Telecommunications

Working Relationships

Aug 28th

As I believe I’ve written previously, all of us on Global Traveler‘s editorial staff (editor in chief Lisa Matte, senior editor Janice Hecht, art director Tracey Cullen and I) work from home offices. What’s more, we live in four different states — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Oregon — and two different time zones. Through the wonders of modern technology, though, we’ve developed a very efficient process for producing a beautiful and informative magazine every month (as well as a number of supplements each year).

We’ve only all come together once, on the occasion of GT‘s fifth anniversary celebration, so you might think that ours are strictly business-like relationships. However, over the years we’ve interspersed work-talk with more personal matters, and shared aspects of our lives and interests apart from the magazine.

Working alone at home can be a somewhat isolating experience, so it’s nice to be able to develop a warm and friendly partnership with those linked to you by computer and phone. We swap stories involving families, trips and gardens and commiserate with each other over weather (too cold, hot, wet or deep!) and car and home repairs.

I especially enjoy the sharing of just-this-moment bits of interest. Earlier this summer Jan reported she was under a tornado warning (in Connecticut?!), and we waited to hear that she was in the all-clear afterward. This week, Tracey sent a great photo she’d just taken in her backyard. She reported having heard a lot of commotion out there in the preceding days, with the birds being literally all a-twitter over something. That morning she discovered the cause of all the ruckus: a hawk had been hunting, and she snapped him in a tree feasting upon an unlucky mole. (Tracey actually had little sympathy for the mole, as her husband had been trying to eradicate them from the yard for weeks.) Jan then replied with a possible identification of the bird (complete with a description of its cry) and stories of her own encounters with the raptors. I shared my own humbler version of backyard battles: I’d been distracted that day by aerial dogfights, that would have made the Red Baron proud, between two hummingbirds battling over the choicest flowers.

These little tidbits from our daily lives are hardly earth-shattering, but they comprise the building blocks of a positive working relationship between far-flung individuals. I have no doubt that this same kind of sharing occurs between business people on every continent all over the world – the exchange of children’s pictures at dinner, the swapping of battle stories across the aisle on a jetliner, a tip for a great place to visit as a meeting adjourns – bringing each of us a little closer to another.

– Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor

The Home Office

Feb 18th

Posted by Kim in Blackberrys

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I believe working from home is the way of the day, age and future. With the world so well connected through wireless, laptops, phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, BlackBerry Messenger, Instant Messaging, GChat, video chat, Skype and Internet cafes, connecting with a colleague or client has never been more convenient.

Additionally, with the closing of larger corporations, we are now entering an era of the niche service. People are slowly starting to realize how to customize their services to a specific niche. It is less costly, the relationships are stronger and there is less red tape and digging through large company directories to tryÂ to find the right human to speak with.

Of course, there are some downsides to not working in an office. Passing Joe by the coffee machines might remind you to follow up with that client you both met with last week. Seeing Amy at reception might remind you to put up an auto-reply on your email while you are in meetings all afternoon.

Here are some useful home office tips I have found very helpful in keeping myself organized in Brooklyn:

Have a landline in addition to your cell phone. BlackBerrys and iPhones make life pretty easy, but a call through a landline will never drop on you or create static. I am used to using a BlackBerry for work and personal, but I also like having a landline, with a light that blinks for voicemails and a speakerphone. A landline can even change your presence over the phone.
Have a large calendar over your desk. In addition to keeping track of things on your computer’s calendar and your phone’s calendar and, maybe even, a small planner you carry with you, have something large and visible over your desk as well. It’s an extra thing to write on, but writing something down three times will also keep you from forgetting.
Keep a dry erase board for weekly and monthly goals. Dry erase boards save paper and they are a great way to keep your goals organized and color-coordinated.
Purchase cabinets and shelves with closing doors. In a home office, it’s easy to get trapped between being home and being in the office. Having closing cabinets will help you close down on nights and weekends.
Pick a spot in your home with good natural light. Plants and sunlight will also keep your mood chipper and your oxygen flow higher.

These tips can also apply to your workspace in your away-from-home office as well. I wonder how many global travelers work from home offices?

