Another crazy international work trip... and my thoughts on work travel

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be traveling internationally for work once again.

And boy, I certainly do have a love-hate relationship with work travel!

Why work travel rocks:
- Get to know colleagues better.
- Much easier to get collaborative projects moving when in person than over VC or e-mail!
- Frequent flyer miles!
- Experience little fascinating pieces of foreign cultures and learn more about my own in the process.
- Get to see wonderful far-away friends.
- Acquire lots of photos and fun stories to tell :-D

Why work travel sucks:
- Tons to do ahead of time (in addition to “regular” job)! visa, vaccinations, presentation/interview prep, etc.
- Away from local friends; often not there when they most need me.
- Expense reports in multiple currencies (this time: seven!). Pure hell. No seriously, doing calculations with various exchange rates, credit card fees, etc… really really sucks.
- Screaming babies and loud morons in 15 hour economy flights. 
- Jetlag (seven different time zones in 30 days).
- No pause button for e-mail.
- Traveling can be lonely.

On the whole, though, I’m grateful for the opportunity to travel for work.  Unlike some of my friends who have to dress up to face frustrated clients when they travel, I typically have the pleasure of working on awesome projects with friendly and fun colleagues when I travel.  And I also am damn lucky with the cities I get to visit:  Sydney, Stockholm, Seattle, and even super cities that don’t start with ‘S’.  Granted, I suffered through crazy-freezing Stockholm and icky-damp London in the heart of winter, but still… :-D.

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So where to this time?  Here’s where!

• Tue Feb 17: Departing for SINGAPORE (via Hong Kong)
• Thu Feb 18: Working with teammates in Singapore Office, doing an interview with press about Search; grabbing dinner with friends and heading to a jazz club
• Fri Feb 19: In the Singapore office, then in the evening,flying to HYDERABAD
• Sat-Sun   : Exploring Hyderabad (it's my first time in India!), prepping for the week's upcoming conferences
• Mon Feb 22: Working on projects with Hyderabad Search Quality colleagues
• Wed Feb 24: Flying to BANGALORE, doing interviews with press, prepping for two conferences
• Sat Feb 28: Doing three presentations at a Search conference; in the evening, flying to CHENNAI
• Sun Feb 29: Attending an informal Search conference in Chennai; flying to TOKYO in the evening (overnight)
• Mon Mar 02: Working on projects with Search Quality Googlers in Tokyo
• Sat-Sun   : Visiting KYOTO with a friend to unwind a bit
• Mon Mar 09: Speaking at a TOKYO Google press event re: search issues
• Tue Mar 10: Flying back to the U.S.
• Wed-Sat   : Undoubtedly trying to get over jetlag and attempting to catch up on e-mail
• Sun Mar 15: Flying to DUBLIN (thankfully direct this time!)
• Mon-Wed   : Working on projects with Search Quality Googlers
• Thu Mar 19: Flying to REYKJAVIK (via London) for a marketing conference
• Fri Mar 20: Giving a presentation on Google and Search at the conference
• Sat-Sun   : Exploring Iceland, then flying back to the U.S.
• Mon Mar 23: In BOSTON, likely visiting Google's Cambridge office; also hanging out with friends
• Tue Mar 24: Flying HOME!

Whew!  Maybe I’ll even get around to doing a journal entry about the places I visit this time?  Though given that I still haven’t posted detailed thoughts about my time in Brazil, Mexico, China, Korea… {sigh}... writing is hard!

Anyway, if you’ve been to (or live in!) any of the places above, feel free to share your recommendations for things to see, place to eat, etc. :-D.

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I’ll leave you with a photo of a train station from beautiful Howth, Ireland, where I spent an uncommonly sunny weekend day in between work days in Dublin last year.  Feel free to check out more of my photos of Howth :-D.

A music solution that's so brilliant, no wonder why the music industry has shunned it

The other day I got a (yet another) piece of inbox spam on the otherwise cool service last.fm.  And no good can come from spam, right?

Not sure what got into me, but I actually went to the site (which I’ll not name, so as to not potentially give them any customers).  And you know what?  They were doing something brilliant:  they were selling high-fi music tracks for 20 cents a piece.  No, that’s not in itself brilliant; Russian sites doing the same thing are and have been a dime a dozen.  What struck me as brilliant was their way of allowing music lovers to explore the *full length* of songs while still enticing them to buy the track.

How did they do this?  It’s ridiculously simple yet, IMHO, likely to be remarkably effective:  they overwrote parts of each track several times with a moderately annoying audio blip (sort of a “chirp”).  Only the truly desperate would possibly stream and copy and store such a track as an mp3, and, as we know, the truly desperate are not one’s potential customers.  Had this firm been even more enterprising, they would have instead added once after each minute of song: “Sample brought to you by [companyname]; uninterrupted tracks just 20 cents!”  If they wanted to be both enterprising AND deliciously devious, they’d have seeded a ton of torrent sites with those tracks :D).  Or, at minimum, made it crazy-easy for bloggers to embed any track or album AND receive a cut of all proceeds from people clicking through to the site.

Maybe I’m naive or missing something glaringly obvious, but it seems like everyone would stand to win with such a situation:
- Music lovers would get to sample full-length (albeit slightly interrupted) songs, instead of dealing with the 30 second samples found on iTunes and similar sites.
- Musicians would be happy to see samples of their work passed around in a way that wouldn’t damage their potential for earning revenue on the same tracks.
- Bloggers and others distributing the tracks (especially if done so out of real passion for specific artists or songs) would be delighted to get commissions (though it’d be hard to grant commissions on just the bare passed-around MP3s).
- The legit music sites hosting MP3s in this way would probably enjoy greater sales and profits.

Your thoughts?