Are you a parent traveling on business? Here are 13 tips for taking the kids
.27.10 | 1 Comment »
October 27th, 2006 by Alex
I’ve recently become an adventurer in the world of business travel with baby — in this case, our son, now almost 4 months old. He’s now attended three different conferences, and from these experiences I’ve gleaned a few bits of wisdom that I wanted to capture and share:
- Think twice. Business travel is WAY easier without a kid, so don’t undertake it unless you really need to. That said, don’t let the challenges of business travel dissuade you from doing what’s best for your own work and family — particularly if traveling with your child will allow you to continue providing the benefits of breastfeeding.
- Start small. My first conference-with-kid experience was an informal, local, one-day event (let’s hear it for BarCamp Vancouver!) that let me alpha test our baby’s ability to quietly endure a meeting before I braved taking him on the road.
- Know your kid. Think about whether he or she can be quiet in meetings, and also whether you can meet her needs (for food, entertainment, and attention) while in a business setting. I happen to have a very easy and quiet baby, but I sure wouldn’t bring my three-year-old to one of these things. And since kids are constantly changing, you need to re-think your kid’s road-worthiness before each and every trip.
- Defer to your colleagues. If you’re attending a conference or client meeting with your kid, make sure to put your colleagues’ comfort first. Identify a location where you can nurse or entertain your kid if he starts to cry or disturb the proceedings.
- Buddy up. At the last conference I attended I was lucky to have a buddy — the lovely Katrin Verclas — who jumped in to lend a hand. Katrin volunteered to hold the baby at a few key moments, including dinnertime (my first two-handed dinner in months!!) Having the support of a buddy made all the difference to my experience.
- Forewarned is forearmed. Let meeting organizers or clients know if you’ll be bringing your kid, and give them a chance to tell you if their setting is not child friendly. When I attended the fabulous Online Community Summit, I checked with conference organizers before registering; their welcoming attitude helped me feel comfortable about participating. After the success of that venture, I didn’t worry about forewarning the folks at the Blog Business Summit; they’ve been fantastically accommodating, but I’m sure they’d have appreciated a chance to consider the challenges in advance.
- Scale your expectations. If you attend a conference with your kid, be prepared to miss big chunks of presentations and social events so that you can step out and attend to your kid’s needs.
- Scale your budget. Be prepared to spend more money than you usually would to make your trip as easy as possible — stay at the nearest hotel, get valet parking, order room service. And if you’re evaluating whether a conference or client visit is worth undertaking with child, consider not whether the event is worth the cost in and of itself - consider if it will still be worth the cost of a no-expense-spared approach, even if you miss half the conference sessions.
- Your kid is part of your presentation. Whenever you attend a conference or client meeting, you think about your self-presentation. When you’re attending with a kid, your kid becomes part of that presentation. So make sure your kid has a clean face, clean clothes, and behaves well.
- Connect with your kid. Don’t forget to interact with him. or there’s no point in having him along.
- Connect with your colleagues. If you travel with a well-behaved kid, you’ll find that many of your colleagues will be warm and welcoming — particularly the other parents in the room. Make the most of this chance to connect with colleagues on a personal level: one of the things I’ve enjoyed about traveling with my baby is the chance to hear from other parents about their own experiences juggling work and family. How else would I have left a business blogging summit with the URL of a great attachment parenting blog? I’ve really appreciated hearing from other moms who remember the challenges of life with a new baby, and whose support — whether it’s holding the baby so I can use the bathroom, or cheering me on for trying this juggling act — remind me that I’m not the only woman out there trying to combine work and motherhood.
- Accept non-acceptance. While the vast majority of your colleagues are likely to be encouraging and supportive, some people may not be happy to see a baby at a business event. Accept that some people aren’t going to like seeing your baby, the same way they might not like what you’ve got to say or what you’re wearing. Anticipate those reactions, and know in advance which accommodations you’re willing to make for others. But don’t let concern about other people’s reactions push you into sharing more information about your circumstances than you feel comfortable disclosing, or into a decision that jeopardizes your child’s well-being or your professional or personal integrity.
- Cheer yourself on. When I first started using my laptop at conferences, about ten years ago, people used to ask me to put it away — they found the key tapping disturbing. Ten years later, everyone has their laptops out to take meeting notes (or check their e-mail!) That culture shift happened gradually — and a similar culture shift has to happen around children. The more that thoughtful parents include their well-behaved children in their professional lives, the more we’ll break down the cultural wall that separates the public and private spheres — a wall that has historically served to keep women and men in separate worlds. So give yourself a cheer for bringing baby along: you’re not just helping your family or business, you’re helping make our culture stronger, healthier and more human.
Movie Central digs me out from Six Feet Under
.17.8 | 1 Comment »
August 17th, 2005 by Alex
Today’s online customer service award goes to Movie Central — that’s the (Western) Canadian equivalent of HBO.
I emailed the address listed on their web site last Monday (August 8th), as follows:
Subject: Six Feet Under season 5
hi,
I’ve somehow missed Season 5 of six feet under — I only just now
discovered that the season is almost over!! and it’s our whole reason
for subscribing to movie central, so i’m heartbroken. Can I ask when
you’re going to start showing season 5 again from the beginning so I
don’t miss it again?