– Courtney Centeno, account executive

Local News

Nov 15th

Posted by patty in Cities

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Allow me, today, to rant briefly, Andy Rooney-like, about one of my pet peeves. If you’ve read my blog very much, you’ve picked up on the fact that I live in Southern Oregon, just outsideÂ the small city of Medford. I enjoy living somewhere that offers the benefits of civilization (good medical care, shopping, eclectic restaurants, a livelyÂ cultural scene) as well as access to the outdoors and a wide range of local foodstuffs (and wine!). The Rogue Valley certainly fits the bill on all those counts. What needs improvement, though, are the local news broadcasts.

Those who travel or who’ve lived in a variety of places know that the quality of local news dependsÂ a lot on the size of the market. Obviously, the experienced talent (and the money to build a professional news-gathering team and produce a polished broadcast) will land in the big cities: New York, L.A., Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, etc. From there, it’s a descending scale, kind of like going from the NFL to college to high school to Pop Warner football.

When I lived in Twin Falls, Idaho, I experienced probably one of the smallest markets in the country, and we had one local station in town (but could draw on Boise and Salt Lake City, too). Growing up in Portland, we had three network-affiliated stations and an independent (long before cable came along) in a mid-sized market, and during all my years in Washington state I enjoyed the local broadcasts from the large Seattle market. Now I’m back in a comparatively small-market arena, although it covers a large geographic area (Sacramento to Eugene, and the Pacific coast east to Reno and Bend) and supports three network affiliates. Let me just say, the on-air talent pickin’s are slim, ESPECIALLY on the weekends.

I get that these folks need to get their training somewhere — most of them look like they are fresh out of journalism school — and reading the news live is harder than it looks, but sometimes I find myself addressing wardrobe advice and correct pronunciations of fairly common words to the T.V. screen (similar to the way my husband offers commentary when he’s watching a football game, though I don’t think I’m as loud — or profane!). Really, you can be forgiven for messing up some of the more unusual local geographic names if you’re a newcomer here (and most catch on fairly quickly), but common, ordinary words or well-known political figures’ names? I wonder if they practice those cheesy smiles in the mirror more than they do reading their copy!

The thing that makes me really squirm, though, is unscripted, “folksy” banter between news team members. I know, it’s not particularly enjoyable onÂ any broadcast anywhere. It’s especially bad on slow news days when apparently they need to fill extra air time. Please, I don’t want to know what you’re doing on the weekend or what you think of the story about the surfing squirrel. I don’t want to see the weather gal flirt with the sports guy. It often goes on far too long and ventures into the ridiculous. And of course, on weekends when there often isn’t a lot of big news, the situation is compounded when you have the second-string reporters at the desk. They become visibly flustered and laugh nervously when they have to fill air space for more than 20 seconds; it’s just too painful to watch. Please, end the newscast with scenicÂ shotsÂ viewers have sent inÂ over some niceÂ music, scroll the sports scores or even tell us what’s on following the news, but don’t try to ad lib your way through a minute of small talk!!

There, I feel a little better. Maybe I’d just better avoid those weekend newscasts altogether from here on out!

– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

The Power of Print

Oct 8th

Posted by patty in Articles

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In this day and age of Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Bing, Yahoo (the list could go on forever), handwritten letters sent through snail mail are few and far between. So whenever I receive a letter in the mail, I take the time to sit down and read it, as opposed to whizzing through my email every morning.

My father loves to write. He has the penmanship of a calligraphist and collects rare fountain pens for pleasure. As I was growing up, he always told me that there is nothing like a handwritten letter. I went to college a mere 30 minutes from my hometown, and my father still wrote me at least once or twiceÂ a month. Even in New york I know my dad is just a phone call away, but taking the time to write a small noteÂ takes just enough effort that the person on the receiving end feels genuinely cared about.

Thank-you emails are quick and efficient enough so that one can easily follow up after meeting someone. Perhaps the person you met will be more likely to remember you if you shoot them a quick email later that day. But a handwritten note is rarely forgotten.

I feel the same way towards print and online. We are all beginning to see publications dwindle in numbers (T & L Golf, Gourmet) as we are overwhelmed with new blogs and online information. My friends and I communicate frequently through email, and we often share articles and blogs we’ve read online with one another. With a click of a button, I can share an article with my friend before I’ve even finished it. However, on several occasions where I have received an article in the mail that was torn from its publication, I’ve truly felt touched.

These days, we can achieve tasks so quickly and efficiently that the few extra steps of stamping and addressing a letter have much more meaning. With publications becoming a rarity, we will start to see the true value with the print that remains. Like a handwritten note, information seems to carry more weight and value when you can physically hold it in your hand.

– Courtney Centeno, account executive