We’ve just finished going thru the submissions for my iOS Developer conference, 360|iDev. While we had some great submissions from women in the field, the showing wasn’t large. somewhere around 4%. Of the total line up for the conference, those women make up barely 10%

We even went against our long standing policy and invited a few people to speak. We rarely invite anyone to speak. We sometimes have to remind people to submit, but we almost never solicit someone to submit whom we’ve never had speak before. We won’t be doing it again, for the record. Matt Gemmell has an awesome list of women in tech, and Mike Lee has been very vocal in advocating more women be involved in Tech Conferences. We’re glad both are so engaged, now if more women were too. The one thing we disagree with both of them on is this. It’s not our job to pull anyone, male or female onto the stage. We want people who want to be there. Women fought for rights to vote, work, etc, but somehow as event organizers it’s our job to gift-wrap speaking spots for them, and when there aren’t women at our events, it’s our fault. Bullshit.

We pinged two people off Matt’s list. We didn’t pick randomly we asked around for recommendations. We got no reply from one, and the other said “I’m not a very good speaker”. We only did two because frankly we think it’s a waste of my time going through lists of women in tech to solicit submissions from them, especially if they then demure or don’t reply (please see #2a). We don’t want people at our conferences, that don’t want to be there. That’s why we can’t pay airfare, speaker fees, etc (please see #3).

Back to the point, ladies…. you can’t write blog posts about sausage-fests, and too many dicks on the dance floor at tech conferences, and then never show up. You can’t wait for people to include you. That never works. It doesn’t work for men, and it doesn’t work for you. The only way the programming world will get to a better gender mix is for women to stop hiding, waiting for us to stop what we’re doing and invite them in.

If you don’t attend conferences “because there’s not enough women” you’re part of the problem.

You know who’s part of the solution?

• Mollie Rusher
• Andrea Jensen
• Jaimee Newberry
• Justine Pratt
• Dee Sadler
• Michelle Yaiser
• Huyen Tue Dao

They didn’t wait for an invite to speak. The submitted awesome topics, that would be accepted no matter who submitted them (please see #2b). We’re pleased to have each of them presenting at my conference.

The door is open. we’re holding it open, but I’ll be damned if we’re gonna grab you and pull you through the door or try to coax you through it. WALK THROUGH THE DOOR.

(UPATE)

I wanted to add a few things. I’m super glad so many great discussions sprung up, even the ones that attacked my credibility and motivations. If this post had no reaction, I’d be worried about us all :)

1. I shouldn’t have made it about me. I used “I” a lot and really it was about the conferences and the company, which is 50% run by my wife. I think that helped me look even more douchy and ass-hole-ish. I think it made my point harder to see and talk about, which bums me out. I’ve edited the post to be more “we” so if you didn’t see the original, sorry, just assume this one makes me look less like a bad guy… I hope.

2. I got a lot of complaints of being sexist. I’ll be honest I don’t know how that could be inferred from my post, but if expecting women to submit talks is sexist, i’m ok with that. We encourage women to be as active as possible at 360|iDev and 360|Stack. Along with Mollie Rusher host a women’s breakfast to 1. offer women attendees a break from us men, but 2. and most importantly to get feedback on the conference, how to involve more women, etc.

2a. Our sample wasn’t 2. This post has been 5 years coming. Those two were just the latest. I’m sorry I made it seem like an attack on them.

2b. To be clear on our process for speaker selection. The first pass is done without looking at the name on the submission. We do that to help from doing two things. Picking people we know without regard to what they proposed, and taking gender and race ( as much as that can be assumed from a name) into account.

3. Despite Aral’s claims to the contrary we do cover 3 nights hotel for our speakers and this year are trying to an honorarium. From the beginning our aim has been to do as much as we can to ease the burden of speaking. We don’t charge a lot, and we have a lot of sessions, that’s a lot of speakers. That means it’s a lot of money that we often don’t have. We’re hoping the honorarium becomes a standard part of being a speaker at 360 conferences.

3a. If anyone is curious how the money works, since it was claimed I was getting rich at the expense of pro speakers. We do a session on the state of the conference including a full breakdown of income and expenses. You can buy the video here. Email me if $5 is too much to sate any curiosity on my intentions, regarding money. This year was the first time it’s been made publicly available, but we thought sharing it was valuable.

