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?

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You may have heard me complaining about the fact there’s never something interesting to watch on TV or to listen to on the radio, so the whole invention of podcasting has been great for me. I just download stuff I’m interested in and just discard the conventional television and radio stuff. I’m subscribed to a whole bunch of science related feeds, like New Scientist and also to some newscasts. If there’s really a TV show I want to watch, I can do it on demand using the public network’s on demand online video service.

A friend of mine, who lives in Amersfoort knows I’m a terrible geek (and not afraid to admit it) and also listen to a lot of podcasts. She told me her priest was a podcaster. I was like, “Yeah, right. But I’m not going to listen to boring Catholic sermons.” I was really happy she converted from ‘somethingism’ to Catholicism, but sometimes I really got fed up with her urge to ‘convert’ everyone to her new-found hapiness. She insisted it was about geek stuff and not about Catholic things. So I decided to have a look. And indeed, there were a number of really interesting podcasts: Secrets of Star Wars (I am a huge SW fan), the Catholic Insider (in which he takes the listener to closed areas of the Vatican), which he calls ‘sound seeing tours. They are really fun and not overtly Catholic. I also subscribed to one of the newer shows, called ‘Daily Breakfast’, a kind of morning show which is about everything but not overtly Catholic. Sometimes he does touch upon Catholic topics, but I just fast-forward through them. He founded a whole ‘network’ with a bunch of podcasts, some of them are Catholic, by the way. But there are also gems that are worth listening to as a non-Catholic. I just avoid anything with the word ‘Catholic’ in it. I’m not interested in becoming a Catholic at all, after all.

Links:

• Flickr Photo by CC Chapman.
• All podcasts by SQPN can be found on their website.