Tomorrow is a coming out party for Tourism Marketing Consulting which is a project that Jen Leo and I have been working on for a few months. We are kicking off this joint venture with a free webinar called “Social Media 101“.

Jen and I met at the speaker’s dinner last year at the Travel Blog Exchange conference in Chicago. We hit it off immediately and soon after Gary Arndt and I asked her to join us starting the This Week in Travel podcast. Jen confessed recently that she thought she was being asked to be on one episode and did not realize that she was being asked to be a regular host. That is probably just as well as she might have said “no” as her job as the lead travel blogger with the LA Times was keeping her pretty busy.

Jen has much more experience in travel than I do and seems to know all the other travel editors and travel writers. I have a bit more social media experience since I was building internet communities full time starting in 1996. She is a blogger and I am a podcaster. I am afraid to ask, but since she lives in southern California she might even be a Dodgers fan. Hopefully this is the start of a beautiful partnership. I hope you can join us tomorrow.

I must certainly not be alone in my love of or addiction to travel contests. When I recently created a travel contest area for the Amateur Traveler website I was quite surprised at the number of companies offering travel contests and sweepstakes. Fodor’s is having photo contests to put a picture on their guidebook cover. You can currently enter to win a trip to Japan, London, NYC, National Parks, Bali, Virginia and many other places.

It used to be that entering a contest was a simple thing. You gave the company your personal information in a form (which is why they are running the contest in the first place) and they entered your name in the drawing. But with the success of the “Best Job in the World” contest run by Queensland Australia earlier this year contests increasingly are asking you to shoot video, blog, take pictures and get votes. So now in addition to providing personal information contest junkies like me are fueling social media marketing campaigns with content and attention.

Is it likely that people will get tired of these offers? That does not appear to be the case. Certainly no one is getting the kind of free press that Queensland did when they held a competition to work for them for 6 months in a tropical destination for $100,000. Somehow that 2 free nights in a Day’s Inn in Portland are not going to be able to compete with that. But companies continue to run contests because users continue to enter them. Sometimes the contests seem odd, like one web company that wants you to describe your perfect trip to win a contest that is… well… a completely different trip (this one is from i-to-i.com).

So what is next for travel contests? No one has matched $100,000 as prize money so it seems that the big sort of contests will still be rare. But, I know of 2-3 different contests to get you to the World Series or to next Year’s All Star Game. One of the reasons that I enter contests may be that we have won contests before. Back in the 1980s my wife won a free computer, an Apple ][e, in the second chance drawing for Crest’s Back to School Sweepstakes. If you are not familiar with a second chance drawing, it implies that the person who had the winning entry never claimed their prize. So, someone will win. Someone will be lucky. Why not me?

Excuse my while I write a blog post about my ultimate trip to Timbuktu. I have a contest deadline to meet.

Esperanza says that what they are actually trying to build is community, houses are just the byproduct. They put in credit unions and teach people how to save money, help people help their neighbors as they build sweat equity in the program, and teach people how to build cement bricks. The family and their neighbors must construct every brick for their house before a volunteer crew like ours will help dig trenches, pour a foundation, pour a floor, stack walls or pour a roof.

In our last trip we moved 85 cement mixers full of concrete (about 500 pounds per load) by hand using a bucket brigade. We also moved 3 dump trucks full of dirt. You end up with very sore muscles a few scrapes and very very dirty. You also end up with friends South of the border. One of the neighbors who we worked along side on this trip was a woman whose house we had helped build on a previous trip. Nothing cements a friendship like… well like cement.

Oh yeah, and the food is great also. For more information check out an early episode of the Amateur Traveler on Building Houses in Mexico.

An actual letter to the passport office

Dear Bureaucrats:

I’m in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this. How is it that Radio Shack has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a t.v. cable from them back in 1997, and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date? For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand? My birth date you have on my social security card, and it is on all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 30 years. It is on my health insurance card, my driver’s license, on the last eight passports I’ve had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done at electi on times. Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother’s name is Mary Anne, my father’s name is Robert and I’d be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die!!!!!! !

I apologize; I’m just really pissed off this morning. Between you an’ me, I’ve had enough of this bullshit – just look at the incredible lack of common sense here! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my address!?! . What is going on? You must have a gang of Neanderthal ass holes working’ there! Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don’t want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for Christ sakes. I just want to go and park my ass on a sandy beach.

And would someone please tell me, why would you give a crap whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a c hicken or a g oat, believe you me, I’d sure as hell not want to tell anyone! Well, I have to go now, ’cause I have to go to the other end of the city and get another copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of $60.

And that brings up another point. Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day?? Nooooo, that’d be too damn easy and maybe makes sense. You’d rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some ass hole to confirm that it’s really me on the picture – you know, the one where we’re not allowed to smile?! ( morons) Hey, you know why we can’t smile? We’re totally pissed off!

Signed – An Irate Citizen.

