There seems to be no shortage of tips on what to expect and what are the “must dos”. Nearly everyone says be prepared to walk a lot, stay hydrated and recognize that you can’t do everything and meet everyone you hope to meet. To be honest, it’s all a bit overwhelming.

But you know what, that’s OK. I’m channeling some Zen by focusing on a few things which I am really looking forward to.

• Reconnecting with all the friends I made when I was in Austin last year to help Sprint launch 4G. Austin is packed with really smart, laid back people who love live music and good food. What’s not to like?
• Tech Karaoke. The concept is simple. Techies sometimes need to cut loose when they get together and they don’t all want to talk about work or wonkiness. I’m looking forward to people singing 80’s music in a cool setting with a live band. (Sprint’s co-sponsoring this party with Awareness, Chirbit, BarStar, MobileRoadie, TechCocktail, Mashable, the Social Media Club and Pinqued. If you want to come, you have to sign up ahead of time at www.techkaraoke.com.)
• Showing off Sprint 4G. Since I was last in Austin, we’ve introduced a 3G-4G personal hotspot known as the Overdrive. It allows you to connect up to 5 Wi-Fi enabled devices to Sprint’s 4G or 3G network. iPhone owners frustrated with the network Apple chose to partner with in the U.S., look for our street teams giving demos in downtown Austin throughout SXSW. (We can run your iPhone on our 4G network.)
• San Antonio. In addition to managing media relations for Austin, I represent Sprint with media in San Antonio. The two cities are so close, it makes sense to visit both on the same trip. And just like the people in Austin, the people in San Antonio are bright, energetic and love live music and good food as much as I do. Plus I’ll get to hang out with Nan Palmero, who has more energy than anyone else in Texas.
• Warm weather. (I’ve still got some snow on the ground in my back yard from last month’s blizzards, yet I’m packing shorts for Texas!)

If you’re going to Austin, tell me what you’re looking forward to; if you’ve been before, share your tips for first timers like me. Meanwhile, here’s a bonus tip for your Austin visit: check out The Oasis on Lake Travis at sunset. (It’s a good place to relax away from the craziness of downtown.)

I spent most of the day at work, monitoring the impact on Sprint’s networks in Chile and following our preparations for the tsunami which hit Hawaii this afternoon around 11 a.m. HST. Once it became clear that the tsunami had arrived in Hawaii with less force than expected, I was alerted by colleagues that Sprint would be supporting the mobile giving fundraising efforts of several charities working on earthquake relief in Chile.

As we learned following the earthquake in Haiti, mobile giving is an extremely effective way to raise money. I’m not sure if the donors will respond to the appeals for Chilean relief at the same level as they did with Haiti, but I do expect millions to be raised.

If you have a Sprint, Nextel, Boost Mobile or Virgin Mobile USA phone, you can donate $10 via a quick text message at no cost to you. (These messages won’t count against your bucket of messages if you’re on a limited data plan.)

The charities are: Convoy of Hope (Text “4CHILE” to 50555); Friends of the World Food Program (Text “CHILE” to 50555); Habitat for Humanity (Text “CHILE” to 25383); Operation USA (Text ”REBUILD” to 50555);  The Salvation Army (Text “CHILE” to 52000) and World Vision (Text “CHILE” to 20222).

I’m told that our competitors have provisioned some, if not all of these codes, to be free from standard text messaging charges. (Verizon Wireless has announced support for some of these codes; there’s been no word from AT&T or T-Mobile.)

While the carriers all have to program their billing systems to make this work, it’s the charities which have to set up the keywords with aggregators like mGive to make things work. (Generally, most charities already have established 5-digit numbers known as short codes — the only new part is determining the key words.)

One interesting fact about the key words: spelling counts. While most of these charities used the word “CHILE”, some of them also set up “CHILI” to work as well.

I’ll be interested to see if the public responds.

This morning my friend Susan, who happens to be one of the best internal communications experts I know, posted this video of ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” to her Facebook page.

I wanted to share it with you, too. I guarantee it will put you in a good mood. Consider it music to shovel snow by.

Today Sprint Nextel Corp. reported earnings for 2009. At publicly traded companies like Sprint, the media relations people work hand-in-hand with the investor relations people to make sure the financial results are reported accurately and in a way that investors and the media can understand. My colleague James Fisher, who works most closely with reporters who have questions about our financial results, does a very good job of answering media questions about Sprint’s financial performance.

The reporters, most of whom don’t have a finance background, are under tremendous deadline pressure to quickly interpret complex financial statements which often include complicated accounting notes. To help them quickly grasp what the numbers are saying, James has started sharing a few simple bar graphs with media on deadline.

The chart on the right is what he sent out this morning.

I think this does several things:

• It alleviates some of the deadline pressure media face.

