Remember my post back in August about how it’s time to say goodbye to free WI-Fi in coffeehouses, in airports, etc? I have never been more sure of something in my life – Today, I’ll prove it. I’m on the 6:20am Amtrak from NYC to Boston right now. For a brief moment, I switched off my Sprint EVO 4G, and am using Amtrak’s free WiFi to prove a point. I also installed a little Add-on to Firefox (I usually use Chrome, I switched to Firefox for this experiment,) called Firesheep. If you haven’t heard of Firesheep, prepare to be really, really frightened. I’m not a true tech geek, so please forgive me if I don’t totally speak Geek. Essentially, FireSheep [...]

I got an email from someone two days ago from the shankman.com contact page – and true to what I preach, I responded – Me – no one else. (Took me a day, but I did.) This person simply asked, “How do you cultivate the seemingly endless energy you have to constantly meet new people and grow your network like you say you do?” I thought about it for a while – And it bothered me – Because I couldn’t come up with an answer immediately – I don’t think I’m full of energy – Quite the opposite – I see myself as constantly tired. As much business travel as I do, always up early for training for this stupid [...]

Conference season is upon us! It’s been a fun, relaxing summer, but welcome back to hell! With more conferences than ever before from which to choose (don’t these guys know we’re supposedly in a recession?) here are eight easy tips to help navigate the ones you do choose to attend. 1) Networking starts LONG before you get there. The second you register, use the beauty of social media to let the world know, and find new people who are going as well. Ask them if there’s a hashtag, then use it. You want to have at least ten new people you plan to meet over the course of the conference before you go to the conference. The rest of the [...]

I woke up this morning, my first night home after a very successful South by Southwest, to a hungry cat at 5:30am. I was exhausted, and pushed her away. Turns out, she wasn’t so much hungry, as she was trying to inform me of a shitstorm brewing in the comments section of a well-written blog post, about how there were way too many douchebags at an otherwise excellent conference. She’s a very smart cat. The short story – A blog post was posted about someone at a party who yelled at a volunteer. It wasn’t me. However, under the influence of too much tequila, I posted a comment on Twitter inside the TechKaraoke party that was taken totally out of [...]

UPDATE! TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SPOTS SOLD ALREADY. THREE TWO LEFT ONE LEFT!!!! SOLD OUT!! SOLD OUT!!! Any desire to get your company, logo, or brand image in front of thousands and thousands of people, all around the world, all throughout 2010? It’s no secret I travel a lot. It’s no secret I speak a lot at conferences, major corporations, etc. when I do. It’s no secret my Macintosh comes with me wherever I go, from Asia to Starbucks, from Australia to Whole Foods, from Newark Airport to the Tokyo Subway. So far, I’m booked for over 50 speaking gigs in 2010. I’ve already purchased airline tickets totaling over 125,000 miles SO FAR. I’m expecting this year to be busier [...]