Links to the other sessions: Session 1, Session 3, Session 4
Day broken out in “movements.” First session was culture. Now business.
In this session:
Links to the other sessions: Session 2, Session 3, Session 4
In this session:
Okay, I final got a chance to prep for tomorrow’s (now, later today’s) big event… TEDx Lansing! My grandiose plan is to actually try to both type AND post notes about the presentations during the event. We’ll find out how realistic this is tomorrow morning. But if it gets in the way or I’m terrible at being able to listen and post adequately, I’ll likely stop.
In any case, I’m pumped for the event. I prepped blog posts for the 4 separate sessions and that got me to look through the presenters again. It looks like a great line-up. So, I’ll be heading to the Wharton Center in the morning for the 9:00am (sharp!) start time. Three Internet-capable devices will be in tow and wi-fi will be provided, so hopefully I can at least get a few comments tossed through the tubes. You can use this post as an on-ramp to the other posts. Here’s a break down of the 4 sessions or go to the schedule page on the event site: Continue reading »
Last week, several us from the office took a 60-minute jaunt down the road to Ann Arbor. No, we didn’t battle the torrential downpours for lunch at Zingerman’s or Blimpy Burger (still never been there). We actually took a tour of one of our industry peers and generous hosts, Menlo Innovations.
And this blog is none the better for it. My last post was many months and moons ago. In that time, a lot has happened however. I did partake in the Twitter hype for quite a while, but also gave that up for the past 5 months. Most recently, though, I finished Gary Vaynerchuk’s excellent book, Crush It! That was an awesome read. If you ever need a book to give you a kick in the pants, read that one.
To that end, I am attempting to resurrect some of my social media outlets to build my personal brand. No, I’m not looking for a new job or plan on starting a solo business next week. I just buy what Gary has to say on putting yourself out there, so that’s what I’m going to do. We’ll see what happens. I’m already 10% of the way toward Gary’s recommended 50 blog post ideas for content, so I’ll be working on creating those and coming up with the other 45.
So, look out second half of 2010. You won’t know what hit you!
Dang, where did 2008 go??? Well, Happy New Year everyone! I’m starting to get back into blogging a bit. I’ve even been hitting up Twitter quite a bit. You can check out my feed @blakenyquist to see what I’m up to on a more frequent basis. But I doubt many a really that interested in knowing what I’m up to by the day, let alone the hour.
I also have a new blogging project that I started up last week, that’s been going well so far. It’s about something a bit more interesting than my personal life, so hopefully I can get it going and get some readers to enjoy it as well.
Well, that’s enough of an update for now. Cheers!
Day 3 in Cairo, still packed. We started with a couple hours at the Egypt Museum where a massive amount of antiquities are on display. Statues (many many shapes and sizes), sarcophoguses, and numerous other items from daily and pharonic life. Covering 1000s of years of artifacts in 2 hours is no justice but highlight was King Tut collection. So much gold!
We then made it over to the Citadel, a large fortress from 100s of years back which also has an amazing mosque built by the original Muhammed Ali in 1830. Plus a great view over nearly all of Cairo. Our second great tour guide who was amazing to have at the museum did not disappoint at the Citadel either.
Last stop was Cairo market area. This is about exactly what you’d expect from packed little shops as far as you can see trying to peddle their wares to every tourist walking by. Everything is negotiable. Couple good stories from there too.
It’s midnight and we leave in 3 hours for Luxor and Nile cruise. Excited but I should get some sleep. Probably no wifi until retun to Cairo on Friday. Until then, I’ll continue with the picture taking. Peace out.
Posting from my cell phone so this could be rough. Jet lag seems to have hit me as it’s 2am, we got up at 7am and have to get up again at 7… yea in 5 hours.
Well my loss of sleep is this blog’s gain. One word… Pyramids! Wow, how utterly amazing. We went into 2 today. Words nor photos can do them just. They are absolutely immense and amazing.
We were among the very last to get into the Great Pyramid of Cheops today. It’s a bit of trek up into the burial chamber, but very worth it. The chamber was basically emptied out by the time we got there. So we decided to try out the acoustic properties due to the special construction. Amazing echo and reverb for such a small room. Was very cool.
The Sphinx was also part of today’s tour. Its size pales compared to the Great Pyramids, but still extraordinary. Craftmanship of the adjacent buildings is still quite visible and hard to believe considering the lack of precise tools so many thousands of years ago.
After the tour, but much crouching in pyramids and hiking all over, we enjoyed some tea and snacks at the Four Seasons in Giza. Uh, rather nice place. Oh, and Jill had to argue with our assigned security guard, his boss and some police major that we didn’t want him to follow us around for the evening. That’s a story itself.
The evening plans finished with dinner at a great Lebanese restaurant. Then hanging out at Ali’s apartment again. Tomorrow is the Egypt Museum to see even more of this ancient history.
Okay should get some shut-eye so I make it through the day. Good night.
Greetings, loyal readers! Don’t want to be too anti-social with the travel crew, but I got a quick chance to check some email, so thought I’d fire off a quick post as well. We got in 2am Cairo time after about 16 hours of fly time and a 9 hour layover in Amsterdam yesterday. Having arrived at the Detroit airport at 7pm Eastern time on Wednesday, and only 7 hours difference in time, that meant 24 actual hours of plane, airport and layover time. Whew!
Amsterdam was a bit chilly and rainy, but we managed to see the Anne Frank House as well as the Van Gogh Museum. The house was a very moving experience and the museum had a lot of special artwork that. After hearing a lot about both places before arriving, it was pretty amazing to get to see them. We also wandered through the streets around Central Station and had some pretty tasty meals.
Morning in Cairo started at 11:30 for us. We’ve arranged to have a driver in a van at our disposal for the week, so we got picked up by Jill and grabbed some breakfast-lunch on our way out for the day. We then went to see an ancient, but still very active, Coptic (original Egyptian Christian) church that was built in the 3rd century. It’s known as the “Hanging Church” because it’s actually built on one of two old towers, so the majority of it is suspended about 20m above ground. I love heights!
We then went to a park where we could see the Citadel, watched the sunset behind the mosques and listened to the 6:00 call to prayer being sung throughout the city. Pretty cool to hear it in surround sound like that. We then went to a very authentic Egyptian restaurant for a delicious meal. Dinner ended with us all taking turns puffing on a couple of shishas… that is… hookahs. We were up in smoke.
Tomorrow is going to be a trip to the Egypt Museum and/or the Pyramids of Giza. If we miss one, we’ll catch it on Sunday. Then, Monday starts the flight to Luxor and cruise to Aswan. Should be very exciting. Hard enough to believe we’re just in Cairo.
All right, I should join the crowd again. There are already lots of photos to share, and we’re only a day into it. Many more to come!
Just a little while ago, I went through approximately 100 posts from the Lifehacker.com. That may seem like a lot, and it kind of was, but I pre-lifehacked my Lifehacker reading. After much cajoling, I finally was convinced to start using Google Reader. To sum it up, it’s awesome. All my favorite sites with an RSS feed can now be read from a single source. How lifehack-ish is that?
Now that my brain is full of all sorts of neat ideas to save time, money and sanity while enjoying it all, I need to share some of these with you my loyal readers. I recommend the following for all three of you. Some of these go to other sites, but I found them first on Lifehacker. Continue reading »