Our client Homeaway is sponsoring a Getaway contest, a dream vacation worth up to $5,000, to the blogger, videographer or photographer who creates the most compelling answer to this question: Why do you need a getaway, and where would you like to spend it?

Oy, I wish I could enter this contest. The whole time Sheila Scarborough and I have been helping the HomeAway team put this contest together, my imagination has run wild. Travel is something I rarely get to do–for pleasure, that is; I’ve done a fair bit of travel this year to speak at conferences.

But a real vacation? The kind without succumbing to the tuneful ring of a cell phone or squelching the urge to check email every hour? Haven’t had one of those in five long years. A day off here and there, maybe a long weekend, that’s it.

Oh, and sick days. Had quite a few of those. 2008 has been a year of struggle health-wise: I’ve battled an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, undiagnosed autoimmune disorder, and a back injury. Then there was selling the family homestead and moving my mom out of the house where she’d lived for 38 years into a house with me and my sister. Combining 3 households took 2 estate sales, 2 garage sales, and trips to auction houses and consignment stores as well as donations to the Salvation Army.

How’s that for a sob story for why I need a getaway? Well, at least you can understand why I’ve been daydreaming about where I’d go for my dream vacation.

First choice: a sweet little château in the south of France.

I studied at the Université de Clermont-Ferrand the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, and I have always wanted to go back to France someday. Here’s a lovely place I found on the HomeAway site–a charming little castle (in fact, that’s its name) with 7 bedrooms and 5 baths. (Not too big; I wouldn’t want to appear pretentious!)

The Chateau de Charme is a 12th-century castle. Totally restored and modernized, it offers luxury accomodation, inlcuding a private swimming pool. Situated in a rural hilly area where the famous ‘Charolais beef’ is bred and offering panoramic views, the château is 5 minutes away from the medieval village of Charlieu. Many vineyards are nearby–the Beaujolais region is just 30 minutes by car. The local wine is Les Côtes Roannaises.

Second choice: a stylish San Francisco house with panoramic views

A U.S. city I’ve always wanted to visit is San Francisco. HomeAway’s site features vacation rentals from Nob Hill homes to Victorian apartments in Pacific Heights and even a Sausalito houseboat. But the one that captured my eye was this stylish, 3-story, architect-designed house with two killer features: panoramic views of downtown San Francisco as well as the Bay, and a Steinway grand piano in the living room. A Steinway grand–hello!

This home, high on Potrero Hill, would be a perfect spot for a writer’s retreat. I feel creative just looking at the photos! The owner, who lives here when not traveling, says: “There are sweeping views of downtown San Francisco and the Bay from almost every room. The large, open living room has a dramatic marble fireplace, an award-winning staircase, antique Japanese furniture, original art and sculpture, a Steinway grand piano, and a soaring cathedral ceiling with sunlight streaming through the two double French doors, and a huge skylight. The master bedroom, which occupies the entire third floor, has a Japanese-style bath, a wall of glass framing a magnificent view of San Francisco, and a private redwood deck.”

It even has wireless Internet throughout the house. And, this vacation rental is under $3,000 per week–which means that HomeAway would give me $2,000 cash to cover travel expenses!

Oh, wait. I can’t enter the contest. *big sigh*

But you can. Where do you want to go on your dream vacation? You’ve got 120,000+ vacation rental properties to choose from.

I hope you’ll give it a try with a blog post (350 words); a YouTube video (two minutes); or a set of photos on Flickr (up to 10 photos w/ captions of less than 20 words each). You can find more information here: How to Enter the Contest. Just tell us (and the world) why you need a getaway, and where you’d like to spend it. Entries will be accepted through January 7 and voting begins January 8.

If you win, all I ask is that you send me a postcard so I can live vicariously.

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I don’t personally agree with his methodology, but I must admit I was morbidly fascinated by the results….

PR guy Peter Shankman was riding the train to some business-related destination when another man sat across from him, pulled out a cell phone and said “Apologies in advance, I talk a lot.”

Insert grimace here, right? Immediately don iPod/noise-cancelling headphones, and rue the advent of technology, right?

Shankman went further.

He could hear from the man’s constant chatter that he was conducting sensitive business on the phone, so Shankman decided that an object lesson was in order.

With a warning tweet out to his Twitter stream, Shankman turned his laptop around, faced it towards Mr. Oblivious Babbling Businessman and proceeded to livestream the guy on Yahoo LIVE.

I happened to see Shankman’s tweet, and out of curiosity (I admit, I knew this event had “Every Dot Connects blog post” written all over it) I watched the stream for awhile until it was cut off, including the guy yakking away to his lawyer about business information.

