nerd’s eye view

Notes from a Press Trip

This morning at the breakfast buffet, I did something a little weird. After I’d emptied the rest of the sugar packet into my second cup of coffee, I filled the little brown package with salt, folded it in half, and tucked it into my wallet. That seemed a better thing to do than stealing borrowing the cheap plastic salt shaker, though I suppose I could have just asked the waitress, who surely has seen restaurant patrons do odder things in her time, for a dish of salt. I did this because I wanted nothing more than to have a nice salt water gargle to soothe my poor beleaguered throat. I will, I think, pack salt next time I travel, along with my neti pot, just in case this kind of thing comes up again.

This is the long way of telling you that I’m a little under the weather from the volcano’s effects on Hawaii’s air quality. I’m heading home mid-day today and for the first time ever since I’ve been coming to Hawaii, I’m glad to be doing so. I am beat.

This is the first time I’ve participated in the classic press trip. A bunch of journalist types from all over converge on a location and spend an inordinate amount of time together being curious and (hopefully) polite. They’re on an intense schedule of sleep – eat – see – travel – see – eat – sleep for the duration of the trip, and then, whoosh, it’s over, leaving the crew with a head full of new ideas, tired feet, sleep deprivation, and, if you’re me, a very mild case of what I think is bronchitis. It will go away in no time, I’m sure, once I’m back in the volcano free atmosphere of Seattle. Though yesterday, the trade winds started to blow, so better still would be a few more days right here in Hawaii.

I had an amazing time, I enjoyed almost everything to the fullest, save the tour of that rather mediocre hotel. I would much rather have had a shower and a glass of iced tea, but it was not to be, plus, the entire crew had the same wilted look by that time, so it’s not like I was the only one who needed laundering. Misery loves company. And luckily, the company was good, mostly. I took my turn being a bummer while hurling my lunch into Kona Bay (after said lunch spent a short stay in my belly) — after that, I passed the baton to others and oh, I’ve said enough.

I learned some things, too, about how these trips work. They’re not a vacation, not by a long shot, no matter how excellent your accommodation or fabulous your meals. It’s a slog without a lot of free time and you are expected to participate, every step of the way. And with that, here are my big takeaways from the press trip experience:

• Go all in. Surrender yourself to the schedule. It’s possible to get some dispensation, but you need to do so in advance. It’s bad form to bail at the moment. I was tempted to back out of the boat tour, but really, it was too late. I should have done so before getting on the plane to the island if that was my intent.
• Be on time. People are waiting, dammit. You’re pissing them off by fussing with your hair or whatever. Get into/out of the damn car.
• Pay attention. It’s exhausting, but if you’re not paying attention, you’re going to miss it. Do your best to stay engaged. If that means asking, “Do I have time to grab more coffee?” well, do that. If you don’t engage, you’re aggravating your hosts who have made time for you and you’re missing the point.
• Do your homework before the trip. I’m actually okay with going for the culture shock experience, but if you’re going to do that, you should engage (see above) but don’t waste anyone’s time asking rookie questions. Shut up and experience the place, scribble down your questions, then after you’re home you can follow up with the stuff that Wikipedia and Google won’t tell you. I’m also a big fan of reading while you go, because you have live context.
• Have a sense of humor. Things will go wrong, you will get sick, lose your water bottle, hurl your lunch into Kona Bay, be paired with someone who drives you nuts for an afternoon, have to go to a nice dinner looking like you’ve been rolled down a cliff.  If you can’t take that stuff in stride, you might as well stay home.
• Defer to the experts. I’m a dork. While we were talking about birds (I’m a bird hugger) I mentioned to a local that there are no hummingbirds in Hawaii. Duh. Like they don’t know. No one likes a know it all. I’m sort of crazy about hummingbirds, it gets away from me, but puh-leeze, I should shut up already.

This is all common sense stuff for travelers, really, but I was reminded of so much of it this last week. I would still rather travel alone, on my own schedule, on my own time — I’ve not been sold on the idea that the press trip is the way to go. But I’m really glad I came. The trip was 95% excellent 95% of the time and I enjoyed the company tremendously. I’m as surprised by that as anyone.

My trip to the Big Island of Hawaii was sponsored by the Big Island Visitor’s Bureau.

