Category: travel
I arrived in NYC on Sunday and will be here for an entire week!
In addition to being asked to speak at the awesome Web 2.0 conference, I’m excited to be back and this time plan to spend time connecting with people and companies I always seem to run out of time for. The weather is super warm in the 70′s and 80′s with those oh-so-warm nights one comes to miss when living in San Francisco. Read More…
![Image for Hipmunk Airline Travel Made Easy [VIDEO]](http://cdn.butyoureagirl.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/9-1-2011-6-50-50-PM.png "Visit: Hipmunk Airline Travel Made Easy [VIDEO]")
Hipmunk totally saved my butt when I had to travel back to back from San Francisco to Park City, Utah to speak Friday and then depart the next day for Los Angeles, CA to speak Saturday!
I met with Florence (@flo_hipmunk) from Hipmunk for coffee to talk about the travel service. At first was a bit unsure about using it because I’ve been using Priceline since 2000 and have been using Yapta for price tracking on flights for the last year so I didn’t see where Hipmunk could fit into my travel planning for the public speaking I do…until last month.
When you travel to multiple cities before returning to your departure city, it’s known as “open jaw”. Searching for flights can seem like a “hit or miss” type thing but there are strategies like flying mid week and buying your tickets between Tuesday and Thursday (when airlines let go of tickets reserved by travel agents over the weekend that were not fully booked) and buying at least 21 days in advance.
For $352 I was able to travel from San Francisco on a Thursday to Park City , UT, speak Friday morning then fly out that afternoon so I could speak in Los Angeles, CA Saturday morning. It was friggin’ awesome to plan out my flight using Hipmunk because I could see all the legs of my flight and choose them by departure time!
This is one of the screenshots I took in early June when I was researching flights. I needed to make sure my departure and arrival times would allow me time to get to the conferences, socialize, network and of course speak!
Check out this fun video Grumo media did explaining Hipmunk:
I’ve arrived at my one year anniversary consulting with Zendesk and have been offered a full time position at Zendesk in Business Development!
In this new role, I will work to bring on new companies to Zendesk and expand our integrations + partnerships. So basically it’s geeky stuff plus relationship building. Right up my alley! I’m both excited and squeamish about the opportunity as it means learning new things and creating measurable success for Zendesk yet I will have to put my personal brand on hold. I start full time January 2010.
Want to come and work with me? Check out Zendesk Jobs including:
A year ago, I agreed to undertake creating the Zendesk webinars. At that time, Zendesk was receiving several requests a week for demos. This was not efficient. Since I’d been a long time customer of Zendesk, having left Cerberus in favor of a cloud based helpdesk solution, and a vocal customer, they asked if I would be interested in creating a webinar series for them. Uhm, think about it….heck yes! And so began the journey of chubby buddah, Adria and San Francisco. The Sunday after Blogworld ended and I’d delivered my 500 hugs for John Chow, I flew to San Francisco for the very first time…
The goal was to reduce demo requests and increase conversions of trial customers to paying customers. Also, if the webinars could answer common questions customers had, there would be less support tickets in the queue. I set the work learning what the customers wanted to know. I interviewed Zendesk staff (much smaller group a year ago), looked at tickets and talked with customer support advocates. I drafted an outline for the very first webinar, Zendesk 101 and out it went through the Zendesk email system for feedback. After a few tweaks, a brief set of slides and a lot of practice, I was ready to hold the first webinar!
Initially we had technical problems with the internet and audio quality. Webex was the first company we went with to deliver the webinars and thankfully now we’ve switched to Citrix’s GoToMeeting / GoToWebinar / GoToTraining packages. I made sure from the first day surveys were sent out to collect feedback. Being a consultant, it’s very important to collect feedback early on and then keep it coming in. Not only for quality validation but to improve the delivery of your services. I used Google Docs spreadsheets for the form to collect the survey responses. We’ve now switched to SurveyGizmo which has advanced reporting and survey logic.
I’m no longer doing the Zendesk webinars. Amy has come on to run them.
Since I have a technical background and and enjoy training, the webinars were focused on showing attendees how to accomplish things within the Zendesk backend like creating tickets, managing queues and activating widgets. I spent time doing QnA, taking people through specific questions they had about workflow. Eventually we started doing special webinars that dove deeper into a specific aspect of Zendesk like customizing the CSS or setting up email routing. Webinars featuring partner integrations came on soon as well. Of course, I picked Harvest as the first integration to do a webinar with because…well, they rock! They were also how I found out about Zendesk. I was using Harvest for my time tracking and invoicing and they mentioned on their blog about their integration to Zendesk and probably in a newsletter.
