loves for Allah's sake and he has no reason to flatter or be artificial."

Ramhumuzi, The Noble Scholar of Hadeeth

(Thanks to P. Christopher Earley of the National University of Singapore Business School for showing me the quotation)

Fists with your toes....

So what is your best remedy for shaking the fuzz out of your head after a long international flight?

I have been told that the classic method (compliments of Bruce Willis in 'Die Hard') is to get to your hotel room, take off your shoes and socks, and walk around on the carpet and make fists with your toes.

Although this is a tried and true method, I think that a better option (at least for me) is to get to the destination hotel (Peninsula Beijing, in my case), head for the fitness center, run a few miles on the treadmill, swim a dozen laps in the pool (this is key), do some quality time in the steam room to re-hydrate your dehydrated respitory tract, and then have a nice dinner with a lot of green tea.  That seems to cure just about anything that ails you.

Chasing the weather

I wrapped up Friday in San Jose, and departed on a (surprisingly non-delayed) afternoon flight from United to Denver.  The storm had beaten us to Denver by a few hours, but the airport was still open and operational.  I was in and out of Denver in a short period then home to Iowa just in time for the big storm to find it's way there.  We probably received at least a foot of snow, plus a bunch of ice that broke the limbs off many of my trees which had weathered prior storms without so much as a tilt.

Today was another early travel day, to Indianapolis for some saw-sharpening.  There was a healthy amount of snow and ice on the roads and aircraft sitting on the tarmac at DSM. American Airlines was kind enough to rebook my flight without informing me, changing my flight routing to IND from ORD to STL.  In retrospect, this was fortunate as Chicago had shut down (like Denver the day before) due to the winter storms, and STL had evidently experienced the same problems the day prior as there were many people waiting to get home.

For the next week, I'll be weathering the storm (literally) inside the very pleasant University Place hotel and surrounding Indiana University college environs.  Email me if you need me, else I will be bent over hard at work sharpening my saw.