However, 'tis is still the season to be learning, and this week's lesson is a combination of a year's worth of travel, the timely catching of the Jason Reitman film "Up In The Air" over the weekend, and the fact that many of us will be spending this week in places other than our homes.

So without any further preamble, what I learned this week is the ultimate step-by-step procedure in which to check into a hotel.  All steps are necessary, no matter what class of accommodations you are checking into, because trust me, I've been burned on every one.

Nothing spoils a great evening's sleep like not being able to clean up for your early morning meeting...believe me.  Before your room door has a chance to automatically slam shut, turn on your shower and check for both pressure and hot water.  Missing either one will severely hamper your mood for the rest of your stay.  Missing both means staying with me in Vancouver for a night.

STEP TWO: CHECK THE HEATING/AIR CONDITIONER

Why?  In Calgary, one of those wheezy, window-adjacent contraptions that once lived as a steam-shovel has been rescued and given life as an air-conditioner that spews much more noise than coolness in a room where the windows have been sealed with Gorilla Glue and the previous occupant seems to have been travelling with a dozen of them (gorillas, not glue).

And on the other hand, in New York, where my breath is finally made invisible when the bellman hauls in an eerily-glowing Russian-issue space he ater, circa 1963, with two-prong plug and frayed wire, that threatens not just to burn the room and the entire hotel down to the ground, but leave nuclear reactivity in its destructive wake.  Sweet dreams indeed...  That's why!

The scenario you don't want to experience--a hot, powerful shower (ahh...) readying you for an important meeting in a frozen wasteland of a town...and the hair dryer blows like a pair of butterfly wings.  No problem you say, just phone downstairs for another one?  "It'll be up within the half-hour sir!  We're in the midst of a check-in/check-out rush!"

Yes, the hotel PROMISES wireless Internet, but your corner room in the sold-out Chicago concrete hotel is beyond reach of the signal...even when it's "augmented" by a booster box for which you have to pay a $50 deposit which remains on your bill even though it didn't work and you returned it minutes later with the warning "Make sure you take this off my bill now!"  And of course, all this happens the night you have about a dozen documents being sent to you for urgent review...

STEP FIVE: CHECK THE ELEVATORS

Break out that stopwatch and time 'em.  I'm serious.  If they take long, change your room to a lower floor.  Or else you may get the shaft (see above) find yourself playing the waiting game with three of your floormates at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. in a rush to catch a 7:00 a.m. flight before having to hike down 15 flights of stairs with your (thankfully for me just overnight) bags.  (And to add unsult to injury, when being a good samaritan and telling the overnight clerk that his elevators aren't working, havimg him explain that: "They're not broken, they just need to warm up after not being used for the night.")

Experienced travelers do this automatically when they're checking out of a room.  REALLY-experienced travelers now do this when checking INTO a room, lest they be awoken at 1:00 a.m. by a frantic, overweight man who left his Blackberry charger and rental car agreement in the night table.

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Hmmm...perhaps Mary and Joseph were wiser than we all thought when they agreed to check into that manger.  Which is probably why I called out the name of their son while experiencing all of the above six steps.

I sheepishly admitted that while I do get away on a non-business level from time-to-time, my vacations are usually packed with athletic activities (i.e. snowboarding or hockey tournaments) or cultural endeavors (i.e. rock camp and day-long museum treks). Despite some pretty exotic locations visited, I lamented that I'm not a great "rest-er" per se.  

And that's when someone in the audience blurted out this pearl of wisdom:

"Sometimes, a change is as good as a rest."

What he said struck hard and fast.  I addressed the audience directly:

"Ladies and gentlemen, forget anything I might have said up until now. Strike it all from your memories.  What that man just said is the most profound thing you'll hear today--A Change is as Good as a Rest!"

I don't know who that man was or where he has gone, but since that fateful speech, I've laid down his eight words on a number of different and diverse people, ranging from lifelong friends to newfound acquaintances.  And the effect is always the same: 

• Immediate contemplation followed by an almost visually-perceptive personal illumination. 