The instructive part of this drill was the comments.  When I logged on to Yahoo LIVE, about 50 people were listening to and watching Mr. Oblivious Babbling Businessman.  They were researching madly and posting….

His name.

His company.

His LinkedIn profile, including an aside that he only had two connections.

His ZoomInfo page.

His work phone number.

It was easy to do since the guy spoke fairly clearly and with plenty of detail. Chat participants also took screenshots of Mr. OBB and sent them to Shankman’s email account, for use in a future post, no doubt.

Chat members worried when the stream stopped and the screen went red (one wrote, “….the guy jumped him [meaning jumped Shankman] and the camera fell in a pool of blood, it appears.”)

It was the “definition of a train wreck” typed another online chat observer.

No kidding.

This is why so many people and companies freak out about the Web, and they SHOULD if they’re just now figuring out that everyone is a potential recorder/journalist, and laptops have Webcams (so if a laptop is facing you, it might behoove you to consider whether you’re being livestreamed.)

My thoughts….

• It is not new that one should not conduct private business in public places, especially about legal issues.
• It is not new that it is rude to talk and talk and talk on your cell phone in close, crowded public places.

What IS new is the ability of technology to instantly spread your foibles worldwide, if someone equipped with that technology chooses to do so.

In a perfect world, none of us would do stupid, rude things. It is not a perfect world, of course, and we aren’t going to stuff that livestream back into the pre-Web bottle, so people and companies had better understand….

1. What this technology can do (meaning all the way up through the C-suite needs to understand what technology can do, not just “those IT guys”) and
2. What it means to the never-a-good-idea of sweeping errors under the rug. You can run but you cannot hide.

I’m sure Shankman will get an earful about this incident, but I’ll submit this….he will get in a lot less trouble for doing it than Mr. Oblivious Babbling Businessman will get when that train pulls in and he goes to his office.

What do you think, readers? Was Shankman’s shot fair or foul?

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In the continued blurring of the lines between content creators serving as “new media”, public relations professionals, mainstream media and the combination of all of the above, I was given press credentials and a media kit for an excellent haunted house here in Austin. In keeping with the interactive nature of social media, I was even invited to participate.

The Mansion of Terror Haunted House, in its fifth year in Austin, is inviting members of the media, including social media, to interact with and even be a part of their haunted house.

If you choose to, and they think you can handle it, you can be a part of the Mansion of Terror, getting a full Hollywood Make up FX session, as well as a Hollywood quality costume and acting lessons.

If you’re not feeling that much of the exhibitionism spirit, but still want to see how it all works, you can still hang out with the actors while they perform. We received invitations, as media, to hang out backstage and shoot footage, interview the actors, and generally get a “behind the scenes” view of a night at the Mansion of Terror.

Or you can directly shadow a specific Mansion of Terror actor. By hiding in the shadows, wearing black, and staying quiet, the Mansion of Terror Haunted House will allow you to document how their scenes and scares actually work. You’ll know the all the secrets.

I opted to be on the receiving end of the performances and went through both sides of the Mansion of Terror. It’s some pretty scary stuff, and I grew up on this kind of thing – thanks Mom! – so I know more than a little bit about what’s scary and what’s just corny. The Mansion of Terror will make even the most hardened among us start looking for the exits.

I’d recommend to any social media types who are here in Austin to contact them and see if they will allow you to take them up on their offer. If you don’t feel like being a reporter, you can go as a customer. It’s worth it. I promise you. Check out the Flickr slide show and the film clips on the website.

To get in touch with them email dneff22@gmail.com or DM on twitter @daveiam.

The Mansion of Terror is very social media centric. When you check out the website you’ll see they’re on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and, of course, FlickR. With so many ways you can follow and connect with them, it’s great for really getting into the Halloween spirit.

The best way to really know the feeling of horror and fear you will get from the Mansion of Terror, however, is to go visit in person. Good luck and Happy Halloween.

WARNING:
This haunted house has intense sequences of graphic violence, extensive blood and gore, small claustrophobic enclosed areas, extended periods of total darkness, strobe special effects. This attraction may be too intense for patrons under 13 years of age.

~Mike Chapman

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When I spoke at the Chicago BlogHer conference in 2007, I vividly remember BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone making a series of announcements from the stage that included, “You need to make the assumption that everything here is ‘on the record’ unless you indicate otherwise, and everyone here is a journalist.”

In a room full of keyboard-pecking / podcasting / videoblogging enthusiasts, that was not exactly a bombshell, but some of the business world has yet to come to grips with the idea that everyone (including customers without any particular axe to grind) can be expected to record and report information.

