Have you heard the news about the death of publishing? Books are going extinct! Paper will cease to exist! Buy stock in digital ink.

Seth Godin, a mentor to me and the rest of the internet, recently announced his retirement from traditional publishing. Seth is perpetually ahead of the curve, so as usual, most people completely missed the point in responding to the news.

When I read his interview, I thought “Wow, I need to catch up.” If I had twelve bestselling books, I’d say farewell to traditional publishing too. So everyone else in publishing, traditional or otherwise, who doesn’t have twelve bestselling books needs to get to work.

Then I read something on a publishing web site with another author complaining that “The only authors who sell books anymore are those who have popular blogs.”

This puzzled me. Where does a popular blog come from—does the blog fairy descend from the sky with a passionate group of readers, all eager to support a new writer? Or does it maybe have something to do with consistent, dedicated work over a long period of time?

Speaking of Books and Strategy

A few days from today I’ll head out on the world’s first Unconventional Book Tour to 63 cities. Venues are now posted over here… at least for the cities I have lined up so far. I get a lot of credit for being strategic, which is overstated at best—or more likely, completely untrue. I really don’t have a strategy besides what anyone can see on the site.

But yes, friends, there is indeed a method to the magic. The method is called: Dream very big. Decide to do big things and then set them in motion.

My strategic plan is: say yes to everything.

The tactic is: get up early and stay up late.

Whoa, so strategic! I know, I know… I’m really giving away the secrets to the store.

Next, get very smart people on your team, like Reese the Superstar Design and Nicky the Genius Developer. Together they do things like make the Unconventional Book Tour site come to life, where people can sign up, post directly to Twitter, and even volunteer to bring cupcakes. (And just wait till you see the World Domination Summit site… coming next month. They’re raising the bar even higher for that project.)

The point is that you don’t have to figure everything out before you get started. Dreaming comes first; details come later.

Which leads to another very important point: If you have a big dream, you should find a way to pursue it.

Derek calls it the hell yes moment – when you hear about something that sounds amazing, don’t worry so much about what else you have to do to make it work. Just say hell yes. You’ll be scared about it in the beginning and happy about it as you work it out.

Now, the process of following a dream is not without stress and tension. The point is not to retreat from the tension, but to embrace it and live in it. I am frequently reminded of this quote by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi:

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

By the way, I’m also encouraged by Csíkszentmihályi because if he can be successful with that name, Guillebeau should be no problem. But I think the point at hand is: If you feel discontented, change it up by doing something challenging instead of something relaxing.

So for the book tour that begins next week, some things are good to go and other things have yet to be finalized. I have no idea where I’ll be in Wilmington (Delaware) and Manchester (New Hampshire) and those stops are on the very first leg. I finally decided if nothing else, I’ll show up at a Starbucks somewhere and we’ll go from there.

But it’s OK. It will be fine. I try to take everything step-by-step. Get on the plane and fly to New York City. Have a fun book launch with all of Manhattan at Borders on Tuesday night. Figure out how to get to New Jersey. Look up the locations of Starbucks in Delaware.

No worries. We’ll make it happen with the help of a small army.

I’ll apologize now for writing a lot about the book and book tour for the next few months. It won’t be all book, all the time for 97 days while I’m back and forth on the road. But I’ve always written this blog based on what I’m doing, and “all things book” will be what I’m focusing on for a while.

The fun thing about blogs is if you decide you’re no longer interested, you can vote yourself off the island by unsubscribing. No hard feelings! And for everyone who sticks around, I really appreciate your support. The dream is much easier to pursue when other people are a part of it.

So, back to you over there…

What’s your plan? How can you embrace tension and pursue a big dream? What can you say hell yes to?

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Image: Jim

Jolie and I went down to the Portland Art Museum for a meeting with the Events Planner last week.

We looked around at rooms that seated 350+ people. We talked about projectors and coat rooms and WiFi and catering—and everything else you could think of related to holding a major event.

“Look,” I said as we walked past a wide corridor. “That looks like a nice place for the bloggers’ lounge.” The corridor in question also contained a large statue of a naked man, but hey, it’s an art museum.

“We don’t allow red wine in this room,” the planner told me as we walked by another room with 500-year-old paintings. “But white wine? As much as you want!”

Normally I’d be taking notes on all these things—we looked at ten different rooms, all with different seating capacities and red wine vs. white wine specifications. But I didn’t take any notes at all, because I was simultaneously thrilled and terrified, caught up in the Big Idea of what this was all about.

