Welcome to ‘Unpacked’!
Thoughts about our travels and the items which we carry with us
‘UNPACKED’ is Traveler Tech’s new, open-ended series of thoughts about our travels and the items which we carry with us. Hopefully, these features will blend the practical with the philosophical–while also fitting completely under the seat in front of you. Welcome aboard!
My first instinct was that I didn’t want to assemble another collection of packing tips: I have already read an interminable number of “You can stuff items into the empty spaces of your shoes!” articles and, I expect, so have you.
Instead, I thought we’d all be better served by diving a little deeper. I want to explore concepts which might help you discover your own better ways of filling up a bag. Frankly, I hate when people proclaim that there’s a “right way” to travel. Let’s try to be more honest and humble than that. We should acknowledge that no two people travel in exactly the same way and, in fact, no two trips are the same.
Or, to paraphrase the Ancient Greeks – “No person ever packs the same bag twice”.
§
Let’s start things off with a look at “baggage”, both literal and emotional.
[Read more…]
Hello and Happy 2015! 🙂
Currently traveling in Myanmar and have just posted an update at Veritrope called ‘The Past and the Future’, which has some travel-y bits in it. Check it out!
It matters not where or how far you travel—the farther commonly the worse—but how much alive you are.
Steven Norton’s article for the Wall Street Journal about Starwood Hotel CEO Frits van Paasschen ticks a number of boxes for me: The travel and technology trends, of course, but also the larger idea that successful people can accept or reject technology based on whether it actually helps them.
Mr. van Paasschen certainly isn’t alone in ditching a PC for a tablet or a smartphone for the majority of his work and, while it still isn’t something that I would do, it’s nice to see a profile like this that highlights the emerging reality: These days, any PC/Post-PC discussion is really more about personal preferences than any hard limits of functionality.
One more nugget of interest deeper in the piece – a brief mention of how Starwood is using custom apps to connect data about its rooms with their reservation system.