A company’s bungled reaction to this can quickly turn even a happy or neutral customer into someone mad as a hornet.

The latest example of this is one of the airlines, JetBlue.

Passenger Marilyn Parver filmed an altercation between two passengers on a recent flight. One of the passengers was the mother of a child who had been acting up on the flight, and the other passenger was not happy about the child’s behavior.

“Suddenly, I heard loud shouts and removed my headset,” she added. “I realized that the man seated next to the loud child had finally lost it.”

At that point, the child’s mother and the passenger were yelling at each other, Parver added.

“On instinct, I turned my video camera towards the altercation,” Parver said.

Having just left from a visit with her grandchild in Boston, Parver said she thought the video would be a good example to show her daughter how children’s behavior affects other people. Parver said she did not leave her seat or even stand up in it.

“I was not interested in who was involved, I just wanted the words being said,” Parver added, “so I did not adjust the exposure and kept everyone in full shadow.”

In the less than two-minute video, an off-screen man can be heard yelling at a woman to control her child and the mother responding also in anger.

“A JetBlue employee settles the dispute very appropriately,” Parver said. “There was no violence or extreme behavior.”

The problem arose when JetBlue discovered that Marilyn had filmed the incident, and they demanded that she erase the video, primarily because they were concerned that it would be uploaded to YouTube.

When she refused to delete her video, Marilyn was arrested.

“I’m a rational, non-threatening 56-year-old grandmother who was complying with every request the flight crew made, other than delete two minutes of video,” Parver said. “I knew I had done nothing wrong and that the flight crew was out of line to demand I delete a video.”

JetBlue told Ms. Parver that if she didn’t do as she was told, she would be blackballed from ever flying JetBlue again. She was informed that her name would be circulated to other airlines in a report and she would have a hard time flying with them as well.

She still refused and is taking formal action against the airline.

This is a perfect example of a social media tempest in a teapot; JetBlue overreacted to their fear of video uploads to YouTube, even though there was nothing negative about their company in the video.

As travel expert Chris Elliott points out in his blog post about the incident,

“I’m not a lawyer, but I can’t find any rules that would prohibit a paying passenger from filming the interior of a JetBlue aircraft or of any commercial plane. Parver said she phoned JetBlue later, and that a representative told her she could tape whatever she wanted….This case underscores the travel industry’s sensitivity to the growing influence of social media, and particularly to viral videos.”

There is more about it in the Wall Street Journal and Consumerist and Gadling, and it’s also up on Digg. Way to keep the issue under wraps, eh, JetBlue?

While I certainly understand that companies are concerned about bad publicity, I do not understand this sort of heavy-handed reaction, particularly when all it does is make a company look thuggish and silly.

Is that what JetBlue wants for its brand reputation?

The reality is that these days, anyone can carry and use a small video recorder like the Flip camera. Most digital still cameras can also shoot video and anyone can stream live video from their cell phone.

Social media technology is evolving and spreading, and smart companies right now should do two things:

1. Make sure that they are up to speed on those technologies (how many who work in the average B2C company even know that you can stream live video from a cell phone? To keep up with Web 2.0 technology and how to use it, start with Robert Scoble on FriendFeed) and….
2. Think through the implications of that technology, and discuss how you want employees to interact with customers who might use it in conjunction with your business. Not interact as in, “Let’s hunker down and call our lawyers,” but interact as in, “How can we use these tools to better serve our customers, and how can we train our employees to better understand these tools?”

A company that strives to do the right thing and make good decisions has little to fear from video cameras.

Yes, that’s an “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” sort of sentiment, but it’s still accurate, for people and for businesses.

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I’ve mentioned my favorite political blogger here several times. She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s extremely knowledgable on politics, and I give her much of the credit for getting me interested in social media. Now I get to be on some high powered panels with her as part of My ooVoo Day Political Edition this Sunday and Monday.

My political blogging hero is Eileen Smith, creator of In The Pink Texas and editor of TexasMonthly.com the online edition of Texas Monthly magazine. OK, I tricked her into doing this with flattery and small bribes. That’s not really true, but if you read her blog posts regularly, you’ll get the spirit.

The Pink Lady and I don’t always agree and when we don’t, she’s always right. Well, except on a few issues and I won’t mention what they are. If you watch the replay of our panel here on Every Dot Connects, or on one of Eileen’s blogs, you’ll probably figure out what those very, very few issues are. Here’s a hint, I supported Barack Obama and she still wants Hillary to take it to the convention. Other than that, we agree on everything.