;

That stuff aside, I got some great and bluntly honest feedback. One of which I’ll implement this weekend. We’re going to post a anti harassment policy for all the events. Some will say that’s kind of obvious but it was pointed out that if things happen at our events, we might not hear about it. This is a sad sad list, and I’m ashamed of most of it from the perspective of a guy and a conference organizer. Frankly that kind of crap is whack. If a speaker did that at our events they wouldn’t be welcomed back, end of story. But it was also pointed out that we should be explicit in that stance and encourage anyone who feels harassed to let us know. I will say, I’m happy our events weren’t on that list that I could see.

I’ll post the policy on the company site and link to it from the conferences. So look for that, and let me know what you think of it, what I can fix or be more clear about.

Ok that said, I’m not an American car guy. in fact I’ve never

owned, been inclined to own, or liked anything made in America. Sure there’s some nice whips coming out of Detroit, but none made me want to walk away from my beloved Austrian Engineering.

While I’m not about to sell my paid off A4 to get a Volt, if my situation was different, the Volt would be a contender.

But the Volt is a nice looking ride. Externally it’s a sporty little hatchback, with clean lines and some definite aggressiveness. The headlights (usually my first impression is based on them) are nice and angular. They were your basic Halogen, which felt cheap to me.

Before I go inside, my only complaints on the exterior are: the mirrors are a bit big and stick out like Alfalfa’s ears, and at least on the model I drove, weren’t automatic when parking, etc. And the front end sticks a bit out from the wheels. Even with just me in the car, pulling out of the alley I park in caused some scraping. My A4 with sport suspension has no issues. Big nose.

Ok interior stuff.

The inside is pretty nice. A good amount of brushed alum, which always adds class :)

The console is all touch button goodness,  with very few actual moving buttons. I found the interior quite nice, which is usually what I hate the most about american cars. Chrome does not make something that sucks, better on it’s own.

My unit came with Navigation, it was ass.  One of the worst UX’s I’ve ever seen. The screen was way too busy, the touch screen (oh yeah, the center screen is a touch screen!) buttons were confusing, and overall it wasn’t fun to use. Worse yet, if you were moving you couldn’t use it. On the move and need to change your destination? Too bad. Find yourself lost, too bad. I understand it’s a safety feature, my car displays a disclaimer that the passenger should be the one to use the nav while in motion. The Volt straight up locks the user out of the Nav until you come to a stop.

This is one of the less busy nav screens.

As you can see, the buttons are quite nice, pretty responsive.

The only downside of this dashboard…. It’s packed with buttons. A few times I found myself driving and staring at the dash trying to find the button to change the temperature or radio station.

Much like a prius the Volt has a gas motor as well. Unlike the Prius the motor is just to generate electricity, not provide drive power. Accelerating simply takes more juice, but you never get a bump from an engine.

The battery is only good for about 30 miles or so, then you switch to the gas motor. It’s very flawless, I didn’t even feel it. If your daily drive was under 40 miles you’d almost never use gas as long as you got to charge the car at night. If you could plug in during the day you’d be golden.

Also like the the Prius, the Volt has a mesmerizing display showing energy usage and flow as well as a fun little ball that bobs up and down to show you how your driving is impacting energy usage. The data and graph types will love the display. It’s chock full of neat tidbits about your driving and energy usage.

I can see why Prius people love to draft, you quickly get to a place where you want that ball to be neutral at least. Once you’ve used up your battery, I’m pretty sure you’re done. I did notice once or twice “Motor and Battery” as the driving force, but once I was on gas, it never that I saw went to “battery power” only. I wish when idling or coasting, the motor would charge the battery. Maybe it does, since on 110 it takes 8 hours to charge it, the motor just may not make a dent.

Speaking of charging, the Volt does not like sharing outlets. Twice i popped my GFI outlet while having the Volt.

I was definitely bummed when they said they needed it back, it was a fun car to drive. I was very impressed. I got tons of questions and everyone i saw asked about it, which was cool. I definitely hope to see more vehicles like the volt in the marketplace. I really… REALLY hope Audi rolls something like it out. While I do love my Turbo charger, I might sway to the Hybrid side.

Oh and the storage space.. While no where near a sport back like the A4, it did hold two full sized suitcases, and then some, so that’s not bad.