Last week, I shared the words with author and marketing exec Lois Kelly at the Supergenius Word of Mouth Marketing Conference in Chicago.  Her wide-eyed, enthusiastic reaction confirmed it.  So what I learned this week is that what I discovered a few weeks ago is indeed real, namely:

A Change is as Good as a Rest.

Here's what I never got from vacations: peace of mind or rejuvenation.  Even when I tried my damndest to vegetate on a beach, I was busy reading and taking notes.  And the slight slowdown in pace my body enjoyed after a week or two away was short-lived once I got back to the hundreds of emails, piles of paper and other professional demands that laid in wait for me upon my return.  After two, three days of intense catch-up...it was as if I never left.

But change...

Change is a different animal.

On a macro scale, when I abandoned a cushy career as CEO of the Just For Laughs Festival to embark on a risky digital journey with Garner and Airborne Entertainment (now Airborne Mobile), the combination of uncertainty and hope erased stale cobwebs and infused me with adrenaline. 

On a frivolous micro scale, the days I decided to get my ear pierced (15 years ago) or risk a most radical of haircuts (January of this year), changed not only my physical look, but my emotional outlook.  I was a (slightly) different person again.

Here's another example that could be considered frivolous, but better considered as a metaphor:

This past summer, following the period of mourning after my father died, I went back to playing hockey.  But instead of playing goalie--as I had at least once a week for the past 20 years--I became a defenceman.  Just like that.  Haven't played "out of nets" since I was 14, and had no idea what was ahead of me. Bought new equipment, abandoned my past, and basically started anew. 

You gotta understand that once upon a time, I LOVED playing goalie...but for the past two years, I did so out of obligation rather than inspiration.  There was no fun left, just the feeling that I was there to fill the hole in the net and not let down the guys (you see, a game with a bad goalie is better than one with no goalie at all).

These days though, I CAN'T WAIT to get to the rink.  Each shift is a challenge, and with each one, I learn something to do--and NOT to do--for the next one.  Instead of spending the game counting down time remaining, I spend the week counting down time until the next game.

Such is the renewal power of change.  Unlike vacations, you're not "getting away" from it all, you're "getting into" something new.  And yeah, maybe one day I'll get tired of playing defence.  But trust me, I won't languish in the position for two years before making my next on-ice move.  Or move off-ice...

Perhaps Swiss philosopher Henri Frédéric Amiel said it best when he wrote:

So, as this blog takes on a new direction (hey, I'm sure walking the "change" talk, ain't I?), and as the vacation period descends upon us, I hope you can take as much out of this week's learning as I did.

And now, time to re-charge my batteries by doing something radical.

Who-hoo! 

Ahhhh.....

(And with apologies to REM, “And I feel fine.”)

1)    This blog was failing to live up to its primary mantra, namely Surprise needs to exist as a continuum.  Any one Surprise doesn’t last; things need to be constantly changed and shaken up to provide the spark.  Well, what greater way to “shock the system” (as I have relentlessly preached) than jump off the horse that brought me here while it’s still in mid-gallop? As Daniel Gilbert says “Wonderfulness wanes with repetition,” and after three years of consistent posting, I found myself to be repeating.  By now, longstanding FOPs (Friends of Pow!) get it.  They know what to do, and in most cases, have tried doing it; one more example ain’t gonna matter much.  Newbies have an inventory of more than 800 posts to comb over.  And you can always buy the book.  Or the Audible.com audio book .  Or the Kindle edition. 

2)    I love marketing, but really now…there’s got to be more to life than finding yet another new way to drill into someone’s head and sell them stuff.  I’ve been doing this for real, as part of my day job, for 35 years.  And with so many magnifico marketing bloggers out there—from Seth Godin, Andy Sernovitz and Mitch Joel to Saul Colt, Chris Brogan, Julien Smith and Dan Pink—what more do I have to add to the conversation without saying the same thing?  This isn’t throwing in the towel; it’s using it to admiringly fan their inferno-esque flames, then to wipe away any nostalgiac pinings that may be left clinging to me as I head off into the sunset (and into my new sunrise).

I’ll also use this space to share some of the short stories, and even shorter stories, I’ve been writing and neglecting.  Maybe they’ll find life, perhaps they’ll be ridiculed, but at least they’ll see the light of day and escape from their hidden file folder at the back of a green USB key.  I suppose the learning here will be whether they’re any good…or if I’m just another delusional weekend warrior pounding his keyboard, to use a very apropos masturbatory metaphor.