Posted in Aloha Oy | 11 Comments »

Auntie Margie Leads Song Circle

Auntie made one of her students pass over his song book to me. Now I have a binder with her playlist and the names of everyone who committed to show up at Anna Ranch to entertain us. I have a color xeroxed watercolor of a hale (house) by a bridge and I have a little return address label with Margie’s address.

I know exactly how this works. You line up a handful of likely people from your club or class. You tell them to put on their best aloha wear and to tune up the uke. You make a bunch of copies and you put them in order and you sit and play for strangers who may or may not be paying attention.

They knew we were coming,they knew there was someone in the group who played. I asked to borrow a uke and one of the uncles handed me his, and another slid over while an auntie pushed a chair up for me. Then all of us, in the beautiful light filled hall at Anna Ranch sat down together and we sang.

After, Auntie Margie gave me a big hug and took my face between her hands and kissed me. She waved her hands at one of the uncles and he gave me his notebook. It’s just a couple of xeroxed sheets of some songs I already know, but it’s a perfect souvenir.

My trip to the Big Island of Hawaii was sponsored by the Big Island Visitor’s Bureau.

Posted in Aloha Oy | 3 Comments »

Postcard from Pahala

Even though it’s pouring rain, all the windows are open and I’m barefoot. I am wearing a sweater over my tank top, there’s a cool edge on the air, but it’s just while I write, if I were moving around at all, I’d be too warm, pronto.

It’s our last morning in Pahala, a former sugar mill town on the south coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. I am packed and ready to go back to Kona, up early because of the roosters and doves and other birds I can’t identify singing too loud, too early, everywhere.

I’m suffering from the vog — the volcano is so active that the upper rim road was closed yesterday because of air quality. There’s a massive plume of steam and gas filling the air, spreading out across the lower slopes of the mountain. The winds are blowing the wrong way so all that stuff from the inside of the planet is filling my sinuses, my lungs. My throat is raw and my voice is shot, my lungs are working a little harder than usual, and now that I’ve heard someone else say it, I can imagine that I taste sulfur on my lips.

This is a shame because while my respiratory system is unhappy here in this pleasant, green, noisy little town, the rest of me would like to pick up that sugar shack, the unpainted one just up the hill, across from the market, and maybe the 50s panel van complete with cute kitchen trailer. Then, because this is coffee territory in which, ironically, it is hard to get a decent cup of joe, I could open a little espresso stand, learn how to pull a cappuccino from the pros, and dissolve into a life with a ukulele soundtrack of my own making.

I hung my pua kenikeni lei on a tree in the garden where right now a bird is making a crazy squeaking clicking squeaking clicking noise. The flowers turned brown after first turning the color of an orange peel — when our hostess/guide/handler dropped them around my neck they were a creamy yellow. They’ll disappear here, falling to the ground.

If I’m remembering correctly, the lei is supposed to absorb your mana, your spirit. That seems appropriate — even if I’ve got the mythology wrong, I’ll be leaving yet another piece of myself behind when the plane leaves the tarmac and wings me back to the mainland. The flowers will drop to the ground and disappear back into the land and when I think of them, while wearing shoes and watching traffic out the bus window, I will be here, too.

My trip to the Big Island of Hawaii was sponsored by the Big Island Visitor’s Bureau.

Posted in Aloha Oy | 2 Comments »

Dream

I am in an open sided building, a combination of upright posts and corrugated metal on a concrete slab. There’s a little kitchen area, I’m making coffee on a rusty propane fueled two burner stove. It’s morning, the grass is wet. Fields stretch out around me, I’m not sure what’s growing, it’s grassy, wide blades, about knee high, it looks a little bit like sugar cane though I know it is not because it’s soft, not sharp. It is that bright green of sugar cane though, that shiny color you see after the rains, when the sun comes out.

I am squatting down on the edge of the field with a coffee cup in my hands. There is some kind of animal resting in the grass, something that I should probably be nervous about startling, it could go skittish and attack me, but I’m not at all afraid. It’s golden brown, maybe some kind of wildcat, or maybe a sort of large fox, it’s a dream, I can’t say for sure. The critter turns and looks at me, sniffs the air a little, and does nothing. I drink my coffee, we look out over the fields, it is morning, we are both waking up.