Their reasons for not being fans of kickstarter are their own, and while I agree Kickstarter needs some overhauling, I’m not opposed to it in general, in fact I’ve backed 3 things.

I do think they should take a little oversight, and implement some rules. I don’t normally like rules for the sake of rules, but a good case in point is a project I backed called “The Present”. I backed it in late 2011. It funded the next month. The planned ship date was “beginning of 2012″ well even loosely, that would be what? First quarter? I backed it because the intro movie was incredibly inspirational to me. I backed it because at the time, time was on my mind.

16 updates since funding, no new ship date is known, and the creator (I’m sure a great guy) seems to be traveling the globe, making (admittedly) very cool videos to share with backers on his thoughts on all manner of things. He also mixes in moaning about not finding the right mediums for the product, not being able to have it made in the US. He’s basically started from scratch after funding. It might have been mentioned, but I don’t recall US manufacturing being a factor in the initial “please back me” phase. If it was, perhaps he should have worked out arrangements ahead of time to ensure it was possible. I’ve no idea what it will be made of, the initial information was metal and glass. Two things I like a lot. Then he was talking about wood, no glass, and now I don’t recall what he’s thinking of using. Definitely not the experience Kickstarter wants. At least I assume they don’t want this type of experience.

Obviously things happen, but I think it’s fair if Kickstarter had some rules in place  to make sure the people getting backed had the ability to deliver. Whether that’s more escrowing of money or something else I don’t know. But had I know the thing I bought (I actually bought two. one was to be a gift) wasn’t gonna make it’s ship date, and then wouldn’t have a ship date, I wouldn’t have backed it. He’s got my money, in fact he’s had it for 5 months now. The thing I eventually get, may not even look anything like the thing I backed. That’s pretty crappy.

Of course other projects rock, they fund, they create, the ship. More importantly when they update the backers, they actually give new information. I love my Lunatik iWatch, and I’m anxious to get my LunaTik stylus thing next month.

So yeah I’m being way more careful now in backing Kickstarter projects. I love the idea of crowd funding, but worry now we’ll see projects fund that sound great, and never deliver.

Figured I’d throw this out really quick.

I like iOS 5. It’s better than Ice Cream Sandwich.

the iPad(3) means my Xoom is being sold to offset the cost of an iPad.

So yeah not at all disappointed.

Two people over twitter asked about coworking. Our awesome friends of Uncubed all chimed in without our asking and recommended Uncubed. That’s awesome in and of itself. We love that the community feels strongly enough about us that they’ll recommend us.

Both guys seemed interested and we made sure they knew we’d love to have them come check the space out. Both seemed like they intended to do just that.

Then yesterday (the initial twitter exchange was about 2 weeks ago or so) one tweets that Uncubed and another space nearby are out. Too shady of neighborhoods and too far from downtown. Say what? He spent one day at another coworking space, and formed that strong of an opinion?

The other guy, replies and says he too ruled us out for similar reasons. (He never tried either space as far as I know) We tried talking to both who clearly don’t know the neighborhood or downtown for that matter. One even went so far as to say Taxi was in a better spot. I love Taxi but that place is just past East Bum Fuck at the corner of “nowhere” and “Hard to get to”

Oh, Unucbed, is the “A” and Taxi is the arrow. If “better area” means nothing around and only one road in or out, then yeah I guess Taxi is better.

One questioned whether his car would be safe when he worked at night… Jake pointed out that the hundreds of people who come thru Uncubed for meetups each month, plus members who work late have never once, had an issue. As a resident I can say, the only cars I’ve seen broken into (and yes it does happen, just like it does anywhere in downtown) are the cars that look like they’ve got good stuff and are left for a while and clearly not being paid attention too.

It was clear in their tweets with us and others who chimed in to defend the neighborhood, that neither knows the area. Hell neither even ever came to Uncubed to try it out. But while part of me wanted to convince them they were wrong and win their business, another part (which won out) pointed out that it was a losing battle. Some one who’d made a decision with little or no facts or research, isn’t likely to change their mind in the face of contrary evidence. The fact that our “shady neighborhood” is also where my house is, home to several great bars, many awesome indie coffee shops, tons of small businesses etc. clearly wasn’t a factor. Maybe it’s because there’s less sidewalks?