The end of the journey that was Pow! as we knew it.

And the beginning of the next explosive adventure as it awaits.

Hope you enjoyed the ride.

Thanks for reading. 

Please keep following.

Bye!

Cleaning out spam on my Gmail Spam page, and what appears in the menu bar?

An Adwords link to a site called RecipeSource, which features, amongst a (and I use this term both figuratively and literally) shitload of other recipes, a whole slew of epicurean delights you can create with--yup, you guessed it--Hormel's majestic meat-esque product Spam.

The pot calling the kettle black?  A post-modern paradox?  Obvious overkill?  Brilliant subversive marketing?  Or a combination of all of the above? 

I'd be pissed off if it weren't so ironically humorous.

For those who don't feel like clicking over the links above, here's an example for a Green(-ish) Spam lunch, which appeared after I did.  Enjoy!

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SPAM VEGGIE PITA POCKETS

STATE FAIR RECIPE:

In bowl, combine SPAM, broccoli, cauliflower, tomato, carrot,cucumber, and onion.

Toss with dressing. Cover and chill several hours.

Spoon salad mixture into pocket bread.

"So this is Christmas, and what have you bought?"

In my case, over the past couple of weeks, I bought an Amazon Kindle for myself, and the special edition three-volume set on the history of Chanel as a gift.

While both are, ostensibly, reading material, the polar opposite nature of the two got me to thinking about the lifespan of books as we know it.

Since the launch of the Kindle (and its Sony eBook / Barnes & Noble Nook brethren), old and new media alike have been abuzz about how the device heralds "the future of books!" (Check out this piece from the New Yorker.)

Well, after toying around with the Kindle, and gingerly handling the quilted-leather-bound Chanel set (that's it at left), I have a slightly different opinion.

Kindle is indeed the future, namely the future of reading.  It's ideal for novels, textbooks, newspapers, nonfiction and all other tomes or periodicals that actually need to be read.  It provides a most necessary service to those of us who want to simplify and unclutter our lives, and what it in turn does for the environment, more specifically our forests, should guarantee Jeff Bezos a Christmas card from Al Gore and David Suzuki for the rest of his life.

But the Kindle will not, as many fear, kill books. (Won't kill magazines either, as this article shows...but I digress.)

Frankly, I think the Kindle will open up a new market for books that are not necessarily meant to be read, like the aforementioned Chanel box set. 

The Chanel books are published by Assouline, a ten-year-old French company that, as is says on its website, creates "fine illustrated books, luxury editions and an exquisite gift line dedicated to fashion, photography, art and design."  The books range in price from a $40 bio of chef Daniel Boulud to the Goyard Trunk, which houses 100 of Assouline's signature Memoire photo-biographies on art, fashion, design and architecture in a trunk from luxury luggage maker Goyard, and will set you back a mere $20,000.

(I bought the Chanel box at a bookstore called Librissme, a most tony spot where I actually put on white gloves to handle some of their volumes, including a $10,000 history of golf that was housed in its own plexiglass-covered coffee table.  Check out this joy-to-walk-into, anti-Borders below.)

The Kindle will give new life to books like "The Light in Darkness," my friend Lawrence Kirsch's new fan-sourced, photo-filled tribute to Bruce Springsteen (that's it at right), the follow-up to his best-selling--and now unavailable-- "For You Bruce."  For as good as the Kindle may be with words, it can't capture the thrill of looking at crisp, sharp, emotional photos of a band, a landmark, a child, a puppy or a historical event. 

As publishers flock to the electronica of the Kindle, passionate entrepreneurs like Lawrence will find--and fill--a tangible, tactile gap in the marketplace.

The Kindle will also give new life to books like this:  Electronic Popables, an interactive pop-up book that sparkles, sings, and moves.  Check it out below:

The great thing about all the above is that in a world of disintermediation (have you spoken to a typesetter or record-store owner lately?), there is most definitely a future for the world of publishing...one where books and reading both live, but in most cases, independantly and mutually exclusive.

