Seven Days To Go
Today it occurred to me it’s only a week from now that I will travel to the United States to attend CNMC MMX in Boston, MA. I also went to last year’s edition, kind of unprepared because I didn’t really know what to expect. This year, I plan to leave much more updates and such, just to look back on later. It probably will be my last CNMC ever since I hope to start a new job early 2011 which makes planning days off really hard. Last year I made the mistake by posting my updates to different kinds of social networks I’m not using any more this year, so therefore I made a dedicated category on this blog to keep things organised. I already saw other attendees are doing similar things on their blogs. For instance, Stephanie is also counting down on her blog. I’m wondering if other people I don’t follow but who do attend the CNMC are doing the same, too.
Back to preparing my trip. Since I’m flying in from The Netherlands I had to arrange a number of things before even considering going to the CNMC. First, I had to get a new passport, since my old one expired and my European Identification Card hasn’t much value when travelling outside Europe. After that I had to apply for the VISA Waiver program at Homeland Security by filling out an ESTA form. After getting a plane ticket, a registration for the CNMC and making sleeping arrangements I think I’m basically set. The only thing I need to figure out is how much cash I bring to the US as I don’t have a credit card. Sometime next week I need to go to my bank and buy United States dollars. I need to make sure not to buy too much, because changing them back to euros will cost me extra and if I don’t bring enough I will run into troubles too.
Today in a week I probably will post some audio boos and other updates on different social networks while travelling, at least for the leg inside The Netherlands using my 3G mobile internet. I don’t know if there’s free WiFi on Boston airport, probably not. Using 3G internet in the US is insanely expensive, so I have to rely on open WiFi as soon as I touch down.
Since there’s not much to do in the real world to prepare for the trip, I’m thinking on how to prepare digitally? I wonder if someone set up a new TweetGrid already? Did you know there’s a TwitPicGrid too? What’s the hashtag for CNMC 2010 tweets? #cnmc10, #cnmc-mmx or something else? What other services do people use to aggregate their social network activity? I plan to try out posterous, but I’m not following many people over there yet. I’ve not posted anything either over there yet. I also set up a dedicated tumblr blog which aggregates everything that has anything to do with my travels. It syncs this blog category, audio boo, vimeo etc. I’m more familiar with tumblr then I am with posterous. What tumblr basically does is merging everything I post elsewhere related to my travels into one place whereas posterous seems to be a posting site that will ping all kinds of other services, including tumblr. I need to see how it works out. I wonder if people who read this use other services? And what’s your experience with it? What do you recommend?
That’s about it for now. A new countdown post tomorrow about gifts: thinking on what to buy and avoiding problems with the custom department in the US. What do you bring to Boston for your friends? Local goodies? What kinds?
Popularity: 20%
Related posts:
Thanks for the blog link! Can’t wait to see you in a week. Good luck in getting everything ready and in order for your trip. I don’t know what the official hash tag is, but we’ve been using #cnmc so far. No announcement has been made. See you soon!