http://www.lizburr.com/favorite-things-virgin-america?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=favorite-things-virgin-america A girl about the Internets Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:14:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.lizburr.com/favorite-things-virgin-america/comment-page-1#comment-368 Christian Westbrook Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:56:08 +0000 http://www.lizburr.com/blog/2009/02/favorite-things-virgin-america/#comment-368 Whoever Branson hired to managed entire pax experience is genius: the purple lighting is impossible not to notice as you board, and just sufficiently unconventional to ease your mind in transitioning from the drudgery of air travel to a more inquisitive, receptive state: what is this mysterious purple ... dance club in the air? It's unfortunate that their in-flight system which allows you to watch TV with or without text chat w/ other passengers is unused (in my experience, but usually the redeye) -- the concept of changing "a bunch of people with whom you have to cram into a plane for a few hours" into an ephemeral social network, allowing you to *choose* whether to interact with other passengers and with whom (no longer the sales guy next to you) is a radical step that will take a while to catch on socially before the utility of that system is fully realized. As an example, though: I'd been working on my laptop and went to order free coffee/soda from the seatback device (bloody mary's at 35K' can work a number on productivity) when my seatmate in front laughed out loud at Metalocalypse, the show we both were watching on the seatback. That sparked a conversation, and as it turned out, I'd purchased the soundtrack to the series and mentioned this to him. He was still raving about Dethklok when my coffee arrived, so we exchanged email addresses, I queued a link in Mail.app to him, and got a thank you email two weeks later. That kind of passenger interaction -- based not on random seat assignments (and in fact even in spite of them!), but on common interests -- implies a radical shift from business travel as an expensive inconvenience to what can *more frequently* serendipitously yield relationships that persist beyond the 'ephemeral social network' Virgin's system implicitly creates. Love it. Did I mention it runs Linux? Love that too. Christian Whoever Branson hired to managed entire pax experience is genius: the purple lighting is impossible not to notice as you board, and just sufficiently unconventional to ease your mind in transitioning from the drudgery of air travel to a more inquisitive, receptive state: what is this mysterious purple … dance club in the air?
It’s unfortunate that their in-flight system which allows you to watch TV with or without text chat w/ other passengers is unused (in my experience, but usually the redeye) — the concept of changing “a bunch of people with whom you have to cram into a plane for a few hours” into an ephemeral social network, allowing you to *choose* whether to interact with other passengers and with whom (no longer the sales guy next to you) is a radical step that will take a while to catch on socially before the utility of that system is fully realized.
As an example, though: I’d been working on my laptop and went to order free coffee/soda from the seatback device (bloody mary’s at 35K’ can work a number on productivity) when my seatmate in front laughed out loud at Metalocalypse, the show we both were watching on the seatback. That sparked a conversation, and as it turned out, I’d purchased the soundtrack to the series and mentioned this to him. He was still raving about Dethklok when my coffee arrived, so we exchanged email addresses, I queued a link in Mail.app to him, and got a thank you email two weeks later.
That kind of passenger interaction — based not on random seat assignments (and in fact even in spite of them!), but on common interests — implies a radical shift from business travel as an expensive inconvenience to what can *more frequently* serendipitously yield relationships that persist beyond the ‘ephemeral social network’ Virgin’s system implicitly creates.
Love it. Did I mention it runs Linux? Love that too.
Christian

]]> http://www.lizburr.com/favorite-things-virgin-america/comment-page-1#comment-367 JeR Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:24:09 +0000 http://www.lizburr.com/blog/2009/02/favorite-things-virgin-america/#comment-367 LOVE Virgin America! It's like a club inside... haha... I'm going on it next week headed to Seattle. LOVE Virgin America! It’s like a club inside… haha… I’m going on it next week headed to Seattle.

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