It was clear, neither would be members. The community that is Uncubed wasn’t important, something else was, and we didn’t have it. It still stung to be ruled out without even having a chance tho.

At any rate, since I can’t rail against those two guys directly because that’s bad business and plain silly, I’ll blog about them so I can have the last word in an argument they didn’t know they were having. After all isn’t that largely what blogging is about? :)

He’s been around the block; helped found companies, worked for Apple, and most recently starting an international movement called Appsterdam. He’s spoken at more events than I can count, thankfully that includes my events. Of all the speakers I’ve worked with, Mike raises the bar. He preps like no one’s business, and puts his heart and soul into the presentation. And he doesn’t repeat and recycle his talks. Each is a unique work that he puts a lot of energy into.

But this isn’t about Mike as a presenter. It’s about Mike as a super smart guy. A while back Mike did a thing where he announced he was charging $1,000/hour for consulting. That’s a steep price tag, but when you consider that it’s not just an hour of slinging code, though it could be if you wanted. It’s an hour of Mike’s time. Having been the recipient of an hour or two of Mike’s time I can tell you, it’s worth $1,000 easy. Thankfully he hasn’t sent me the bill yet :)

Mike doesn’t hold back or sugar coat things, or tell you what you want to hear. He tells you the truth, but it’s couched in an honest desire to help you. I’m making changes to the way I do conferences because of Mike’s input. Spoken honestly and intended to make my events better. It’s eye opening when you hear stuff that makes you realize you’re doing it wrong or going down a bad path.

On the smart people thing, Tom has started something new. Tom and Mike are really similar in that they want to help others. It’s not ego, it’s giving back, and helping people. Tom and I have talked a lot about this and I’m, glad he’s giving this a try. One of our shelved business ideas was antiMBA. A business consulting service aimed at offering real world practical advice.. you know counter to what most MBAs dish out. We’d seen businesses we worked for and businesses we liked do truly stupid things, that had they asked someone who had some common sense and real world experience they wouldn’t have done.

Tom excels at solving problems. We’ve written code together and he’s a great coder, but his strength is solving problems. Lots of people can code, few can solve problems. Tom decided that maybe his business should be just that, solving problems. I think it’s a good move.

Whether you’re starting a business, or just trying to solve a problem in your existing business, Mike and Tom are two people you should talk to. The money you spend getting their feedback will be money well spent, and likely to save you far more money in the short and long term. During 360|MacDev I got to watch Mike be Mike and it reminded me (I didn’t need to be reminded, but still) how awesome he is. The night before the conference a bunch of folks gathered in the hotel bar. I had only met one or two of them at 360|iDev or MacDev in the past, most were new to the conference. Mike came and hung out and while having my own conversations I watched Mike. He engaged folks, met new people and really made them feel a part of the community and the conference. He wasn’t holed up in his room or out with the A-List crowd or anything like that. He was talking to attendees and sharing a good time. Tom is much the same. When we started 360|Conferences and started holding evening receptions, he made it his job to work the room, find the person in the corner and go talk to them. He’d learn about that person, and then walk them over to a group he knew they’d click with based on that short conversation. Then he’d bow out and do it again, and again. Introducing people to each other, ensuring that no attendee ever felt that like they were alone at the conferences. I try to follow his example still, and it’s not always easy, but the feeling you get is incredible.

Mike and Tom are two people I count on tremendously. I’m not normally a decision by committee person, but when I don’t feel able to make a decision myself I’m glad I have awesome, crazy smart and insightful people to ask. Oh and Mike and Tom aren’t the only smart people in my arsenal of brains, but they’re the two who have things that you can pay them for.

Oh and some companies that I think might benefit from spending some money on Mike and Tom;

• O’Reilly (love ‘em but they’re way too into themselves to see what they’re doing wrong)
• DC Comics (see above)
• Marvel Comics (see DC)
• CBS (the CEO is on record as saying ‘cutting the cable’ is a fad, and people will come back. We’re actually tormenting your content you dork)
• Hulu (i pay $8 and see just as many ads, BUT have access to the Buffy and Angel back Catalog, AND shows still expire like 30 rock. WTF)
• Netflix (Quickster….)
• HBO (I’d pay good money for Game of Thrones, but HBO Go is tied to a cable subscription…. To The Torrents!)