• It ensures reporters aren’t missing important trends in our business. (They may not deem these trends important, but it’s harder for a reporter to ignore them when we point them out in graphical form.)

• It give reporters some context for some of the questions from the investor community which occur during the conference call. This call is held within 30 minutes of the earnings release crossing the wire and reporters are not allowed to ask questions during this time — the get to speak to James and our executives after the call. To understand my point about context, listen to any earnings call; there’s always a few oddball questions from an analyst who is intimately familiar with the business and doesn’t want to ask the CEO or CFO a general question about financial guidance. (They already know the answer to that question — they’d prefer to get down into the weeds.)

When James sends out these charts, he also includes a brief note with the highlights from the news release announcing quarterly earnings. Since James has started including this as part of his earnings routine, we’ve seen fewer mistakes made by the reporters writing without a financial background (and fewer corrections to stories). We’ve also seen reporters ask the financial analysts who cover Sprint questions about these trends.

While this doesn’t convince media and analysts to ignore poor financial results — they’re too smart for that — it does help tell our company’s story in a clear, simple and convincing way. I recommend this to my fellow media relations professionals. And for your journalists who cover publicly traded companies, I suggest you request this type of information from the PR people you work with — it will make your job easier.

On the face of it, it sounds like it would be compelling television — it was that. But it didn’t make me want to work for Waste Management.

Larry O'Donnell, President & COO of Waste Management, as the "Undercover Boss".

While it’s great that Mr. O’Donnell had these intentions, I wonder why he couldn’t just be himself and get the same feedback? Shouldn’t a manager — even a C-level executive — be able to get honest feedback from employees? The best ones do. But when a manager creates an environment where he or she isn’t open to constructive criticism, all they will ever hear from employees is what they want to hear.

One scene early in the show struck me as particularly ironic. When Mr. O’Donnell, who is working undercover as a helper on a garbage truck route, notices a white pick up truck following the garbage truck he is working on, his supervisor tells him that the pickup is being driven by a Waste Management “spy” who is following them to be sure they are staying on their route and keeping on schedule.

In explaining the pick up trucks, Mr. O’Donnell tells the audience that they are driven by route managers. He says, “I don’t want our drivers to feel like they’re being spied upon — because that’s not what this is about.”

Of course, he is saying this when he is in fact, “spying on” his employees.

That said, I think Mr. O’Donnell deserves some credit — he is trying to change his company. The closing scenes where a group of Waste Management front line employees were shown a “reveal” of Mr. O’Donnell’s true identity were certainly well received and I believe showed the genuine affection that Waste Management employees have for Mr. O’Donnell.

But let’s be honest about what this is — a huge advertising and PR win for the companies who participate. For me, the whole thing was a bit too contrived.

Mary McNamara, the television critic for the Los Angeles Times said it better than me:

Now, I’m a sucker for any show that features people doing actual work (chefs, stylists and event planners don’t count) and no doubt these five souls, who come off as a genetic cross of Will Rogers, John Henry and Emma Goldman, are just as extraordinary as they seem. I’m even willing to buy the notion that they have no clue whom O’Donnell is and think they’re being filmed for a documentary about entry-level jobs.

What I’m not willing to buy is that the workers O’Donnell chose to spend time with were not the product of an extensive and exhaustive search of the company’s 45,000 employees for the most TV-ready. The trash picker with the kidney condition? The multi-tasking mom who’s about to lose her house? To which she invites O’Donnell? The sanitation worker so beloved by the families on her route that a mentally challenged woman just happens to have a letter of appreciation in her hand the very day the camera crews arrive?

The marketing and public relations teams at Waste Management are making the most of this opportunity. Not only did they create a special “Undercover Boss” section of the company’s website, (pictured above) they also placed stories in papers around the country, including The Star-Ledger, The Wall Street Journal and The San Jose Mercury-News.

My question for the internal communications and media relations folks out there: if the producers invited your company’s CEO to be an “undercover boss” would you recommend she or he do it?

Geoff Livingston, who’s a communications pro here in D.C., has invited me and Washington Business Journal reporter Jen Conner, to join him in a test drive of the Chevy Volt, GM’s long awaited electric car. Geoff mentioned over lunch the other day that he was asked by GM to blog about the test drive and I asked if I could tag along. (I’m going to film Geoff and Jen on my flip camera as we tool around Washington inhaling that new car smell.)

I don’t know where we’ll go — that’s up to Geoff — but I am interested in visiting  one of these charging stations announced by Pepco today.)

Geoff’s idea for blogging about his test drive experience was to crowdsource it. Over the last several days, he’s reached out to friends on his blog, Facebook and Twitter to find out what people want to know about the car. Look for Geoff’s take on the Volt (and my flip camerawork) later this week on the Live Earth Blog.

