It is great that Michelle Obama is advising US citizens to vacation in the Gulf. There are, in the end, thousands of miles of beaches that the oil has not touched yet. Getting involved in the effort to help local communities and the overall economy while still having a blast during your vacation is something to admire. An example to set that other will follow and make sure people are stronger than the oil spilt in their waters.

“It is vacation time.  Folks are looking for things to do with their kids, and this would be a great opportunity to do a few things — help this community, send a different message about the extent of the spill, and also think long term about how the rest of the country can help this economy and the folks down here,” Mrs. Obama said at the Panama City Welcome Center.

But is this PR move still brilliant when the Obamas themselves chose to vacation elsewhere, Maine to be precise? Isn’t taking your own advise proof that you believe in what you are saying and that you are also involved and doing, not just reciting PR speeches carefully crafted for you?

Maybe there is a perfectly good reason why the US President and his family have chosen Maine’s Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. Then again it’s a weekend mini-trip and the reason why it’s not the Gulf Coast for them as well is unclear to me.

It breathes hypocrisy and actually a poor PR strategy of the White House. I am sure people who knew Michelle Obama was to speak at the at the Panama City Welcome Center cheering for Gulf Coast vacations also knew where the First Lady and her family were planning to go. Couldn’t they connect the dots?

There is a Romanian saying stating you should do what the priest says, not what he does. Maybe it should be extended to presidents and their families as well.

What do you think of all this?

I’ve mentioned on quite a few occasions that I had a new blogging project in mind, a travel blog to be precise. I didn’t want to give too many details on it until it was up and running and had something published on it.

Right now, Travel Spells is about two weeks old, has an About page and two published posts. I’ve used a lovely magazine type theme for it that has tons of documentation I am yet to read. I am so happy it is finally up and running and I can properly share my joy with you.

Please visit it when you have the time, comment or subscribe to its RSS feed and share your thoughts and ideas here or on Travel Spells. I am really curious to find out what you think about it!

Being at the airport at 5 am is not an easy thing to accomplish! Especially if you didn’t finish packing or got enough sleep the night before. But we got there in time, went through the check in, the security check and had another hour to kill before boarding.

The flight to Munich was easy, the next 10 hour flight no Chicago was a different story. I was planning to sleep a lot, so was Silviana, but none of us actually did. What happened? Well we got to our hotel in Rosemont at about 1.30 pm and ended up sleeping until 7 pm. We woke up to no converters at the hotel and had to go buy one at the nearby mall. And so we said goodbye to our sight-seeing plans.

The next night I could get no sleep of course. Thank God I had 2 series and a half from Angel with me So at 8 am we went to have breakfast and head to the Stephenson Convention Center where ISPCON took place. We were sponsors of the Email Center and also had our exhibiting Kiosk. One of the computers in the center was not working, no browser had been redirected to the AXIGEN homepage and we were told to do it ourselves, if we knew how to Wow! So we paid quite a lot to be a sponsor and an ISPCON IT girl at the same time!

The first day was pretty quiet. So I thought it would be great to go visit the Press Lounge! Maybe some had already arrived! Tough luck, it was empty! And this part of the event didn’t change much over the next two days. But there were plenty of visitors, who turned out to be potential clients, partners or investors. But I was right, exhibiting always stands in your way. Being a sponsor gets you almost the same awareness and you are free to meet everyone you want. Then again, Jupiter Media had a weird deal for ISPCON that did not allow a company to be a sponsor without exhibiting.

On the second day, I had lunch with Barbara Rozgonyi of WiredPRworks. It was really great meeting her and she provided great insight about what we should see in Chicago. If you are wondering, she looks 10 times better than her photo and she has an incredibly warm smile. If you’d like a photo of the two of us and a way better story on our meeting, see Barbara’s entry!

Our time visiting downtown Chicago? About 3 hours. But we tried to make the best out of it. Yes, we were real tourists, went to the Navy Pier, got on the huge wheel near the carousel to take better pictures, bought the photo they took of us while going on it and so on.

We then got hungry, of course. And chose a Mexican restaurant where I had Loco Wings. And that they were, spicy enough to make you go loco, but so tasty I could not believe it! To have a complete experience, we drank Bud

And for the grand finale, we walked among the skyscrapers in the twilight, seeing all of them light up and making it all bright.

The ISPCON event was ruled by men. Only a few women, we were a bit overdressed, the evening events didn’t really appeal to us. If I ever want to gamble, I’ll gamble in Las Vegas, not in some Convention Hall in Chicago. The event is not that big as one would expect considering how well promoted it is. From what I heard, HostingCon is a better alternative for some. I think it still was a great start to find out more on the US market, to find out what people want to know and where they’d like to go.

So on the third day of our story we said goodbye to our Launchpad colleagues packed our banners and went to the airport. Next stop, NYC!