A Tribute to the Road Warriors – Top 20 Most Travelled SharePoint People in 2009*

As we round out the year, I was looking at some of my travel stats and wondering… I wonder if I’ve clocked up more miles than anyone else.  Sure I think I talk about it more than anyone I know, but maybe that’s because I like to share.  Not because I like to boast or brag.  At least I hope not.  I have had some in the past say they like the stories.  Some say less on travel, well many of us it’s our passion other’s it’s part of the job.

I’m a fan of the basic Trip it social media travel service.  Here’s my profile if you want to add me.  (I do like it better than Dopplr.com which I used in 2008.) Forwarding my plans to plans@tripit.com and getting an awesome summary on my mobile device in an offline app has been HUGE.  Can’t say much for the pro service yet, since I haven’t used it, but here are my stats for the year…

	Total	Rank
Trips	25	5
Days	150	4
Distance	159,617 mi	2
Cities	64	1
Countries	18	1

 

Most Travelled SharePoint People in 2009

* Based on my Tripit list and filtering out some non SharePoint people up to Dec 16 with friends/connections as of that date.

	Trooper	Distance		Trooper	Days Gone
1	Joel Oleson	159,617 mi	1	Paul Stork	173
2	Elizabeth Caley	100,101 mi	2	Joel Oleson	150
3	Tim Huckaby	90,873 mi	3	Angus Logan	142
4	Paul Stork	74,795 mi	4	Corro’ll H Driskell	122
5	Todd Bleeker	68,249 mi	5	Todd Bleeker	117
6	Paul E Robichaux	61,087 mi	6	Jake D Attis	109
7	William Cornwill	59,222 mi	7	Elizabeth Caley	105
8	Rick Taylor	55,887 mi	8	Paul E Robichaux	98
9	liam Cleary	53,789 mi	9	Rick Taylor	96
10	Mike Fitzmaurice	53,259 mi	10	Kristian Kalsing	94
11	Bill English	52,008 mi	11	Ram Gopinathan	88
12	Kristian Kalsing	51,081 mi	12	Penelope Coventry	87
13	Penelope Coventry	49,901 mi	13	Tim Huckaby	81
14	Venky	48,933 mi	14	Kimmo Forss	81
15	Chris Johnson	44,773 mi	15	Paul Schaeflein	77
16	Andrew Woodward	41,369 mi	16	Chris Johnson	72
17	Ram Gopinathan	40,735 mi	17	Christian Hougardy	72
18	Corro’ll H Driskell	36,557 mi	18	Kanwal Khipple	65
19	Jeremy Thake	36,288 mi	19	Bill English	64
20	Jake D Attis	35,172 mi	20	Andrew Woodward	59

 

I know I’m not connected to everyone, but I am really only connected to 120 mostly SharePoint people who are or have been active in the past in the SharePoint community.  If I get anyone who wants me to update this chart with more data and to tally end of year scores, I’m happy to include some additional people and push the count down. * This list is purely for entertainment purposes.  As well if anyone wants me to remove them, let me know and I’ll accommodate that as well.  The accuracy of this is only as good as the info added to tripit, etc…

 

To give you the background this includes most trips, I started using it at the first of the year, so I have to guess it’s within 25,000 miles of accuracy.  150 days puts me a little under my limit of 50%.  It really has been about 2 weeks per month this past year, and my wife and kids have been real troopers.  With the birth of Dean I did limit travel for a month and a half in the middle.

I do know that it’s families who benefit by the job, but also suffer as a result of a primary bread winner being on the road.  It’s definitely not always as sexy as it seems.  Coming home at night to an empty hotel room is the pits.  The hours and hours of security checks and missed flights let alone the expenses.  Yuck!

 

5 Things I Hate about Travel

1. Going home to an empty hotel room at night, really doesn’t matter what upgrades you get, the TV doesn’t have your DVR from home and no one to snuggle with

2. The whole airport scene is awful, wait in this line, then wait in this line, and on and on.  To get to a destination you may wait in a dozen lines and have people go through your bag nearly half as many times.  There was one flight that was delayed 10 times, cancelled then delayed again for half a day.  I missed all of my meetings.

3. Airplane seats are the worst.  They are designed to pack as many people in as small area as possible, and that incline is just enough to make you think your not straight.  My back is always a problem after long flights.

4. Being gone – You miss the band concert, the overnighters, the firsts with a baby; and it’s not your pillow, it’s not your car, it’s not your house or your office, and if you need clippers or any essential you’re going to have to buy it if you didn’t pack it.

5. Early morning meetings on little to no sleep.  When you fly in, everyone locally works on their time zone and they really don’t care where you came from.  Meetings still start at 8am, even if it means 3am to you.  Even across the 3 time zones in the U.S. this gets bad, but across the pond to Europe and a day to adjust is a luxury and often not afforded.

 

You know I do love to travel, so this helps balance out all the cool blog posts this year about all the cool places I was able to see.

 

I guess you can tell what’s been on my mind…

It’s not all bad.  There are some perks with frequent fliers, frequent hotels, and frequent car rentals.

I have platinum, premium elite status on Delta/Northwest (since they combined), gold on American, as well as silver on United.  Essentially I’ve got my bases covered for this next year across the Skyteam, Star Alliance, One World.  I later learned a valuable lesson about focusing on one airline per alliance essentially one per partner group.  I plan to use some miles this year to visit the SharePoint User Group in Peru, and have open conversations with Brazil and Costa Rica, now.  I’ll be sure to report back on the evolution of my efforts to hit South America which essentially has been off the radar the past few years for most of the community.  I think we need to start sharing the love down south.  I call myself a global evangelist and try my best to serve in that capacity. 

With 19 car rentals I have 3 free days.  Is that good?

Having status in Marriott and Hilton has paid off with room upgrades free breakfast and often cheaper or free internet.  I must say that, it is worth collecting the points.  That’s a no brainer.

 

 

My tribute does include assistance from Michelle at Quest.  She’s helped me with major coordination on events and planning and a whole lot more.