P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture and getting someone to confirm that it’s me? Well, my family has been in this country since 1776 . I have served in the military for something over 30 years and have had security clearances up the ying yang. However, I have to get someone ‘important’ to verify who I am – you know, someone like my doctor WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN COMMUNIST CHINA!

Sincerely,

You Sure In The Hell Should Know Who.

I actually doubt this is a real letter but it has spread like wildfire on the Internet because it highlights the kind of frustrations that normal citizens have working with government bureaucracy. I have seen interactions like this in a whole new light after conversations with my wife. She is studying for a masters in public administration and one of the things that they studied was why bureaucracies were setup in the first place and what the advantages of them are. “What?” you say. “They have advantages?”

The idea is that a government bureaucracy is a solution to cronyism. You may get bad service when you go to the passport office or the DMV, but you get the same bad service as everyone else. You don’t have to know someone, or slip someone a bribe to get service. The bureaucracy, when it works as designed, is indifferent to you and who you are or who you know.

When a company provides bad service people will move their business over time to a competitor that provides better service. When you are frustrated with the line at the DMV or filling out your tax forms, people seldom decide that they will move to a different state or a different country where they might get better service. This lack of competition clearly removes some incentive for service and I think we all know that. We also see in industries with less competition where customers have fewer options we also tend to have poorer service. Think of your telephone company or cable provider.

But the situation is more complicated than that. When a company provides good service and steals business from their competition they get more business and therefore more money. When a government bureaucracy is more efficient at best it only gets more work. An agency that can figure out how to do more work with fewer people will probably get their budget slashed and will indeed end up with fewer people. It will not end up with more money coming in and fewer people as it might in a private sector company which could translate to higher profits or salaries or both.

So how do we change these fundamental rules? How would we provide incentives for government employees other than seniority. While getting older may be an accomplishment, it is should not be the only thing we value. If you have ideas… please take a number and wait in line 3 over there.

TAKE BACK YOUR TIME is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.

Vacations are vanishing. Only 14% of Americans will get a vacation of two weeks or longer this year. A third of women and a quarter of men get no annual leave anymore, as annual leave benefits are being eliminated like pensions. Many others are afraid to use their paid leave for fear they could be laid off or demoted if they do. No wonder the average American vacation is now down to a long weekend.

It’s time to protect vacations before they disappear altogether. Unlike 127 other countries, the U.S. has no minimum paid-leave law. Australians have four weeks off by law, the Europeans four and five weeks. The Japanese two weeks. We have zero. The lack of annual leave standards means many Americans never get time off, says “No Vacation Nation,” a recent report by the Center for Economic Policy Research.

The movement is trying to change the law in the United States and Canada to mandate minimum vacation time. This would still not solve the problem for people I know (some of who work for me) who don’t take off the time that they are given. That I do not understand.

I won’t be taking my own kayak on my upcoming trip to the Caribbean, but if I was I would be interested in taking this transparent kayak.

Why struggle with other tourists for the best seat on a glass-bottomed boat when you could explore on your own in a small boat made entirely of glass? Well, one reason might be that his transparent canoe/kayak from Hammacher Schlemmer costs $1,600.

SciFi Tech had a great article about this new lighter than air craft.

Private jets? Please. New Money has earned the ability to buy something bigger and ostentatious-er. Ready for a flying palace? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The Strato Cruiser Airship is a gigantic helium-filled blimp with a gourmet restaurant, spa, swimming pool, library and private offices. Add the Strato Cruiser’s resident DJ and it’s pretty much designed for a supervillain. I’m sure just kinda-evil rich people would enjoy, too.

Designs call for all manner of shiny, fun tech like carbon-fiber skin, sectional helium chambers and photovoltaic power cells. The Strato Cruiser’s but a concept, but you can still dream. Drool over those photos in the gallery below. — Adam Frucci

It makes you want to run right out, higher some henchmen (check out Local Henchman 432) and start working on your plan to conquer the world. If you do decide on this line of business then I would recommend reviewing the Evil Genius To Do List.

The official cruise site says:

• Cruise destinations include Cabo San Lucas, and Ensenada, Mexico.
• Cruise will span 5 fun-filled days and 5 exciting nights.
• Aren’t cruises expensive? We chose these dates in order to keep the prices low, as you can see compared to a typical land based con. Prices start at just $570 per person for a Full Event Pass – Inside Cabin, or $370 for a Limited Event Pass – Inside Cabin.

more info

P.Dilly of the Podcast Pickle has a giant pickle suit that he uses to promote the Podcast Pickle, his site about podcasts and podcasting. He says that coming back from New York City this week the TSA took his suit.

When we arrived hone in Dallas the Pickleman was not in our luggage. I checked with baggage, and they said TSA kept it in NY. That it was a security issue. That was all they knew in Dallas. They said TSA would be calling me soon.

How’s that again?