Those are just the ones I can think of right now that Have either seriously blundered lately or have fallen to new lows of lameness because they no longer see past their previous success/fame and need new perspectives. They’re also all companies that I as a consumer, would gladly give money if they weren’t being lame about it.

I replied that i was mainly reading series and Trade Paper Backs because those are what are easiest to get, because I torrent them. Yup I said it. I torrent comic books. I’d pay for them, I absolutely would. But neither Marvel or DC can wrap their collective brains around digital comics. Sure they have the PC?Mac desktop reader, and an annual subscription to that isn’t really too expensive. All you can read for $50 or so. (Tom tried to get it for me as a gift one year) Problem is it’s desktop only. No tablet reading. When i’m in the mood to sit and read a comic, it’s not when I’m at my desk, and it’s not when I’m at my machine. When I’m on my laptop I’m reading email, checking twitter, etc.

I’ve tried the various the comic apps that each company has released, they’re ok, but a digital comic, much like an eBook shouldn’t be the same price as it’s paper version. Unless of course I can do what I want with the file afterward. If I’m leasing a file, I want to pay a lease price. Marvel, and DC, just look at car companies. Lease payments aren’t the same as car payments.

So the my point is simple and I come across it in events and coworking too. If someone wants to give you money, figure out how to take it. Don’t tell them they’re wrong, and need to give you money only in the way you expect it. Only in the way you took money 20 years ago. If you can offer what they want, and make money in the doing, take their money. It’s Win win. They get what they want, they get to pay for it (which almost all of us want to do as consumers) and you make money, and your product is seen.

HBO, CBS, Marvel, DC, etc. All companies who feel you should be the consumer they want, not the consumer they have. Wake up CEOs and Boards. It’s 2012 and you’re still operating like it’s the mid 90′s

Oh and how this all ties back to my business. I get emails all the time from people who don’t want to pay the regular price of the conferences for whatever reason. Rather than send them away, I figure out how we can both win. I want their money, I want them at the conference, and they want to be there. There’s a win in there if you look for it.

My .02 as a business owner and a consumer

You know an industry is bloated and corrupt when they’re first and only motivation is profit, even and especially at the expense of return business. That’s the Hospitality industry. They don’t care if your event sucks, another is dying to book the space next year.

It’s a lot like banks being too big to fail, hotels are too needed to fail, at least in the conference organizer world. It’s hard to do a conference without a hotel, even if you host the event elsewhere, you need hotels for your attendees, whether you make any special plans or not. It’s way worse when your event is at a hotel, then they have you.

Don’t sell enough tickets and fill guest rooms? They can charge you for possible losses whether losses actually happened or not. Kind of an insult to injury scenario since not selling enough tickets is a huge hit on it’s own.

They deliver a crappy experience? so what, you still owe them nearly 30% service charge for bad service.

This is super generalized, and I’m not naming names, but my current situation, is a direct reflection on this corrupt industry. Hotels are not conference organizers’ friends. Some are awesome and nice and I enjoy working with them, and they earn their 30% service charge (I still think that’s a ludicrous amount, and is highway robbery, but they at least work for it) busting their ass, not for me, for my attendees. When attendees compliment me, i pass it on to the hotel staff who deserve it. Great meal, i didn’t cook it. Great staff who helped solve problems, not me. Others simply suck, say they’re sorry, smile and hold their hand out for their check. It works the same here.

All things flow to the organizer, whether it’s a good or bad experience, whether it’s his fault or doing or not. Hotels love to hear the compliments, they smile, they nod, they give each other awards for it, etc. But telling them where they dropped the ball, well that’s helpful, but please pay your bill as you leave.

As a small and struggling businessman it pisses me off. When things go right, the model of conferences that don’t cost and arm and a leg works really well, but it’s a fine line for sure. I knew that going in. I still do conferences like this because I know it can work. Not because I’m an idealist and haven’t made any money, but because I have made money. Sometimes it’s enough to make sure I can eat and pay the mortgage, sometimes it’s enough to look back and smile at a job well done and know the next event has a bit of a buffer in the bank.

example:

When someone emailed me to complain about the video quality of a session recording (he bought the bundle, $85 worth) i refunded him the entire order. Told him to keep and hopefully enjoy the rest of the videos, and that i was sorry and session videos are something we’re trying to do better at.