“What do you think?” the cheery Events Planner asked as she walked us out.

I looked up at the impressive building, pictured above and over here. “I’ll take it,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

And thus began the planning…

The Unconventional Book Tour kicks off in just eight days, with my goal of meeting every person who reads AONC in the U.S. and Canada. But as much fun as it will be going from Kansas to Nebraska to meet with 63 small groups, I also thought:

What if we could also bring everyone together in one place? That would be even more epic than me going around from city to city.

So that’s what this is about, and I knew that the “one place” had to be Portland (PDX), World Domination HQ and my hometown of choice. We’ve been scouting event spaces for weeks, trying to find the best location to host an amazing group of people. A place like the Marriott isn’t the right fit, but the smaller hotels were, well, too small.

So I made a big financial commitment to rent the Portland Art Museum, and everything that goes with it—A/V, permits from the city, insurance to make sure no one breaks the naked man statue, and so on. As I suspected, renting out the Portland Art Museum for an entire weekend isn’t cheap. I’m taking a big risk in committing ten months in advance, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.

So, friends: here’s the proposal.

Next June, I propose we take over Portland, Oregon with our first annual World Domination Summit, and I’d love for you to be a part of it.

The summit will be a gathering of remarkable people from all over the world. Other authors, bloggers, and interesting people will be speaking from the main stage, a 376-seat theater where we’ll meet for about a third of the time.

The second part of our time will be in small groups, where we talk about travel hacking, microbusinesses, how to do what you love while changing the world, and all kinds of other important topics. (You’ll sign up for the groups you want, and there will also be a voting system to nominate your own group.)

The final third of the time will be all about community. We’re working with the Mayor’s Office to put together tours of Portland. You can visit the city’s famous food carts, check out the vegan tattoo parlor, head back to the theater for a special Charity: Water screening we’re putting together, or whatever you want.

And mostly, you can hang out with people who see the world in the same way. It will be insanely epic, and I’d love for you to be there.

So here’s the second part of the deal.

The summit will have a cost associated with it, but I’m spending my time thinking about how it can be amazing instead of how it can make money. (“Not many people can guarantee awesomeness, but we’re stepping up” as I say in the Unconventional Guides business.)

It will probably cost about $300 a person or so for the whole thing—much cheaper than SXSW, BlogWorld, or any other major conference that doesn’t have a ton of advertisers. We’re also working with hotels to offer a discounted group rate, talking to both hostels in town to completely book them out, and planning to coordinate some kind of couchsurfing option for people who prefer that.

I’m not 100% sure how everything will work yet, but I have a team of advisers here in Portland helping me to make this much more awesome than I could do on my own. And if you come, you’ll be a big part of making it even more awesome.

The goal is to publish the registration site in mid-September—live from the road as I’m touring America. But before then, I wanted you to be the first to know.

Will you save the date, and set aside June 3-5th 2011? I hope you can make it.

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This week’s featured postcard comes to us from Tim in Melbourne, Australia.

Here’s what it’s all about.

See more postcards from readers here.

Send your own in to this address:

World Domination HQ
4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd #639
Portland, OR 97214
USA

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As regular readers know, I use Frequent Flyer miles to go all over the world several times a year. I’ve written before about how to earn miles without flying, and how you can become your own travel ninja through mass mileage accrual.

Once you earn miles, however, you need to make a plan for using them. One of the saddest facts in the Frequent Flyer world is that every year, millions of miles go to waste. Help stamp out mileage expiration! Use your miles… but use them wisely. Here’s how.

Always Consider Partner Airlines

I always say the U.S. has the worst airlines but the best mileage programs. So wherever you are in the world, consider earning your miles in programs like AAdvantage and U.S. Airways Dividend Miles.*

Then, instead of redeeming your U.S. miles for flights on U.S. airlines, take advantage of partnerships to book flights on better airlines to better destinations. If you have AA miles, book trips with Cathay Pacific, based in Hong Kong and one of my favorite carriers. If you have United miles, book trips with Thai Airways, ANA, Swiss, South African, or Air New Zealand. A full list of Star Alliance partners is here, the list of OneWorld partners is here, and the SkyTeam partner list is over here.

Note that the mileage required to use partner airlines is almost always exactly the same as using the airline in which you hold the miles. There really isn’t any downside to it, but not everyone is aware that you can easily book partner awards—and when you make a reservation, the airlines don’t always advertise this fact, since they usually have to pay the partners for your ticket.

