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Location: Anchorage, Alaska, but hopefully changing soon!
Experience: Five years on FT with what I hope is a fairly high helpful-posts-to-post-count ratio! :D
What is FlyerTalk to you?
It's both a game (finding cheap fares and piecing the puzzles together to extract the most value out of them), a hobby (both travel itself as well as airports and airplanes [I loved to go to airports and watch planes take off and land as a kid...and still do]), and a way to be able to live almost a jetsetter lifestyle without the massive paycheck normally required to visit exotic lands and fly in premium classes.
FlyerTalk is my home, my social circle, my link to current events, and the place that gave me the tools to turn my passion (to experience this wide, wondrous world) into a reality far beyond what I could have ever thought possible.
What has to change on FlyerTalk?
I'd like to see more official participation and representation from all of the travel industries discussed on FlyerTalk. People like Starwood Lurker are well loved and well appreciated because he's a huge help to us (not to mention a genuinely nice guy!). Having someone from *every* major company in the travel industry who can both give us information, help members of the community with problems, and take concerns or ideas from the community to the higher levels of leadership (and make sure they're taken seriously) would be greatly beneficial to all of us.
We also need to be the *definitive* public source for serious discussion about the travel industry. FlyerTalk is the world's most popular frequent flyer community, but I think the fact that we get excited when FT (or Randy) is mentioned or quoted in the media or when airline management acknowledges our existence is reflective of the fact that we're still not well-known or taken seriously by them. That should be such a regular occurrence that it's just normal and nothing special. We need to be the world's first destination when they want to know something about the travel industry, not seen as a bunch of people who just whine about not getting their way.
What do you like best about FlyerTalk?
The community.
Where else and in what other kind of community can you make friends literally the world over? I've made many friendships quite literally around the world with other members of FlyerTalk--great people from all stations of life that I'd otherwise never cross paths with.
I mean, here I am, a [finally, just recently out of] college kid working for a rental car franchise in podunk Anchorage, and yet I consider people in places from New York to Florida to Seattle to even Sydney to be among my closer friends! And only in this kind of a community could I be constantly running into these friends (some of whom have become very, very dear friends and even mentors) who open their schedules, kitchens, and even couches or spare rooms for me. I'm humbled, grateful, and honored to know such warm and generous people, and the fact that no matter where I go across this vast world I'm bound to run into someone I know makes it all the more special. What started out as just playing the travel game has become an entire life! And I'm not sure I'd have it any other way.
State a platform motto or goals for FlyerTalk for the future.
To be the world's definitive source and destination for travel industry discussion and information.
Name your three favorite forums and why.
Alaska Airlines--my primary carrier, a great airline, and a collection of hugely awesome, friendly, helpful people! (People who drop by for a visit always remark on how helpful and friendly we are.) :)
TravelBuzz!--the source of endless fascinating discussion from topics important to inane.
The last one would have to be split between the various car rental forums and the Alaska destination forums. These are where I find the most joy in being able to help people--I can take what I know about my job and my home and share it with people to make sure they have the best experience they possibly can.
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