There is a meal ready in the shelter, but first we say hello. There are two lines of people, so many different kinds of people, facing each other. It’s when I know I am in Hawaii, I see a woman who’s tall and has long hula dancer hair, a little frizzy, black like mine. But they’re not just native Hawaiians here, they’re from everywhere. I watch the line — they are all embracing each other and saying something I can hear as they do, then they go to the next person opposite them in line. I hesitate and then, I go join them. And they all take me in, they hug me, all those people from everywhere and as they do, they say the same words to me (which I’m not going to repeat because it’s my dream and I want to keep them), and then, when everyone has exchanged this greeting with everyone else in the group, we go eat.

Later, I am in a glass elevator. I know that I am going to some kind of hall, some fluorescent lit room where there are round tables under white generic tablecloths. It will be badly lit, there will be food on generic white plates and everyone will have the same thing. I know this while I look out the glass elevator at the green fields as I go up and up and up. I turn around to face the doors and the elevator starts to close in on me, I can’t lift my arms, I’m starting to panic. I push my arms out and wake up, the blankets wrapped tightly around me, what passes for daylight leaking in through the curtains.

The words of the greeting appear in my head and all my panic is gone. I am awake and I know that I am not in Hawaii anymore. But I can still see myself so clearly, sitting at the edge of that field in complete companionship with an unknown animal, we watch the sun pop over the Waianae Range and then, I go to the kitchen to make more coffee for the farmers who have been up much for longer than I have.

Posted in Aloha Oy, Seattle | 3 Comments »

Postcard: Waikiki, 7am

Two guys are opening their surf shack. One of them is digging perfectly spaced holes in the sand, the other is dropping bright yellow umbrellas into the holes and popping them open. A man sits on the stone wall facing the surf, barefoot, a cell phone glued to his head, a deep frown marking his face. How can he be so unhappy, I wonder, we are in Waikiki, it is a balmy 78 degrees and there’s a light breeze coming off the ocean. Scattered leftovers from the day before line the beach, an abandoned yellow inner tube, still fully inflated, a surf worn beach mat, one flip flop. There are surfers beyond the breakwater, floating, riding the waves to the shore.

I leave my things on the wall next to the unhappy man on the phone and head into the surf. There’s a Philippino woman (I’m guessing), maybe 60 years old, in the water up to her collar bones. She’s wearing a poofy shower cap. She’s performing some kind of calisthenics, she’s vigorously waving her arms back and forth and striding about in the swells. And as I get closer to her I can hear her, she’s singing, belting it out really, some kind of tune, at the top of her lungs. When I float on my back, I hear only the surf, then, when I stand and balance in the ever moving water, her voice fills the air. Inspired, I lie on my back in the salt water, and, held up by the waves, facing the sky, I sing too, loud enough to hear my own voice echoing in the ocean.

Posted in Aloha Oy | 5 Comments »

Re[Think] Hawaii & TEDx Honolulu

I’d been invited to travel to Oahu by the Oahu Visitor’s Bureau in exchange for blogging about my adventures there. At the same time, Christine Lu was planning re[Think] Hawaii, a small conference about start-ups, sustainability, and social media and the dates lined up perfectly. Christine generously waived the attendance fee in exchange for… well, let’s say I owe her a favor or three. Neenz, a Hawaii social, um, universe, she’s a social universe, invited the attendees of reThink Hawaii to TEDx, a morning of interesting ideas and speakers. Now for some long winded contextual stuff…

I’ve attended what feels like a pile of conferences this year — SxSW, TBEX, BlogHer, BlogWorld Expo, reThink Hawaii was the last in a long run. Unfortunately, it solidified something for me that I’ve been slowly concluding with each event that I attend — I don’t thrive in these environments. I’m not particularly shy, but I don’t like to do things in large groups. I’d really prefer to have dinner with two or three smartypants types, being in a room with 100 of them just isn’t that rewarding for me.

I can’t work a room. That’s not to say that I don’t want to meet you, it’s rather that I don’t have the skills to compete for your attention, a cheerier extrovert will do a much better job than I will and because of that, we probably won’t talk unless I sit next to you at breakfast or in those funny between times when everyone is elsewhere. I’m happiest in quiet conversation in a room where I can hear you. Though ironically, I have loved the speaker opportunities I’ve had this year, so I guess I like the spotlight when I don’t have to compete for it. How lazy is that?