*(Unfortunately, Delta’s SkyMiles program has been devalued so much over recent years that it is now known as SkyPesos in the travel hacking world—so I no longer focus on earning many Delta miles.)

Use Miles for Premium Travel (First and Business Class)

Probably the single best use of frequent flyer miles is for international tickets in First or Business Class. This is because premium tickets usually come with a premium price tag of 4-10x the cost of an Economy ticket—but with miles, the ratio is much lower.

You can also sometimes buy miles outright and then immediately redeem them for a premium ticket that would otherwise cost much more. You can do this now with a new U.S. Airways 100% bonus offer that gives you 50,000 free miles with the $1,375 purchase of 50,000 other miles. With your 100,000 miles you can book a Business Class award between the U.S. or Canada and Europe on Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, or a few other carriers—including a free stopover. This is for a ticket that would normally start at $3,000, and you can do it an unlimited number of times.

Side Note: The danger with flying First and Business Class is that after you get upgraded or otherwise wrangle your way to the front of the plane a couple of times, it’s hard to return to the back. So just like everything with lifestyle aspiration, be careful. It’s good to work your way up the ladder slowly.

Research Your Trip Before Calling In

When you call up the airline to book an award (many bookings still need to be made over the phone instead of online), the odds of encountering a knowledgeable person are about 50/50. The odds of encountering a friendly person are also about 50/50—so your goal is to find a knowledgeable, friendly person (25% odds). If you hit the knowledgeable, friendly jackpot, you’re in luck, and that person will help you get where you need to go without hiding information from you.

Otherwise, you’ll need to be ready with some alternatives. When you hear that there’s “no availability” for the award you want, ask these questions:

• Can you check availability on all partners? (Sometimes they only do this upon request.)
• Can you check all hub cities? (Sometimes they just check one.)
• How else could we route this ticket? (Options: to/from Europe via Canada, to/from the South Pacific via North Asia, anywhere with an overnight layover that doesn’t technically count as a stopover because it’s less than 24-hours, etc.)
• Can you book an alternate date for now and put in a request for the date I really want?

A knowledgeable + friendly person will already be aware of these things, so they’ll check them for you. A friendly-but-unknowledgeable person will be able to check all of these things once you tell them what to check. An unfriendly person, however knowledgeable, will get upset that you know what you’re doing, so that situation can be difficult—I usually just say “Never mind, thanks anyway” and then call back to talk with someone else.

Round-the-World Tickets with Frequent Flyer Miles

Most of the time, using miles for Round-the-World trips isn’t a great idea. They usually require a great deal of miles (200,000 is the starting point), and you lose the flexibility that almost every other RTW product offers. For my RTW trips, I purchase tickets directly from Star Alliance or OneWorld, usually beginning the trip in Asia or South Africa, where the cost is lower than the rest of the world.

As always, there are exceptions. The exception here is to use a Star Alliance award booked with Air Canada or U.S. Airways miles to travel via the Atlantic in one direction and the Pacific on the other direction—essentially creating a Round-the-World trip on a single destination award. It sounds complicated, but this tutorial from Gary Leff breaks it down. This is one of the best mileage awards out there—you get free stopovers and a complete trip around the world while everyone else uses the same amount of miles to visit a single destination. If you don’t have Air Canada miles, you can earn Membership Rewards points with American Express and transfer them to Air Canada.

Wrap-Up

The most frequently-asked question about redeeming miles is: how to combine mileage between accounts? Unfortunately, you can’t—at least not usually, and not without losing a large amount of the value or paying an unreasonable fee. That’s why most active travelers keep multiple accounts.

As mentioned earlier, the Delta SkyMiles/SkyPesos devaluation means that I no longer focus on earning Delta miles. However, I still have about 250,000 miles in the account for whenever I need to use them. If I could combine SkyPesos with a FlyingBlue (Air France/KLM) account I would, but that’s impossible—so I’ll just wait it out until I see a SkyTeam itinerary I’d like to book with the SkyPesos, making sure to have at least some kind of minor activity every year so they don’t expire.

This year I went through more than 400,000 miles, so my Frequent Flyer efforts for the next few months will consist of earning and restocking for 2011. To start with, I’ll pick up 100,000 miles from the new U.S. Airways 100% bonus offer—it’s not as lucrative as the one last year, but still decent. They also have a “Grand Slam” offer from which I’ll probably earn another 20,000-40,000 or so.