What I didn’t do, was say, you bought hundreds of hours of video, for $85, and you’re complaining about 70 minutes? On their own the videos are only $3.50 because they’re not super great. they’re good, some are great, some aren’t, but at $3.50 you’re not out a lot of money, and you most definitely get AT LEAST $3.50 worth of value from them. Most often you get way more than that. I didn’t say anything about that. I didn’t say other events charge way more. I didn’t point out that video sales help cover hosting costs, and buy coffee. I didn’t point out that he probably pays more for Angry Birds levels, and that one video is less than a grande latte. I certainly DID NOT apologize and thank him for his money.

I apologized, and refunded the money. I have no idea if he thought the other videos were bad or not. Frankly i don’t care. He had a problem with one, and to me making sure he remembers that my event is run buy a stand up guy is more important. Will he attend next year? Probably. Hopefully. Sure $85 and what the hotels want isn’t the same, BUT it’s less about the money and more about that customer service, and frankly not being a money grubbing suckwad. And yeah it’s a little about the money too. I’ve refunded conference passes in the same fashion before.

A recent conference I organized had basically 50% crappiness level. Thru no fault of my own, no balls I dropped. No loose ends I neglected to tie up. The first two days had useless internet, tons of balls dropped, things not set up like I asked sponsor tables not where they should be, my reg table not set up right, etc. etc. Worst of all the A/V was useless pretty much 80% of the conference. The guy was never where he was needed, feedback was everywhere, etc. It was terrible. One general session was effectively ruined, as was the session recording) by feedback that made your head hurt. Things got ok the last two days (AV not withstanding), not stellar, not OMG you’ve raised the bar, just good.

As a businessman this is where i get annoyed. I’m the guy who’s gonna write  a check for 100k and you can’t get my reg table right? or my sponsor tables? Sure if I had the space for free, you were doing me a favor etc, I couldn’t and wouldn’t complain, but I am paying. I’m paying A LOT. and things like power strips aren’t put where I asked?? Really?

Did the hotel offer anything for those fuckups? no. Well to be fair I got lots of ‘sorry’ and ‘our bad’ and ‘we fixed that eventually’ and of course ‘next time you don’t need to use that AV company’. When I complained, nicely because I’m a nice guy, and I try to compose myself in business as partnering with vendors and customers, I got song and dance about discounting the service charge on Food/Beverage would make that team think they sucked. I finally got a tiny (relative to the bill) discount on NEXT YEAR. So it’s back to, “we’re sorry we did a bad job, please pay your bill in full as you leave” never mind that in this case, i’ve yet to get a bill that’s correct. Every bill has had errors in my favor and theirs. You can’t adequately bill someone? Hell I’ve tossed invoices when I messed up and just given the sponsor a free ride to show I wanted their future business. THis hotel is busting my ass about a bill i’ve yet to agree is correct.

This has happened 2x, well kinda 3x. Each one was a hotel that didn’t see me as a valued partner, but as the guy who no matter what happened the next four days, would be writing a check for more than 100k. When you think like that you don’t do your best job because you don’t have to. Every year I bust my ass to make sure my sponsors know I want them to succeed, because at the end of the conference, they will either come back or not, based on how I did. That is 100% NOT an issue for hotels. Because of how I think business should be run, I did exactly what they expected. I wrote checks for bad or non existent service. MY sponsors wouldn’t, not for a second, they’d say thank you, we won’t be back. Sadly some have, and I’ve regretted each time, and tried to make sure I learned from those mistakes. Attendees who were treated by me, like I am hotels, wouldn’t come back, and might ask for a refund. Heck I refund people 3 weeks from the conference. Hotels fuck you 6 months out if you need to cancel. Too bad so sad!

It’s a very one-sided relationship. Sadly the conference industry doesn’t help. Most organizers are marketing departments or internal event organizers, etc. While they have a budget target, etc, at the end of the day they don’t care. They still get paid, they can still eat. So what if there’s a 30% raping on top of $4 cans of soda, and $6 cupcakes. It’s not their money. I know they don’t care, because that’s how business works. If hotels didn’t have people lining up to pay $4/can for soda, they wouldn’t charge that.

