Austin - Day 1

Everywhere I turned I saw cowboy boots.

The landscape is very different there, than here. They don’t really have trees. They’re more like big shrubs. And I confess I was quite excited about seeing fields of cactuses. I suppose that would be like someone visiting here getting excited about seeing thistles everywhere in our fields, lol.

Austin has the world’s largest Urban Bat Colony. It was really neat to see thousands and thousands of bats flying out at once. The most noticeable thing was the noise. The whole area was awash in the sounds of bats and birds.

I brought home cowboy hats for the kids:)

It was a great trip but I encountered some interesting things along the way. While leaving the Fredericton airport, I was physically checked and my luggage searched, which was fine. When I arrived home, I unlocked my suitcase and discovered a notice in there that they had somehow unlocked my suitcase and searched my luggage. They did a rather messy job, left items unzipped and sprawled all over the place. I have a serious flying problem with my ears. Every time I fly, my ears are plugged up for days afterwords, sometimes weeks. I’ll be heading to the doctor this week to see if there’s anything they can do. As decongestants aren’t cutting it. On the flight back, from the Atlanta to Boston flight, I happened to have someone from Fredericton sitting behind me. What are the odds of that. Then on the flight from Boston to Fredericton, there were several people that had flown out Monday morning and we all recognized each other and chatted away.

Another thing I thought would be a good idea in the airport stores are single use items. Since we can’t take makeup, lotions, nasal spray, etc. on the flights. It’s a waste of time to buy a full bottle. I would think they would start to sell small single use bottles/packages of items. They could set up a makeup kiosk where women could purchase these and touch up their makeup. They may have this stuff already and I may have just not discovered it.

The course itself was incredible and amazing. I felt like I finally was with a group of people that thought like I did about marketing. The partners there have done marketing for companies like General Electric, Universal Studios, and more. The particular course I took was Wonder Branding: Marketing to Women. Michele Miller and Holly Buchanan did an excellent job showing how marketing has changed and in particular the power of the woman buyer. I plan to attend some courses there again in the future. I met people from all over US and even another Canadian.

In light of marketing to women. I read that women candidates were extremely low in this recent election and that the NB Council on the Status of Women want to bring more women into politics, here in NB. With what I learned this week, it reinforces that I think that political organizations aren’t reaching out to women in the way that women need.