Starwood recently offered a new 30,000 credit card offer that was a great deal if you live in the U.S. and have never had the card. I already have it, but I wrote them to ask if I could have the 30,000 bonus anyway. (Yes, I can be shameless when it comes to miles.) They didn’t give me 30k, but they put 5k in the account to pacify me. 5,000 Starwood points can be a free Sheraton hotel night, so I’ll take what I get.

Otherwise, I’m heading out to see America instead of flying overseas… but of course, I’ll also have my eye on other Frequent Flyer deals that pop up, in order to make sure I’m ready to go in 2011.

Happy travel hacking!

###

Image: Richard

The “hustler” image on the right is pretty much what I try to do every day: lots of work, lots of messaging. The messaging isn’t always directly related to the work at hand—sometimes I’m supporting other people with their own hustling. But on a good day, there’s plenty of work and and plenty of messaging.

Another way to look at it is:

Style without substance = flash. (Also, no one respects these people.)

Substance without style = unknown. (Everyone who knows these people respects them… but not many people know them.)

Style with substance = impact. (The goal.)

Remember when we talked about strategy and tactics? The interesting thing with hustling is that people can copy your tactics without understanding your broader strategy. Charlie Gilkey recently referred me to a similar quote from The Art of War: “Everyone knows my tactics, but no one knows my strategy.”

When you take the time to build something worthwhile instead of just taking up space, you engage with strategy and tactics every day. And you hustle.

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Book Update: Thanks for all the comments, emails, Twitter messages, and courier pigeon deliveries for the 99 free books last week. It was a three-hour project to pick the winners, but Libby and the biased judges managed to overcome. If you got an email from us this weekend and sent your address via the Google form, your book will be on the way tomorrow.

Everyone else, the book will be available everywhere starting September 7th, and I really appreciate your support.

This week’s featured postcard comes to us from Aaron in Omaha, Nebraska.

Here’s what it’s all about.

See more postcards from readers here.

Send your own in to this address:

World Domination HQ
4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd #639
Portland, OR 97214
USA

###

The day before leaving on my final international trip of the year, the FedEx guy showed up at my door.

Unfortunately, he did not have a package with my passport from Washington, D.C., which led to my just-barely-made-it excursion to Algeria. Too bad—but it all worked out in the end, as it usually does.

Instead of a passport, I received a small package from Penguin Books. I get review books all the time, so I assumed that’s what this one was. But then I opened up the package and saw my name. At first I thought it was an impostor, but no impostor would choose the name Guillebeau to write a book. (He would probably choose a name like Godin or Grisham instead.)

Yes indeed, somehow my ADD brain and continent-hopping body managed to write a whole book. And now it’s almost ready to go… in just 19 days from today.

Live from Belarus, check out the video below for more…

[Can't see it? Here's the direct link]

***

And here are two important announcements…

First, the Unconventional Book Tour Is On!

As promised, I’m hitting the road to meet readers in all 50 states (all 10 provinces in Canada will follow in January). We’re confirmed at some good locations—a mixture of big-name bookstores, independent bookstores, universities, bars, pizza places, Pilates studios, and so on. There are also a bunch of places I don’t have a venue for yet, but there’s plenty of time… right?

–>Action: If you haven’t done so already, please sign up to come out. I’d love to see you on the road this fall.

The goal of the book tour is twofold: first, I want the book to do well, so I’m taking matters into my own hands. Authors should be responsible for the success of their own books, especially these days with the publishing industry changing so much.

But second, even though I believe in personal responsibility, I probably wouldn’t visit everywhere just to promote a book. That’s why the other goal is to live adventurously and tell good stories. The story here is to redefine what book tours look like. Plenty of authors go to major markets, but how many go to every state and every province? Let’s step it up, people.

Second, I Need Some Help! (or: “99 Free Books”)

Just as I get review copies of other authors’ books, my publisher is sending out review copies to a bunch of other authors and media contacts. That’s all fine and well, and I definitely hope to receive their support.

BUT… the entire AONC network is the result of a Small Army of remarkable people telling their friends. The vast majority of site traffic doesn’t come from famous people; it comes from other bloggers, social networking links, and all of you spreading the word one person at a time.

When I was discussing the book launch strategy with Penguin, I told them that I wanted to involve the Small Army as much as possible. In addition to sending review copies to media folks, I asked, could we send them to a selection of my readers?

Sure, they said—how many copies do you want? Ha ha. Foolish question! I told them that 44,000 would be a good start.

Alas, that request was turned down—apparently they want some readers to actually purchase the book!—but they agreed to give me 99 free copies to send to the Small Army. Penguin is even paying for shipping, and the 99 people will get the book at least a week in advance of official publication of September 7th. It’s not 44,000 free copies, but hey, I do what I can.