So this is also kind of an open letter to my fellow organizers. We can do better. We should do better. I’m going to start doing better. To the hotels, well fuck you guys, you don’t care about me, and I’ve hardened my heart to you, so now we’re enemies and fighting each step of the way. That’s not how business should be, and really not how I want business to be done, but it seems in the short term, there’s no choice.

Travel sucks, it really does. The TSA has made it absolutely miserable to go between two places in our country. BUT you can try to make it as painless as possible.

So here we go, a few helpful tidbits to help you (and me) get through security and on your way.

• Nothing has changed in the last few years with regards to shoes. Take your shoes off. Flip flops, sneakers, sexy boots, they all gotta come off and go on the belt, just do it. I actually have travel shoes i wear sometimes. They’re slip on deals, not really pretty and when not traveling their house shoes. Not slippers, they’ve functional shoes, I’m just not a slip on guy. BUT at the airport, shoes that go on and off fast are a big deal. I can’t say how often i’ve seen someone in fancy shoes (LADIES!) struggling to balance and take them off, then put them back on.
• If you don’t know if your laptop needs to be out of your laptop, it does. Err on the side of not slowing down the process. There’s like 2 bags that laptops can stay inside of and maybe 3 laptops that don’t need to be removed. Unless you know for sure you’ve got one of those, take it out. It always makes me wonder who those people are that in 2011 that don’t know laptops have to come out of bags.
• Is your phone in your pocket? OMG really? Pockets EMPTY! 
• Got kids, maybe do some drills at home? Nothing messes up the line more than the freaking out mom, annoyed dad, and kid with toys in his pockets, shoes on, who’s picking up on mom and dad’s mood and starting to freak out too.

• Prep your kid, we all benefit! I’ve seen pro families, and I’ve seen families I’ve wanted to murder. Preperation is key and you can tell the families that travel a lot or prepped ahead of time. It makes a ton of difference. I don’t have kids, so I can’t offer prep tips, but I’m pretty sure candy and rehearsals would be perfect! Or worse case, robitussin. But seriously, beready to go through security with your kid

• Airports tend to bring out the worst in us, but keep in check. Karma is a bitch. I thanked the gal from the front desk, apologized again to the line behind me, and dashed off to my gate.

OK that’s all I’ve got for ya, it should at least help you get through security and out of my way as efficiently as possible. I hope ;)

See you at DIA.

This blog post has been sponsored by CLEAR, the service that speeds you through airport security. CLEAR members save so much time at the airport, it’s like having Daylight Savings every time you travel! CLEAR, the (self-proclaimed) Official Sponsor of Daylight Saving Time, is celebrating the extra hour we get on Nov 6th with a series of travel and time-savings posts on their blog - and here, on my blog too.

To help you see what CLEAR is all about, they are offering my readers a special 3-month FREE trial! Don’t settle for just one extra hour this Daylight Savings. No need to deal with unpredictable security lines, the stress of rushing to your gate, or the time you waste getting to DEN extra early. Click here to get your pass and try CLEAR’s enhanced travel experience for yourself. Just enter my code (CMNDST12) in the promo code field on the payment page.

I got back from my trip to LA and found out. I didn’t know Jim all that much, he ran the motorcycle museum below us, mostly opened on the weekends. He’d come up and chat once in a while, lend us a tool during the construction before we opened. He was a good guy, who loved motorcycles.

His kids came by shortly after his passing and held a wake in the museum, and since then it’s been closed up.

Last night I left the office and was taking the trash out and walk passed the dark windows of the museum. Now the lights would never be on at night anyway, but walking past I knew that they’d never be on again, at least not for Jims’ museum.

Death is a funny thing. I’ve been fairly blessed  in that my family hasn’t suffered many deaths. At least deaths of people I knew or had met. Great grand parents passed when I was a child. That’s changing of course as grand parents are getting older, but they’re still kicking.

But now other people in my life are passing, and it really does (as Steve said at Stanford) make you think and evaluate.

This is kind of a navel gazing post, but i just wanted to share that it’s weird as life goes on, that deaths start to occur and you really do start thinking about life, goals, that kind of shit.

I almost wrote this up and deleted it, but meh, I figured I’d post it just to put it out there, so that next year I can come look at it.