Politics can get really boring for normal people. Eileen gets that and makes the issues of the day fun. She isn’t Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert…she’s better. Recently, she posted about our upcoming panel, which just happens to be on Obama’s birthday (I thought you’d like that Eileen) and, once again, she cracked me up.

Here’s her take…

When my blog friend and yours, The Other Guy, started telling me about some new, exciting platform for online communications and digital media, I quickly said “unsubscribe” and hung up the phone. But then he told me it had something to do with a live video chat and I’m like, sign me up. Who am I to pass up yet another opportunity to embarrass myself and the entire staff of Texas Monthly?

God knows I’ve had plenty of practice, appearing on panels I have no business being on, where I nod my head thoughtfully and continuously blink so as to appear awake. No matter. I’ve already coerced the lovely Karen Brooks and the lovely Andy Brown to appear on the virtual panel so they can save my virtual ass.

ooVoo is the hot new video chat and conferencing tool (and I say it’s “hot” and “new” because I just found out about it). They’re hosting several virtual political panels over the next week. You can sign up to be a participant if slots are available (especially if you have a mac and a built-in web cam). Live streaming is not an option yet, but you can watch the recorded sessions once they’re uploaded. I’ll be posting them here once they’re online so you all can make fun of me while I get all defensive and then burst into tears. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?! Who’s the Other Guy?

Here’s the full line-up:

Adriana Maestas, Marisa Trevino & Edmundo Rocha / Latino Politics Blog, Latina Lista & XicanoPwr
Albert Maruggi / Provident Partners
Arlene Fenton / Black Women Vote
Baratunde Thurston / goodCRIMETHINK
Eric Roston / Carbon Nation
Eileen Smith & Mike Chapman / In The Pink Texas & Every Dot Connects
Erin Kotecki Vest / Queen of Spain
Jason Rosenbaum / The Seminal
Joanne Bamberger, Glennia Campbell & Stefania Pomponi Butler / PunditMom, The Silent I & City Mama
L.N. Rock / African American Political Pundit
Leslie Carbone
Liza Sabater / Liza Sabater, culturekitchen, Daily Gotham
Mary Katherine Ham / HamBlog
Matt Parker / Political Buzz
Morra Aarons / Women and Work
Nicco Mele / EchoDitto
Robert Millis & Will Coghlan / Hudson Street Media
Todd Zeigler / The Bivings Report

Join us or one of the many others who are participating in the ooVoo Day Political Edition. Tune in.

~Mike Chapman

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If you followed the story of the Frozen Pea Fund from the beginning, you know that just before Susan Reynolds was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, David Neff of the American Cancer Society had asked me to do some pro bono work for the Society on a new project. SharingHope.tv has now launched, and I’m very happy I was able to be part of the effort to let people know about this new Web community created to help connect cancer survivors, their friends and family members.

David, who is director of Web and interactive strategy for ACS, was kind enough to sit down with me recently and talk about the origins of the idea for SharingHope.tv, and why they decided to build it with Ruby on Rails and enable OpenID. (My video skills obviously need a lot of work. Note to self: buy a tripod for the Flipcam.)

* upload videos, photos, music or artwork
* add free background music from independent artists
* view content, make comments, and share it with others
* embed videos on their own blogs or MySpace and Facebook pages
* store twice as much video content as YouTube
* log in with an existing OpenID
* create an OpenID using ACS Passport

For more information, read the news release. Susan Reynolds has started posting videos on SharingHope.tv, sharing information she wishes she’d had access to before her surgery, such as this one where she talks about the process of making treatment decisions.

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She sparkles. Even without the stage lights or her signature sequins and fringe. Wearing a plain pair of jeans and a cotton shirt, Wanda Jackson walks onto the tiny stage at the Continental Club for a sound check. I can’t help noticing that she’s a tiny woman. But when she picks up the microphone, the band strikes a chord, and she growls, “Some people like to rock, some people like to roll,” there is no doubt that the larger-than-life Queen of Rockabilly is still making a statement at age 70: “Let’s Have a Party.”

The Smithsonian Channel invited me to sit down with Wanda while she was in Austin for a screening of the documentary of her life, The Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice. A second SXSW screening will take place on March 14, and the worldwide broadcast premiere will be Sunday, May 18.

In the 1950′s Wanda Jackson toured with the men who would become the legends of Rock ‘n Roll: Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, and the King himself, Elvis Presley, whom she dated briefly. Although she was the first woman to record a rock ‘n roll song, Wanda Jackson has yet to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

That leaves Elvis Costello, who recorded “Crying Time” with Wanda on her 2003 CD, Heart Trouble, incensed. In an open letter to propose Wanda’s induction into the Hall of Fame, Costello wrote, “Look around today and you can hear lots of rocking girl singers who owe an unconscious debt to the mere idea of a woman like Wanda. She was standing up on stage with a guitar in the hand and making a sound that was as wild and raw as any rocker, man or woman, while other gals were still asking, ‘How much is that doggy in the window?’”