So… do you want one?

I want these books to go to people who care about AONC and want to support the mission. That’s the only real criteria—I don’t care if you have five followers on Twitter or five thousand, or if you even use Twitter. Presumably you know someone who could benefit from our message, and that’s what matters.

If you’re one of the 99, I’ll need some help—you’ll actually be a part of the launch process, and help to get the word out in September… which is only a few short weeks away. I’ll say more about this to the people who get the books, but for now –

If you’d like to be part of this campaign, all you need to do is let me know in the comments. That’s it.

I can’t pick everyone, but Libby the assistant and my usual biased judges will make a list within 36 hours and contact 99 people for their mailing details. Cool?

By the way, I’ll be going full-tilt into “shameless promotion mode” for this book, but the goal is to make it fun. Most of my limited royalties are going to Charity: Water, and I’m actually spending more on the (self-funded) book tour than I was paid to write the book in the first place.

In other words, it’s not a money-making endeavor for me, but I do want to reach a lot of people with the message.

Can you help? Let me know why you want one, and tomorrow we’ll pick 99 people to receive FREE BOOKS.

99! Really!

***

Update: Thanks for all the interest! Comments are now closed, and the biased judges will get to work on the difficult task of picking 99 people. If you don’t hear from us, you’re still amazing and the book will be available throughout the universe starting September 7th.

###

Thanks to some fun travel hacking that led to a better-than-free side trip to Thailand, I took a couple days off at the end of my Belarus-to-Algeria adventure.

I’ve been to Thailand a dozen times, but never to Chiang Mai, the mountainous city in the north, far away from the hustle of Bangkok.

The highlight of the excursion was a day trip to Tiger Kingdom, a cat reserve twenty minutes out of the city where tourists can play a fun game of “pet the tigers while the staff watches warily with sticks.”

I like cats of all sizes, and I had heard good things about the reserve. The tigers are well-cared for, they aren’t drugged, and they aren’t kept on chains. Despite the fact that they are free to wander (somewhat), they don’t attack humans—or so I hoped.

For once I wasn’t jet-lagged, so I set off in a tuk-tuk from my Chiang Mai hotel soon after getting in. Upon arrival at Tiger Kingdom, the first sign wasn’t good—the left eye of the lady selling tickets was completely covered in white medical gauze from some kind of recent injury. One can hope that the injury wasn’t from a tiger, but for the sake of appearances, perhaps they should put her to work in the back office until she recovers.

I then had to decide on my preferred tiger-petting package. Though the website needs some work, the minders of Tiger Kingdom are smart marketers. The Kingdom offers differential pricing to offer a range of experiences. Nice! They’ve obviously been following the daily lessons in the Empire Building Kit. Here’s how the range breaks down:

Custom Photo CD: 300 baht ($10 USD)
Smallest, Small, Medium, or Large Tiger Room: 520 baht ($17 USD)
Buy All Four Rooms: 1700 baht ($56 USD)
All Four with Custom CD: 1900 baht ($63 USD)

Well done, guys. I briefly considered taking only the “big tiger room” package, but then I thought about it: I had come all the way to the north of Thailand. The visa for Belarus last week was an incredible $420, and there was no Tiger Kingdom in Minsk. (In addition to passing on the “Striptease Special” in the nightclub, I also passed on what looked like “Vodka Kingdom” in the hotel casino.)

With that in mind, I boldly selected the “Alexander the Great” version of tiger-petting packages. I’d get 15 minutes in each tiger room, plus a CD of photos from the room with the big cats. As they say, you only live once, and hopefully I’d still be alive when it was over.

Before I set off to meet the felines, a staff worker gave me the rundown on what I needed to know. First of all, don’t be an idiot and provoke the tigers. Someone tried that a couple of years ago, and no one talks about it anymore. Second, the tigers are treated firmly but fairly by the staff. Tigers are trained from birth to obey the trainers, and while humans are allowed to lay on top of the tigers (really! see below), tigers and humans are not allowed to play together in any way.

I was then guided in the best way to get to know your typical tiger: approach from the back or side, never toward the head, underbelly, or front paws. I was to press firmly on the tiger’s back—apparently the tiger doesn’t like humans to be too gentle. Since Libby the housecat likes me to throw her around the house more than she likes to sit on my lap, I now see where this preference comes from.