I am the proud father of two incredible, unique young men: 

• My younger son Hayes, at 19, is wise and toughened well beyond his years. He has a sparkling creative mind and applies it with the nimbleness of his hands as he goes about learning and performing his passion of designing innovative, expectation-bending high-end furniture. 
  
• My elder son Aidan is independent, adventurous and equally creative, expressing himself more flamboyantly than his somewhat more-subdued brother.  Aidan's tools are words, ideas and social interaction, and he melds them together into something special with every project he takes on (and with every outfit he wears).

Today is Aidan's 22nd birthday, and the best birthday gift is the one he's given himself...and has chosen to share with the digiterati.

Speaking objectively now, I gotta say that Aidan's recent wordsmithing at Posterous.com, a blog called "Journal of a First-Time Entrepreneur," is among the most insightful, honest, raw, endearing and frightening writing on the web.

Subtitled "A GenY's Adventures in Entrepreneurship," Aidan is painstakingly and perhaps too-openly documenting the daily trials and tribulations of launching an Internet-based start-up called Youphonics. More than just diarizing it, he summarizes each post with homework/action items and the all-important lessons learned.

As someone who has gone through a couple of these himself, and who has counseled dozens of others in their start-up dreams, I find this full-bodied exposure to be incredibly heartening, educational and sometimes just juicily voyeuristic.  When I spoke at a youth entrepreneurship conference in Toronto a couple of weeks ago, I urged the brilliant kids there to jump into this blog head first.  It's that good.

I don't know where Aidan's Youphonics project will land up--it could be a game changer, an expensive lesson, or somewhere on a thousand points in between those two extremes.  But I do know three things:

1. "Journal of a First-Time Entrepreneur"should be required reading for anyone wanting to start--or are in the throes of starting--their first business.
2. I regret not doing the same thing during my times doing the same thing.
3. If all else fails, Aidan will have at least documented a story that could find life as a book, speech or college course.

But, knowing Aidan, I don't think all else will fail.

Read this. Go back and start at the very beginning.  And pass it on to someone young you know who can benefit from it.

And know why I'm proud of him as an individual, not just as my son.

Andy Sernovitz' Supergenius Word of Mouth Marketing Conference on December 16 in Chicago, to be exact.

Ho hum.  A speaking gig.  So what else is new, right?

Well, the reason why I'm going is.

At first, when Andy asked, I had to say no...too busy, too much to do, a TV network to launch, too close to Christmas, too cold in Chicago.  Too many excuses.

But then, I took a look at the all-important "who else is coming."

And that's why I'm going.

Many times, jeez MOST times, I'll bolt a conference as soon as I'm off stage.  This is not ego speaking, but reality.  As I said before, too much to do, etc.  What I try to do is balance is what I can learn sticking around vs. what I can accomplish by leaving.  Leaving usually wins.

But given the task ahead of me--launching TXT-TV--Airborne Mobile's four-years-in-the-making, big hairy project of 2010--and seeing who else is speaking here, the day is a major-league learning opportunity.  Case studies from mega-brands like Coke, Starbucks, Domino's and Maker's Mark bourbon.  Numerous social networking experts. Live "Will It Blend" demos from Blendtec's George Wright.  Timely, too, given the aforementioned network launch. (And any time I can hang with fellow speakers Mitch Joel and Saul Colt, and my Chicago-based buddy Jim Fannin, well...)

As oft-mentioned here and in my Pow! book, Sernovitz is the world-wide maestro of word-of-mouth.  Since I changed my "vote" from no to yes, he's been peppering me and all the other speakers with ways for us to promote said conference via word-of-mouth methods like live interviews, special discounts (see photo below) and bribery, like the blatantly-promotional (and ostentatiously-colored) t-shirt he's getting yours truly and others to wear and blog about (see photo below again).

So consider me playing along in promoting the conference. 

And consider yourself promoted to.

But frankly, you're secondary. 

This time, for perhaps the first time, I'm doing it for me.

.

I had a blast.  I learned a lot...about me, and about the intelligence of the audience (it was primarily composed of parents of students who were in town for homecoming week.

It's coming to YouTube soon, but the school just sent me this link to preview it.

If you got an extra minute or 51...enjoy!