My Podversation with Wanda Jackson is split into two parts; we got interrupted for a sound check with the band. Both parts are included below, along with a snippet I recorded during the sound check. It’s a duet with Wanda and Rosie Flores. I could barely hold my little Flip cam still; I wanted to tap my feet, swing my hips and sing along to “Woman, Walk out the Door.”

Special thanks to my Twitter pal, Paull Young, for having a hunch that I was a Wanda Jackson fan. Check out the work he’s doing for the Smithsonian Channel Community.

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That’s right. I am officially a Par-tay girl–or I will be on Wednesday night, when I join host Jonny Goldstein for a video conversation on Jonny’s Par-tay. I’ll be appearing with Susan Reynolds to talk about the Frozen Pea Fund and how online connections can become a vibrant community.

Check out the show info and find out how you can be part of the conversation.

Mark your calendar: Wednesday, February 13, 9:00 pm EST

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Susan Reynolds and I have been invited by the folks at crayon and their client, ooVoo, to be part of the upcoming My ooVoo Day With … series of video chats. To launch their beta version with a demonstration of the new service, which allows up to six people to video chat, ooVoo recruited about 20 bloggers/authors/speakers to host informal chat sessions, on a topic of their choosing. In lieu of paying each of the participating hosts, ooVoo will donate $1,500 to charity; most of the hosts have chosen to designate their funds for a cause dear to my heart, the Frozen Pea Fund.

This is a win-win-win-win situation. ooVoo will have several hundred people test-driving their service, readers get to connect with some of their favorite bloggers, who get increased exposure in the marketplace, and a worthy cause gets its first corporate donation.

Susan and I will be hosting several video chat sessions on Sunday, February 10, on the topic From Connections to Community: How Online Relationships Enrich Our Lives.

Each chat session can accommodate four people, and 18 slots were filled the first day. To register, go to My ooVoo Day, download the software (available for Mac users too–only at this link), and then sign up for an open seat.

Here’s a rundown of the times and topics we will be available to talk about:

Session 1 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST — Building Connections and Networking Online
(four 15-minute time slots available)
Topics: Finding and Friending; Your Profile Is Your Personal Brand; Cultivating Relationships

Session 2 4:00 to 4:30 p.m. EST — Taking it Face to Face: stories of meetups and tweetups (three 10-minute time slots)

Session 3 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. EST — When Connections Become a Community
(four 15-minute time slots)
Topics: How Online Communities Celebrate, Grieve; How to Talk to Someone About Cancer or Crisis; Give the Present of Your Presence

There’s no set agenda, just some topics to suggest the direction of the conversation. I hope you’ll join us for at least one of our 15-minute sessions.

And don’t stop with just one session or one host. Look at the incredible lineup of guests ooVoo has put together — these are the kind of speakers you would travel to a conference to hear. Now you can get some face-to-face time with them from the convenience of your laptop. All you need is a webcam and a broadband connection.

• Mitch Joel/Six Pixels of Separation
• Steve Hall/AdRants
• Bob Garfield/AdAge & On the Media
• Joseph Jaffe/JaffeJuice
• John Wall & Christopher Penn/Marketing Over Coffee
• iJustine
• Marshall Kirkpatrick/ReadWriteWeb
• Irina Slutsky/GeekEntertainment.tv
• Connie Reece & Susan Reynolds Every Dot Connects / Boobs on Ice
• Chris Thilk/Movie Marketing Madness
• Erin Kotecki Vest/Queen of Spain
• Dave Delaney/Two Boobs and a Baby +
• Jack Myers & Friends/Media Village
• David Meerman Scott/The New Rules of Marketing & PR
• Geoff Livingston/Now Is Gone
• Allan Cox/Your Inner CEO
• George Parker/Madscam
• Scott Sigler
• Chris Brogan
• C.C. Chapman
• Susan Reynolds/Boobs on Ice
• Laura “Pistachio” Fitton

Sign up now — before all the slots are filled for My ooVoo Day With …

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Connie Reece talks about personal branding and her new hair color.

Note: RSS readers may need to click through to the web site to view.

My much-neglected humor blog is Blogabillies. I haven’t posted lately, but browse through the archives and you’ll find some fun stuff from Belle (me) and T-Bone (Terry Taylor).

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