Let me tell you, I wasn’t really expecting an answer. So I was just delighted when I got an actual e-mail from an actual human being today:
I’m sorry to hear this! We premiered Six Feet Under in a similar
time-frame to HBO. We will be re-airing this season likely in about 4
months or so. So you don’t miss it again you might consider subscribing
to MCeNews which will send you weekly updates on the series and movies
airing each week. Another great new series about to start is the HBO’s
Rome premiering on Movie Central August 28th. Check into our website for
more details.
The truth is they’re obviously flogging this Rome thing, but I was impressed that they thought to suggest a consolation prize. And really thrilled that Six Feet Under will indeed be mine, if subject to delayed gratification.
Meanhile would all Six Feet Under watchers please take this as a big NO SPOILERS warning. If I hear so much as a peep about Season 5 from any of you I’m going to be scouring my site logs for evidence that your IP number accessed this post. If I discover that you knowingly ignored my NO SPOILERS warning I’m going to subject you to creative RSS-enabled public humiliation.
.bed
.29.6 | No Comments »
June 29th, 2005 by Alex
Our headboard needs an ICANN-accredited domain registrar. We always come up with the best domain names as we’re falling asleep, and forget them by the morning.
No godaddy jokes, please.
Irony, thy name is Technorati
.16.6 | 4 Comments »
June 16th, 2005 by Alex
It’s happened! I am now officially kicking Rob’s ass on Technorati, having jumped overnight from a soul-destroying 72,991 to a respectable if not stellar 44,348 (just think…only 44,347 blogs with more links than mine!).
One might attribute this leap to the silent, kind people at Technorati reading my plea and doing their part to preserve marital harmony. I’d like to think that Technorati has the compassion and discretion to intervene without tipping me off.
On the other hand, one might attribute the leap to my reorganizing my blog: I’ve just moved it from http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/blog to my root directory (http://www.alexandrasamuel.com). The net effect is that where Technorati previously credited me only for links to my blog, it’s now crediting me for all inbound links to my website — pushing my inbound link count to 52 links from 39 sources, compared to the 33/25 that point to the /blog subdirectory alone.
There are two possible conclusions to draw from this experience (and experiment):
1) Technorati has executed its own defense of marriage act
or
2) If people link to your main website as well as to your blog, you can bump your Technorati ranking by moving your blog to your root directory. That can help you regain the upper hand in your romantic (or professional) relationships, make you appear higher up when a Technorati user sorts his/her inbound links in order of authority, or (if you’re really special) increase your odds of making the Technorati Top 100.
A helping hand from Technorati?
.14.6 | 2 Comments »
June 14th, 2005 by Alex
I’ve heard about people whose small-minded partners keep track of things like who does more dishes or who remembers birthdays and anniversaries. And I’m usually sympathetic to my friends who complain that love can’t be run on a point system.
But that’s because typical relationship measures like dishwashing and date-remembering are completely subjective and impossible to track. Happily (or unhappily), Rob and I have a far more reliable way of measuring our relative standing: our Technorati rankings.
For the uninitiated, let me explain that Technorati is a blog search engine that tracks the “cosmos” of every blog to see how many people link to it — the blogosphere’s equivalent of counting how many people signed your high school yearbook. While you can use Technorati voyeuristically, to check out how many people link to any one blog or site, you can only get a ranking for weblogs that you have claimed as your own via Technorati’s claiming system.
The good thing about this system is that you don’t have to stew over how your blog ranks in relation to every other blog in the blogosphere. All you can stew about is your own ranking….relative to the ranking of people who might be checking their rankings while sitting on the sofa next to you.
That’s how it’s come to my attention that Rob has a Technorati ranking that was a mere 72,000 a month ago (meaning he has the 72,000th-most-popular blog), jumping up to about 62,000 a couple of weeks ago, and now up to about 60,000. (Just think…of all the gin joints in all the world, Mr. 62,147 had to walk into mine.)
Meanwhile, I am languishing at a pretty consistent 72,991, give or take a hundred. That’s a leap up from about 142,000 a month ago, but it hasn’t moved at all in the past couple of weeks. That’s despite a really diligent level of blogging and a fairly steady stream of traffic to my article on making blogging part of your workflow. That’s bumped me up to 33 links from 25 sources (not that impressive, I admit) relative to Rob’s 31 links from 30 sources.
Some might say that the problem is that I have fewer sources, even though I have more links. To them, let me point out that (a) I’m kicking Rob’s ass on Blogpulse, and (b) I have a whack of inbound del.icio.us links that aren’t being counted in my favour….and shouldn’t they, on some karmic if not technological level?
I recognize that others may argue that the problem is that we care (and it is we, not I….or at least it will be once the numbers turn in my favour.) So let me just cite the Seinfeld Pez Dispenser episode, which focuses on the importance of maintaining the upper hand in any relationship:
We all want the hand. Hand is tough to get. You gotta get the hand right from the opening.
Technorati, if you’re listening….I don’t care what it takes. Find some coder on her or his lunchbreak and get him to give Rob a custom ranking (that’s http://www.robcottingham.ca/roblog). It doesn’t need to be a humiliating number, just a solid margin below mine. But I need my hand back. I can’t go on blogging like this.