Geoff is one of several bloggers and writers in the D.C. area who’ve been invited to try out the Chevy Volt. I think this is a very smart tactic on GM’s part. The more people they can get to try the car, the more people they will get to buy the car.

Increasingly, consumers want to buy green products, but they don’t want to sacrifice technology or pay more if they do buy green. Put differently, for GM and any U.S. automaker, it’s not enough just to make a green car; to be successful, they have to make a great car which happens to be green.

At Sprint, we took that approach with the launch of the Samsung Reclaim, our signature green cell phone. While another U.S. wireless carrier had introduced a green phone first, to be honest, the critics panned it. We took a different approach and packed as much technology as we could into the phone, plus we substantially discounted it. (The initial sales price was $50.)

We didn’t think that consumers should have to sacrifice wireless technology just because they wanted to use a greener more sustainable cell phone. This turned out to be a great move for us and one which has been embraced by consumers – the Reclaim is one of our best-selling phones.

I’ll let you know what our experience with the Volt is like tomorrow. I’m rooting for this car, but we’ll have to see. (I’m not a GM fan as of late.)

———–

Update: I was going to write a second post which shared my impressions, but Geoff Livingston did that while I was out of town. Check out his post and the video I shot during our test drive for our collective impressions. In short, the Volt was a pleasant surprise. I am not sure what the car will be priced at, but if it’s priced appropriately — under 30K, I’d be interested.

One thing I wanted to check out on this trip was the new City Center complex. At $8.5 billion, it’s reported to be the priciest real estate development in U.S. history. I got to tell you, I was taken by the architecture and art of the complex. Though I skipped the $15 a head admission ticket to the show by the same name at the Bellagio Museum of Art, I will say the collection of public art at City Center is one of the best I’ve seen in a while.

If you have a moment the next time you’re in Vegas, wander over and check it out. I found Cesar Pelli’s designs, the Henry Moore sculpture and an ice sculpture called Glacia especially appealing.

From a PR point of view, I sympathize with the PR team at MGM Mirage Corp. who are pitching the complex to architecture critics, art critics, travel media and the like — to get reporters to write about a building opening, you have to be doing something important inside the building. (That’s what the real news is — not the architecture or art itself.)

Since gambling, excuse me —  gaming —  isn’t particularly newsworthy, they have to rely on the strength of the architecture and art to capture the imagination of writers. Fortunately, that’s pretty strong.

Check out this video I shot.

If you’re a subscriber to AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Nextel, Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile or Sprint, you can donate $10 via text message. All you have to do is click — your donation will show up on next month’s bill. My colleague Crystal Davis, who leads our crisis communications team at Sprint has a great blog post about how the process of mobile giving works. She’s also has the short codes for five major relief efforts.

My friend Sunita Ray, who works in corporate communications for KPMG, pointed out on her Facebook page this morning that if you’re donating to organizations like the Red Cross, you should be sure to check your company’s matching gift program before you press “submit” on that donation website.  KPMG matches employee donations dollar for dollar.  According to www.matchinggifts.com, ten percent of us work for companies with a matching gift program.

Speaking of Facebook, my friend Andrew Noyes, who works in PR for well, Facebook, pointed out a Facebook resource for disaster relief on his Facebook status this morning. (As an FYI, I’ve never written the word Facebook that many times in one sentence.) Andrew suggested that his friends become fans of  Global Relief on Facebook. The page seeks to ”spotlight efforts on Facebook to help respond to disasters around the globe.”

Earlier this morning, President Obama addressed the situation in Haiti and he described what people and governments around the world are doing to help. In his remarks, the President had a special message for the Haitian people which bears repeating. The President said in part:

Finally, I want to speak directly to the people of Haiti.  Few in the world have endured the hardships that you have known.  Long before this tragedy, daily life itself was often a bitter struggle.  And after suffering so much for so long, to face this new horror must cause some to look up and ask, have we somehow been forsaken?     

To the people of Haiti, we say clearly, and with conviction, you will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.  In this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you.  The world stands with you.  We know that you are a strong and resilient people.  You have endured a history of slavery and struggle, of natural disaster and recovery.  And through it all, your spirit has been unbroken and your faith has been unwavering.  So today, you must know that help is arriving — much, much more help is on the way. 

What makes this dinner fun is that the chairman of the FCC gives a speech which pokes fun of the companies the Commission regulates. It’s definitely filled with inside baseball jokes, but if you work in the telecom policy world like I do, you’re guaranteed to laugh. Attendees have dubbed the event, “Telecom Prom”.

As one friend of mine explained it, the dinner is where, “geeks try to be cool and we’re just with each other, so it works.”

Here’s a video I shot of my friend Kim Hart, a reporter with The Hill newspaper, explaining “Telecom Prom”.

While I was home, I had a chance to interview each member of my family about why we love Thanksgiving so much. I think my cousin, a natural storyteller, captures it the best.