All of this is just so you can place my experience in context. Bookish type, kind of a nerd, socially not that great, especially  in a room full of  extroverted success stories. Yeah, not so much my scene. I’m going to sit over there and observe, quietly, and process, thank you, and I probably won’t show up to shout at you in a noisy bar later, I’ll be in my room, reading and eating take out bento.

This doesn’t mean I’m not absorbing information or learning or making some good connections.  I was able to connect with some great people in the pantheon of Internet stars that attended and plan to follow up with a few — they’re doing work directly related to things that I’m doing. I loved the local presence — reThink and TEDx gave me the chance to spend quality time with people who live and work in Hawaii and I adore those folks, they’re wonderful. I’ve never felt so at home while living out of a suitcase. All that fuzzy stuff, the stuff around the edges, that was great.

But I was struck, repeatedly, but what was NOT talked about at both reThink Hawaii and TEDx. My short list:

• Tourism: A lot of time was devoted to discussing sustainability, a critical issue with Hawaii’s limited resources. But we didn’t talk about tourism until I asked. This wasn’t a tourism or travel event, but with 800,000 people passing through the islands every year, including many of the people in that room, not talking about tourism seemed to willfully deny one of the biggest impacts to Hawaii’s economy and environment.
• Education:  I attended more than one talk that mentioned how Hawaii could be the “Silicon Valley of energy” and how it’s got great potential as a business environment. While I sat in that room, restless teenagers sloped about the streets of Waikiki because of Hawaii’s embarrassing furlough Fridays — the state doesn’t have the funds to keep the kids in school full time. Skilled jobs in Hawaii are badly needed, but who’s going to do those jobs if Hawaii residents aren’t getting a quality education?  For personal reasons, I’d love to see a Hawaii tech corridor, but that’s because I want to live there. Is Hawaii creating the skilled workforce needed to fill those jobs once they’re created or are they going to go to lucky imported mainlanders?
• Censorship: I really enjoyed Kaiser Kuo’s talk about our difficult relationship with China via the Internet, but I have a hard time removing the shadow of censorship from the conversation. I don’t understand the first thing about China. But I know that my friend B, when traveling there, couldn’t share his stories with me via his blog, he was blocked by what is amusingly called the Great Firewall of China. There’s a lot of excitement about China’s opening markets, but when it comes to open communication, what’s available to us as citizens? How much of the tone of the conversation with the outside world is controlled by the government? China certainly has the manpower to apply a heavy hand when it comes to censorship — are they? I don’t know.
• Consumerism: I’m not really anti-consumer, I like my stuff just fine, but I sure wish we’d dial it back some as a society. I was frustrated by Henk Rogers talk about the new virtual world. It’s just one tiny thing, but he mentioned how virtual worlds make it easier for us to get virtual stuff. He’s also got the Blue Planet Foundation, an organizaiton that wants to end the use of carbon based fuels. That’s great, but isn’t the drive for stuff what causes us to burn all that carbon based fuel? Is the ability for us to get virtual stuff really going to diminish our desire for real stuff, or is it going to frustrate us, making us wonder why we can’t have that stuff in real life? Again, I don’t know.
  [Related side note: I REALLY appreciated that reThink and TEDx were swag free. Swag is fun, but when an event becomes more about swag than substance... TBEX did a nice job of making sure everyone got the same stuff and that it wasn't just stuff.]
• Success: Wow, there were a lot of very successful people there. And that’s really great for them, but for me, a person of a modest (but really very amazing life) I felt like the lessons of failure were eclipsed by the glamor of success. The most valuable stories are in lessons learned from failure, but I felt like I was hearing a lot of glowing reports on how awesome things were.  A lot of success models aren’t replicable — they’re a magical cocktail of inspiration and work and luck and connections. But failure is a unifying experience and it’s a good thing to learn how to fail without giving up. I realize that’s vague, but I loved beatboxboy Jason Tom’s remark about successful people failing more often. Sharing the failure factor? I would have like to see more of that.

The networking aspects aside, I suppose if Neenz and Christine Lu intended to send attendees out into the world thinking differently about, well, a few things, then I’m probably a fair argument for their success. I’m still rolling these issues around in my head. I dont have any real conclusions at this point, but I’m thinking, thinking and rethinking, a lot, about the last ten days in Hawaii.

Posted in Aloha Oy, Op/Ed, Werk | 12 Comments »