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Most importantly I got the gift of spending it with family – my wife’s family for that matter. I have done this for the past 31 Christmases. The family has changed a great deal but as one of my nieces in college said ‘finding your way to come home for Christmas is something that we should do no matter what’.
My place has changed going from the young kid to the middle aged uncle, son and brother in-law. It’s great to see everyone particularly the nieces and nephews who I don’t get to see often enough. All do different things – some are still students either in high school or college, some work full time. None are married – out of 9 cousins aged 15 – 27.
All are consumed with technology. Everyone has a PDA or phone and if under 30 without exception checked text messages or talked on their mobile phone at least once during the afternoon. That’s amazingly different since my first Christmas with the family back in 1978. The technology we had then consisted of a record player, a television (yes it was color) showing the Yule Log (or was that Christmas Eve?) and the long gone Blue-Gray classic college football all star game.
But now our conversations drift in and out of technology all driven by the younger set. Facebook, internet forums, YouTube, dominate. It seems someone is always sitting at the computer near the dining room table before or after dinner checking something. When I mentioned that I now tweet from time to time there were a few cousins that had no idea what Twitter was! And when I mentioned to my recent college grad (2007) niece about using LinkedIn to find a new job, she said she just had not gotten into that. She (like all my nieces and nephews for that matter) does use Facebook regularly but did not see the value in LinkedIn. What she did not see was how it could be relevant to her.
I was able to show her how I could find out about the people with whom she was going to interview after the weekend by checking their profile on LinkedIn. Of course you can Google someone as well to get information but specific to an individual LinkedIn is faster and more accurate since it is user generated.
What I also was able to articulate is how Facebook allows me to offer up my unfiltered and genuine thoughts to friends or ‘Friends’ and maybe that helps them draw a better read on me as opposed to the business oriented sides of LinkedIn and Twitter . Surprisingly my nieces and nephews actually read some of my updates (I did not know that since they never comment) and think they are funny sometimes but revealing more than that. They get to know me and I get to know them (yes I read their status updates and rarely comment) in ways that people never could before. And that might be the best gift I get of them all.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
2009 the year of better communcation - I hope!
As I write this sitting on a plane heading to frigid Chicago 3 days before Christmas it bothers me to no end that in flight internet access is not a regularly available feature on airplanes. Forget for a moment that the few airlines that are doing it (Lufthansa I think is one) charge passengers for the privilege of wireless web access.
Of course I can still get a diet coke if I want for free. I would rather have the internet access by far. Seeing as I cannot pick up a bottle of internet access at the newsstand (either before or after airport security) I would think that providing free access to the internet on all flights in lieu of free sodas would be a much better deal for the airlines. Remember the airlines are the folks that have brought us the $ 6 can of Budweiser. So why not a $ 3 soda? The point is that the web is ubiquitous and it is more than a mere annoyance that you get to pay hundreds of dollars to sit in a tiny seat on short (under 3 hours) haul flights with no food or in-flight entertainment options (unless you fly Jet Blue). Now I don't want to hear Mabel talking on her cell phone to her husband about what time he should be at the airport to pick her up - EVER! NO CELL PHONES IN FLIGHT. EVER! But in the interest of better communication I think the airlines are going about it all wrong. They don't tell you when you will land but if there were internet access we could figure out what time we would land and at which gate at the very least!
While l waited for my flight (it was delayed three hours which happens I understand) the communication was not good at all as to if or when the flight would leave. Initially it was to be 2 hours late but somewhere along the way the communication stopped and 15 minutes before the flight was to depart a sign finally went up. Why don't the airlines have an information officer on the premises to help passengers with information? The amount of goodwill this would engender would be palpable. I can get more information in the back of a New York City taxicab now (with internet enabled televisions becoming the norm) than I can in an airport.
And once you get to your destination you know what you get to experience. The likelihood of paying for internet connections at your hotel! And the more expensive the hotel the more likely you will have to shell out $ 10.95 or more for 24 hours of internet access. When traveling on business I often stay at Marriott Courtyards for the primary reason that they offer free internet access. And it is far less expensive to stay there than at most other hotels. I just don't get this do you? If we are living in the information age why is so much access behind the iron curtain?
3G networks are on the rise and soon (but not soon enough for me) your internet enabled phone/pda will be able to access the web from anywhere and at great speeds (even in the air!) so eventually all this stupidity on charging for internet access will go away. Unfortunately you will still have to pay for checking your bags on most airlines (this is not going away sadly) and eventually pay for your soda too. It's coming sooner and not later. 2009 may offer a little better communication than 2008 but we still have a long way to go.
Of course I can still get a diet coke if I want for free. I would rather have the internet access by far. Seeing as I cannot pick up a bottle of internet access at the newsstand (either before or after airport security) I would think that providing free access to the internet on all flights in lieu of free sodas would be a much better deal for the airlines. Remember the airlines are the folks that have brought us the $ 6 can of Budweiser. So why not a $ 3 soda? The point is that the web is ubiquitous and it is more than a mere annoyance that you get to pay hundreds of dollars to sit in a tiny seat on short (under 3 hours) haul flights with no food or in-flight entertainment options (unless you fly Jet Blue). Now I don't want to hear Mabel talking on her cell phone to her husband about what time he should be at the airport to pick her up - EVER! NO CELL PHONES IN FLIGHT. EVER! But in the interest of better communication I think the airlines are going about it all wrong. They don't tell you when you will land but if there were internet access we could figure out what time we would land and at which gate at the very least!
While l waited for my flight (it was delayed three hours which happens I understand) the communication was not good at all as to if or when the flight would leave. Initially it was to be 2 hours late but somewhere along the way the communication stopped and 15 minutes before the flight was to depart a sign finally went up. Why don't the airlines have an information officer on the premises to help passengers with information? The amount of goodwill this would engender would be palpable. I can get more information in the back of a New York City taxicab now (with internet enabled televisions becoming the norm) than I can in an airport.
And once you get to your destination you know what you get to experience. The likelihood of paying for internet connections at your hotel! And the more expensive the hotel the more likely you will have to shell out $ 10.95 or more for 24 hours of internet access. When traveling on business I often stay at Marriott Courtyards for the primary reason that they offer free internet access. And it is far less expensive to stay there than at most other hotels. I just don't get this do you? If we are living in the information age why is so much access behind the iron curtain?
3G networks are on the rise and soon (but not soon enough for me) your internet enabled phone/pda will be able to access the web from anywhere and at great speeds (even in the air!) so eventually all this stupidity on charging for internet access will go away. Unfortunately you will still have to pay for checking your bags on most airlines (this is not going away sadly) and eventually pay for your soda too. It's coming sooner and not later. 2009 may offer a little better communication than 2008 but we still have a long way to go.
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