Hello!

I'm starting this blog and my journey to China from Spokane, WA headquarters of People to People Ambassador Programs.

I'm off to china in the morning and will be posting quick updates, pictures and video to the site during my brief stay in Beijing.

My role at Ambassadors is the head of our technology department. In this role I get the opportunity to see how we can deploy technology to make our trips more fun and increase the safety factor. I have a few things I'm testing on this trip :

1) An HP mini netbook. At just over 2 lbs its small and light and mine has a built in Verizon WLan card so I'm never far from an internet connection. Look forward to blogging on this and using it to upload photos and video.
2) A Flip Mino HD. This is a very small and sleek HD capable video camera. I'm curious to see how it performs for both video and some still shots. I love the size factor of this thing. At a little more than 1/2 inch thick this thing is ultra portable and if the quality is decent it will definitely be high on the must have for travel list.
3) A SPOT device. This is a portable satellite messaging device. Similar to GPS enabled cell phones but because it uses satellite messaging it doesn't require a cellphone signal. This is a cool deal for us as we are constantly pushing areas in Australia or Africa that don't have reliable cellphone coverage and we can still keep tabs on where our students and leaders are. They also have a cool sharing page using Google maps so more on this one shortly. I will turn it on once I'm in Beijing.

Time for some sleep. See you on Tuesday! (a little international date line joke)...

-Kris