Then with the creation of the marketing team at Zendesk, webinars focused on product launches and lead generation came about.
The goal of the webinars was to help prospective customers decide and guide existing customers embrace Zendesk more. I enjoyed developing the content, talking with integration partners and reading the awesome feedback attendees left! I’ve seen many of them at conferences like DrupalCon and Blogworld so it’s a nice way to circle back.
Things were going well and I was liking this webinar thing for Zendesk! I came to find out I also liked San Francisco. I was highly focused on my first visit to San Francisco last October. I didn’t go out much and left exploring the city up to the real tourists. Several things about San Francisco gave me pause: the weather, the racial diversity of the people, the architecture, the food and the saturation of people working in technology. Zendesk wasn’t half bad themselves! They invited me to return in December for the holiday party and that’s when it truly hit me; I could move to San Francisco and work for Zendesk!
Upon their invite, I contacted several people living in San Francisco, asking if they would meet with me to give me their opinion of the city. Cheryl Contee (@ch3ryl), C.J. Hayden (@cjhayden) and Mike all happily agreed. Wow, did it make a difference to hear their own personal stories! Just six months before at Blogging While Brown, my table had decided I should move to San Francisco vs buying a condo in Minneapolis and I had happily added it to my list of goals but had no idea how it would manifest.
The Zendesk holiday party certainly cinched it for me. I had an excellent time, the Danish food was great and the mood was festive. We had the first company meeting and I was awed by the CEO’s vision for Zendesk. I wanted to be a part of their success!
Traveling has always been a hard thing for me to do. I hate getting lost. I would print out my Google directions and hop into the car to see a client. God forbid, I had to make a change in my route because I would have to print out more directions! This all changed when I started using GPS and the TomTom software. This improved even more once I got my 3GS iPhone. Due to the number of conferences I was speaking out, I eventually overcame this dislike of travel in 2009 so then the thought of making that “Move To San Francisco” goal became a bit more realistic.
I began researching places to live and stories of moving to San Francisco. I talked with the kindly folks mentioned above. I told Zendesk my intentions, announced it on my blog and asked Twitter for help. I made the move to San Francisco in 4 months time (January to April) and it was the right choice. I spent a lot of time talking about the move and made quite a few videos. I have a lot of videos that haven’t been published yet. Thinking of how to
[VIDEO] Moving To The Mission District In San Francisco
[VIDEO] 5 Weeks After The Move To San Francisco
First Video on San Francisco Move
[VIDEO] Day 5 San Francisco Move Countdown: Packing, Pets, Party, Puters
Farewell Moving Party This Friday
Day 7 Countdown To San Francisco [VIDEO]
[VIDEO] Adria’s Countdown to San Francisco Move – Day 11 #AdriamoveSF
[VIDEO] How To Get Your San Francisco Dream Apartment On Craigslist With PadMapper
Day 13 Countdown #AdriamoveSF [VIDEO]
Day 14 Countdown To San Francisco [VIDEO]
San Francisco Apartment Research And Twitter Lurking
One of the things that’s been a challenge is settling into working in an office. I’ve been working remotely for four years so coming into an office with people everywhere has taken a while for me to adjust to. Being an introvert, I prefer to spend time alone and quietly. That’s when I do my best work. The office has people, stuff and everyones talking to each other. Oh well. Adjust I will.
Tammy Hart was in town for Wordcamp San Francisco this month and dragged me on a touristy sight seeing day. 
We had a great time! Tammy took a bunch of photos and I grabbed this one from Facebook.
Thank you Tammy for making me go out on a sightseeing tour!
A reminder that you still have time to RSVP for Friday’s farewell party. It will be held at Azia Restaurant in Minneapolis between 6pm – 9pm.
Thanks for all the nice comments folks! I’ll certainly miss Minneapolis!
I’m back from San Francisco and for tonight’s AskAdria live video show, I covered my trip to San Francisco including my strategies for apartment hunting. Enjoy!
Make sure to RSVP for my going away party next week!
