Giving travel a rethink
While this issue helps equip you for business travel, the world itself seems to be telling us to reconsider the whole idea
By Peter Wolchak
May 14, 2010
May 14, 2010
International travel was on our minds in April, because we couldn’t. Not by air, anyway. Ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano caused airlines to ground the planes that normally fly through the affected air corridors. At time of writing, Eyjafjallajokull is still erupting but the plume is not as tall, allowing airlines to resume operations and—seemingly—opening the floodgates to criticism. Airlines and passengers are saying the Europe-wide ban was an overreaction. Richard Branson has been especially vocal, saying “There were plenty of corridors through which the airlines could have flown, which would have been quite safe, so I think the government has accepted that there was overreaction.”
And one understands his concern: Branson estimates the volcano cost his Virgin Atlantic US$77 million. For the industry overall, more than 100,000 flights were cancelled and airlines may lose up to US$2 billion, according to estimates.
But really, what were the aviation authorities to do? Err on the side of revenue and planes might have dropped from the sky.
All of this bypassed me personally until I sat down in a large meeting hall in Toronto on April 22. The event was the fifth-annual Global Sourcing Forum held by the Centre for Outsourcing Research & Education. I had come largely to hear the headline speaker, Suzan van Dijk, a vice-president at Unilever. She is shepherding her company’s transition toward enterprise-wide shared services and because Unilever is one of the world’s largest consumer goods company, the project is both massive and complex.
But ash had gotten in the way and London-based van Dijk could not travel to Toronto. Rather than cancel her appearance the resourceful organizers set up a videoconference link, projecting van Dijk’s image on one of the large screens in the hall.
The quick solution didn’t work quite as well as an in-person appearance—van Dijk could not see her audience and could only hear us when we spoke into microphones—but it did work, and her talk was enjoyable and informative. And, forced upon her though it may have been, the videoconference saved her from days away and kept her from increasing her personal carbon footprint. The experience made many at the conference reflect on the necessity of in-person business meetings.
But for times when you do fly
But even with advancing communication technology, business travel will never entirely disappear, which is why one focus in this issue is travel: we talk about exec laptop bags and profile travel tech. (When the stories were assigned we had, of course, never heard of Eyjafjallajokull.)
The laptop-bag piece is a fun and informative read, and I wanted to add my list of laptop bag essentials.
Plug adapter: Not enough outlets in a coffee shop or airport lounge? A polite request and a $5 plug extender can fix that. Or, this $25 Belkin unit also gives you two USB plugs.
Slot mouse: Even notebook mice are bulky compared to these 15-gram MoGo units, which slide into the PC Card or ExpressCard slot on your notebook.
A hidden DVD: I don’t know exactly what a DVD weighs—one online source states 16 grams—but they are light enough that you won’t notice the extra weight, so find one you want to watch and store it in the optical drive of your notebook. It will be waiting the next time your flight is delayed.
Peter Wolchak
Editor
pwolchak@backbonemag.com
And one understands his concern: Branson estimates the volcano cost his Virgin Atlantic US$77 million. For the industry overall, more than 100,000 flights were cancelled and airlines may lose up to US$2 billion, according to estimates.
But really, what were the aviation authorities to do? Err on the side of revenue and planes might have dropped from the sky.
All of this bypassed me personally until I sat down in a large meeting hall in Toronto on April 22. The event was the fifth-annual Global Sourcing Forum held by the Centre for Outsourcing Research & Education. I had come largely to hear the headline speaker, Suzan van Dijk, a vice-president at Unilever. She is shepherding her company’s transition toward enterprise-wide shared services and because Unilever is one of the world’s largest consumer goods company, the project is both massive and complex.
But ash had gotten in the way and London-based van Dijk could not travel to Toronto. Rather than cancel her appearance the resourceful organizers set up a videoconference link, projecting van Dijk’s image on one of the large screens in the hall.
The quick solution didn’t work quite as well as an in-person appearance—van Dijk could not see her audience and could only hear us when we spoke into microphones—but it did work, and her talk was enjoyable and informative. And, forced upon her though it may have been, the videoconference saved her from days away and kept her from increasing her personal carbon footprint. The experience made many at the conference reflect on the necessity of in-person business meetings.
But for times when you do fly
But even with advancing communication technology, business travel will never entirely disappear, which is why one focus in this issue is travel: we talk about exec laptop bags and profile travel tech. (When the stories were assigned we had, of course, never heard of Eyjafjallajokull.)
The laptop-bag piece is a fun and informative read, and I wanted to add my list of laptop bag essentials.
Plug adapter: Not enough outlets in a coffee shop or airport lounge? A polite request and a $5 plug extender can fix that. Or, this $25 Belkin unit also gives you two USB plugs.
Slot mouse: Even notebook mice are bulky compared to these 15-gram MoGo units, which slide into the PC Card or ExpressCard slot on your notebook.
A hidden DVD: I don’t know exactly what a DVD weighs—one online source states 16 grams—but they are light enough that you won’t notice the extra weight, so find one you want to watch and store it in the optical drive of your notebook. It will be waiting the next time your flight is delayed.
Peter Wolchak Editor
pwolchak@backbonemag.com
