Miles is once again sponsoring the Global All-Stars Marketing Institute, which will take place on Monday, July 15. This popular session fills up fast, so reserve your seat now!

We’ve got some really great things in store this year: The 2013 Global All-Stars Marketing Institute will feature destination marketing leaders from around the world sharing successful international marketing strategies and tactics for implementing cross-cultural diversity into tourism programs. Attendees will also be the first to see results from new research on the impact and influence of visiting friends and family on the $150 billion international travel market.

Here’s a brief breakdown of what you can expect at Global All-Stars:
Keynote: Mel Asbury
We know that overseas visitors stay longer and spend more when they come to the U.S., so internationally renowned speaker Mel Asbury will share cross-cultural promotion strategies that DMOs can implement to successfully market their individual destinations to a global audience.

Global Research Insights Panel
Dave Bratton of Destination Analysts presents original, never-before-seen research undertaken into the International VFR market in the U.S. Following that, Aaron Babbie of Sparkloft will join Miles’ Chris Adams to present the results of a global benchmarking program for DMOs.

Global Marketers Roundtable
During this this interactive session, leading destination marketers nationally and from around the world will share their case studies in successful partner marketing for today’s globalized market.

Stay tuned for more updates, and we look forward to seeing everyone in Orlando!

There are two sides to a website’s performance: server and client performance. Server performance refers to how long it takes the server to respond to the initial request. Client performance is how long it takes the browser to load all the additional resources such as CSS, images and JavaScript. In this post I am going to focus on client performance.

Common sense would imply that the size of individual resources has the largest impact on how long it takes to fully load a page. At one time, this was true. Increasing Internet speeds mean that those individual files now load in the blink of an eye. The performance concern today is how long it takes to make individual requests, not how long it takes to download the response. It’s in our best interest to minimize the number of external resources that a page loads.

One way we can reduce external resources is by using CSS where we might have previously used images for design elements. Most notably, this applies to rounded corners, drop shadows and gradient backgrounds. A few years back, the only way to achieve these effects was through images. Now most browsers support these effects as features of CSS3. (There are exceptions: *cough* Internet Explorer 8 *cough.*) So we need to consider graceful degradation, or what effects will be used when the desired CSS3 features are not supported. For instance, a gradient can fall back to a solid color or a drop shadow can be complimented by a thin border.

There is another method called CSS sprites. This involves combining multiple images into a single composite, then displaying specific portions of that large image. This is a good option for decorative elements and icons, combining many small requests into one large request.

Finally, the CSS style sheets themselves can be optimized. When developers work, they like to have each section of the style in its own file, nicely formatted and easy to read. This isn’t so ideal when it comes time for the browser to load the page. For a production environment, we can combine all the CSS files together into one request. The nice formatting, white space and comments can be stripped to minimize the size of the file and reduce the effort made by the browser to parse it. As a final step, we can compress the file, similar to how a .zip file compresses its contents, to further reduce the file size.

These techniques, working in concert, ensure that our sites load as quickly as possible, keeping our users engaged and accessing our content as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I’m fully entrenched in the wired – albeit increasingly wireless – world we live in, so I’m all over the internet absorbing information on places to stay, things to see and do, restaurants and shops to hit. I’m reviewing travel websites, soaking up user reviews, watching videos and following conversations on Facebook and Twitter. After a few days of doing that, I’m ready to book our trip.

All online, of course. From my iPad.

My wife, however, is a print gal at heart. She’ll start out as my web-surfing partner, bless her heart, but quickly gets frustrated with the ability of most travel sites to deliver inspirational, informative content. (On that point, we so agree.) So after a few failed web sessions, she hits the library (like the actual building) and checks out a tower of travel guidebooks (like with an actual library card). She’ll cuddle up with Frommer’s and Fodor’s on the couch each night – bookmarking pages as she goes – and a few days later she’s also ready to book her dream trip.

Then we’ll take what she’s found in her books, cross-reference that to what I find online, and come up with an itinerary that pleases all parties.

We’re living proof of continued research showing that print and digital content BOTH remain relevant in the travel-planning process, even in today’s high-tech world.

Just like peanut butter and chocolate – “Two great tastes that taste great together!” – Amy and I approach travel-planning from two very different perspectives. But when the two come together, they create some pretty awesome results.

This trip to Cali looks to be another winner.

“How many clicks did I get?” “What’s my click-through rate?” These are important questions to address, but it’s important not to overlook the importance of impressions.

Impressions get a bum rap, yet they are the first numbers on our reports. We have forgotten the basics. It’s Advertising 101: whether it is on TV, radio, online or print advertising, the steps are Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action—and you can only get to Action if the message is seen, if the impressions are there. Do not discount the importance of these ad impressions in online advertising!

The next time you review monthly online advertising reports, take a step back and recognize the importance of the impressions. Ask yourself (or your client) when was the last time you clicked on an ad? If someone sees the ad for “The Porch” on VisitPhilly.com, but didn’t click on it, does that mean the ad didn’t work? Not at all; if the ad piques someone’s interest, it’s very likely that they will come back to your site or another site and click on it while they are at home watching Game of Thrones or Mad Men on Sunday night, and then come to the monthly event two months later. Or maybe they will mention something in conversation to a friend or post something on a social media channel. It is not just the “click”—it is the “eyeballs,” too.

Be proud of every single impression. Talk about them. The relevance of how your message is seen while people are planning their trips shouldn’t be undervalued. It’ll knock your socks off when you see how strong the conversions are each month!

Steve referred to the traditional “PC” as a necessary, but not so popular, truck at the AllThingsD D8 conference in 2010:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. I think that we’re embarked on that.”

We have been a few years from that quote, and something always bothered me about it. It isn’t so much the sentiment, more the analogy itself that has struck me as odd. The history of cars and trucks don’t follow the same track or projected track of computers. The analogy applied to computer history would imply big rigs morphed into trucks and then into cars, and that just isn’t how it happened! What is correct, and I think is core to what is being said, is that each still continues to have an impact on our daily lives, just at different levels of usage. Still, I think the analogy could be improved upon:

To me, the computer has always been a tool. It is what we use to get work done, as well as have a little fun! When I was young, most people had a toolshed of some pretty cool, well-used tools hidden inside. The farther back you go, you find that more people had tools of all sorts at the house; they were critical to everyday needs. But over time some of those tools were forgotten by the masses. People today have a screwdriver and a hammer, some even a simple saw. Some have a set of tools, but they often sit neglected until the odd DIY project is started.

That is where I see computers in our lives – we will have our desktops for the few serious craftsmen (or those who sometimes like to pretend) and just need to have the serious workshop available. We will continue to have laptops for those who like a little more, but don’t need the full workshop (think circular saws, compressors and 18V drills). Then we have our simple drills, screw-drivers, wrench sets and other goodies – the more common tools – which in computing we see are being taken by the tablet.** The phone (a.k.a smartphone) is of course our pocket knife – always there and always useful.

There will be hybrid mixes, especially in the consumer market, just as we have seen with tools. First it was the over-reaching pocketknife, and today it is the multi-purpose power-tools sets and the electronic “do-everything” screwdrivers. Desktops and laptops will be around, and will be used when needed – but core work will move to more portable and accessible devices.

One thing is clear: there is and will continue to be a market for all these different tools. They will continue to improve and adapt, just as we must.

* I am not suggesting that laptops were invented, but they were a central focus during Apple’s turn-around. [http://news.hitb.org/content/apples-year-laptop]

** iPad sales were up 65% year-over-year, for Q2 2013 selling 19.5 million units [http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy13datasum2.pdf]