Catch the live show at AskAdria each Monday at 6:30pm Central (That’s 4:30pm Pacific, 7:30pm Eastern, 11:30pm GMT)
So next month I’m moving to San Francisco. It almost doesn’t seem real!
photo credit: tomt6788
Twitter hashtag: #movetoSF
Since December, I’ve been perusing the ads of Craigslist to get an idea of what I could expect once I made the decision to move to San Francisco. Read More…
I’m happy to share that I got my very first passport in the mail today! I went to the post office just 4 weeks ago and today I got it!!!!
Photo Credit: adria.richards
I have wanted a passport for so long but felt intimidated about getting one and also didn’t know how I would even begin to use it since a year ago, I got very nervous about traveling. Attending all these conferences and having clients all over has truly helped me develop a better comfort level with travel!
Now I can train, travel and speak anywhere in the world! Check out speaking topics and sample work at http://adriarichards.com/speak
Feeling happy and ready to check off another goal on my list *smile*
I’m one step closer to empowering the world through technology!
Thank you everyone for your support and advice on filling out the papers and the process. I was so nervous but asking for help on Twitter, bringing Bluey with me and researching what I needed beforehand really helped.
My cat Turtle rocks! Here she is in a quick YouTube video I did this morning as she sat on my lap and then migrated to laying on top of my Magic mouse and Apple keyboard. She’s 15 years old, a Tortishell and my most favorite animal in the whole world. She’s laid back and I can’t wait to take her out to San Francisco with me where where she can have access to a garden year round!
I like to think of her as my part time employee because she’s often here when I’m working at my desk.
Here are some photos I took a few years back when I heard about Stuff On My Cat. I was able to cram quite a bit of stuff on Turtle before she got up and walked away…disgusted!
Well, after 26 years of living in Minnesota, I’ve decided it’s time to move.
This is all for now. I could go into the reasons that I will miss the Twin Cities. There are people here who I find supremely awesome and inspiring. I will miss them.
I have a target move date for April 2010. That’s less than 2 months away. It’s my time to explore the world so here I go! I do find the prospect of moving quite terrifying as you may remember last year just traveling to Chicago left me feeling unsettled. It’s a good time to do this. I’m young, single, no kids and so, so ready to make a difference in the world.
Check back to the blog and this blog post as I will be updating it with the details of my move including:
If you’re in Minneapolis, let’s have coffee together in March. I may do some sort of small get together if it seems like a good fit.
If you’re in San Francisco, reach out as I’ll need help finding a place, getting around and meeting folks.
Photo credit: releasingorange, CarbonSilver (gbenz), Wuggum03
I’m heading to WordCamp Chicago today and mentioned on Twitter that I wasn’t bringing my electric toothbrush. I didn’t want the hassle of TSA making up “rules” on the spot and then telling me I’d have to toss my toothbrush. @swirlspice suggested I try and get it through TSA so today I will attempt to bring my toothbrush with me as carry-on.
I found some interesting experiences on the internet:
Let’s design a basic, compact, TSA-compliant carry-on “survival kit”
In light of the continuing drama-rama that is the TSA (see this thread), I propose a project: let’s design a basic carry-on kit that complies with TSA rules while granting the bearer the most comprehensive array of essentials possible in the event of an emergency (delayed/lost luggage, etc). The more compact the “core” essentials, the more space is left over for items you don’t want to check (read: “donate,” provided they’re legal to carry onto the plane).
Confessions of a Baggage Screener
So far I had seen the machines flag plenty of deodorant sticks, toothpaste tubes, and shoe heels, which showed up on the screen outlined in red. I had handled sex toys, machetes, and pistols (legal in checked bags). But the closest thing I had seen to a bomb were manufactured images on the screen created by the Threat Image Projection System, a software package developed by the government to make sure we were paying attention. Every once in a while, I learned, police let drug dogs find contraband so they don’t grow discouraged. I didn’t much care for the implied comparison.
The ticking was real enough, though, and I couldn’t let the suitcase through until I’d figured out the origin of the sound. A US Airways supervisor was hovering nearby, and jittery fliers were peeking at us through the breaks in the partitions. I took everything out, stacking clothes on the table. I felt around the lining. I turned the suitcase over once more, noted that the ticking stopped, and saw a bulge in a tiny pocket tucked between the rods for the extendable handle. It was an electric toothbrush that turned on when it pressed against the table but was packed too tight to vibrate.
Common Items, Extraordinary Threat (TSA Blog)
Authorities overseas also found an electric toothbrush, similar to one the TSA showed ABC News, which was actually re-engineered to detonate a plastic explosive that could be hidden in the lining of a briefcase.