There was virtually no chance of anything going wrong, the staff member told me. But by the way, could I sign this legal form releasing Tiger Kingdom from liability just in case? Nothing major, it just covers mauling, loss of limbs, loss of eyesight (I thought of the ticket-selling lady), and death. Well, what can you do? I signed away my life and went in.

(Click on any photo to view full-size)

***

“Sticky Rice” Endorses The Art of Non-Conformity Book

The tigers all have names, about half of which are Thai names that I promptly forgot. The other half were your basic “popular English phrases in Asia” names, like Beautiful Morning and Lucky Day. One of the cats was named Sticky Rice, and that’s where the staff took photos for my 300 baht CD.

After I had pulled his tail and laid on top of him with no objection, I introduced my new friend Sticky Rice to this fantastic new book that launches in only 22 days, and managed to secure an endorsement of two paws up with only minor scratches. As you can see, Mr. Rice was impressed—although after he looked like he might take a bite out of the book, I decided to stop pressing my luck. Shaking his back paw (never the front), I said farewell to my new friend and moved on.

(Click on any photo to view full-size)

Before I left, I took advantage of my Alexander the Great tiger-petting package and went to the “smallest tiger” room. These tigers are 3-6 months old, and sometimes a bit more active than the big cats, as you can see in this video.

And here’s one more video from the smaller cat room—I have no idea what I wanted to say in this clip, but the next time I get to lay my head on top of a tiger cub, I promise to be more prepared.

For $63, it was a great experience and well worth it. On the way out I met my faithful tuk-tuk driver at the entrance, and he took me back to the city.

For the rest of that day and the next one, I wandered through Chiang Mai itself. I ate good Thai and Indian food. I took a trip to Black Canyon Coffee, a Thai chain I’ve been visiting since coming to Thailand for the first time in 2002. At night I drank Singha beer and took it easy, something I try to do at least every other year, whether I need it or not.

It was a good way to end my country-hopping for 2010. I’m on the way back home now, and will be getting ready to see all of America starting on September 7th in New York City. It will be epic! Or something.

And… that’s it for now. Greetings from LH 402 to Newark, continuing on to Chicago and then homeward bound to the great PDX. See you all on the other side!

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More photos here

This week in the “wow, really?” department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belarus has provided detailed comments on my recent experience attempting to get a visa for their country. You can read the official government response here in Russian, or over here in a fun translation provided by The Google.

(My favorite line in this translation is “Chris Guillebeau is fundamental no luck” – followed by “a blogger does not have the right to be boring.”)

Among other things, the ministry spokesman says that because “five or six people a day” use the airport ATM with success, there must be something wrong with the debit card I use elsewhere, all over the world. That sounds like a line I could have used in the original post. No kidding, five or six people a day! What an astounding usage rate.

Unfortunately for entertainment’s sake, there’s no real feud—as mentioned, I had fun in Minsk and I wish them well. Also, as mentioned countless times on the blog, I’m a private citizen and have no affiliation with the U.S. State Department. I am well aware that the U.S. often makes it difficult for foreigners to visit our country. So sorry, but I can’t do much about that other than criticize the policy, which I’ve done plenty of times.

No one in Belarus needs to feel bad about the silliness of their government’s bureaucracy, because it’s not their fault. Likewise, there’s no need to vilify travelers from the U.S. just because they are from the U.S. Can’t we all just get along?

Please send any additional complaints about the U.S. visa process to:

Hillary Rodham Clinton
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
USA

In Other News! Fear and the Art of Creation

If you’re been reading for a while, you may recall that Jonathan Fields and I both spoke at a TedX event held at Carnegie Mellon University earlier this year. (My talk is here; the better talk is here.) We’ve decided to take an extension of this show to the headquarters of the Internet, otherwise known as Austin, Texas in March 2011.

Alas, we can’t just invite ourselves—we have to be invited by the internet itself. Are you a part of the SXSW community? Can you hook us up? If so, please vote for our panel on the SXSW site below. Jonathan promises to give out free yoga mats, or something.

–>The Panel Picker Is HERE! Thanks for your support.

Oh, and the World’s Greatest Book Tour Begins in 23 Days

What was I thinking in trying to do 63 events, mostly back-to-back, with no real plan? I’m not sure… but we’re moving forward one way or another. Burn the ships! Damn the torpedoes!

See you all soon, and have a great week wherever you are.

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This week’s featured postcard comes to us from Peter in Prague, Czech Republic.

Here’s what it’s all about.

See more postcards from readers here.

Send your own in to this address:

World Domination HQ
4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd #639
Portland, OR 97214
USA

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