So far, 2011 has been hair-raisingly exciting, a bit daunting but a lot of fun. And next week promises to be yet another of those weeks.

Like I’ve done for the past three years, I’m going to SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. The biggest twist this year is that I’m not travelling alone, but taking Andrew and Anna with me! Hopefully, the event lives up to the tales of fortuitous meetings, massive BBQs and equally large margaritas I’ve told them.

Austin is a lovely and very lively city, especially when thousands of people descend from all over the world to talk about tech, listen to bands or see films together. We’re going to SXSW to fill out brains with interesting stories, meetings and information, to meet fellow Mac developers, community managers and interesting people from all walks of life. If you’re going, let me know on @vero on Twitter. I’ll be bringing some Alfred schwag with me and will be wearing a very fetching black and purple bowler hat, so I shouldn’t be too hard to locate!

If you aren’t going to SXSW and don’t want to hear me waffle on, you can mute me for the week.

[Photo credit: David Herrera on Flickr]

So while I’ve been living in the UK for nearing onto 8 years (minus a few months pottering back and forth to finish University in Canada), it still blows my little mind that I can get from London to Paris in just over 2 hours, or fly to Barcelona in even less.

While my travel schedule doesn’t rival the travel calendars of most of my esteemed industry colleagues, it makes me smile that in the course of a month, my Canadian passport will be stamped with Belgian, French and Spanish stamps.

In Bruges (with a detour via Brussels)

Last weekend was the Bruges trip; a hectic two-day trip to Brussels, where we visited the Cantillon brewery home to Lambic, Gueuze, Faro and Kriek beers. I was lucky enough to try an elder blossom lambic, which was rather unusual and flowery but worth a try. We then moved on to Bruges for the evening, wandering the streets and trying more Belgian beers from Edric’s 100 Belgian Beers to Try Before You Die list. The next morning, we did the classic boat tour, ate more mussels and fries, then slowly (very slowly, thanks to National Express useless train services) made our way home.

Next, Barcelona

In just under two weeks, I’ll be popping over to sunny (I hope) Barcelona for a spot of brainstorming with a brilliant client’s team. If I’m lucky, I’ll have a few hours to pop by Las Ramblas and soak in some Spanish vibes (and Spanish wine).

Last stop, Paris

My last stop before Christmas will be Paris, for the LeWeb ’09 conference, where they’ve kindly invited me as official blogger. I’m looking forward to seeing old friends, meeting new faces and seeing new startups and entrepreneurs get passionate about the web.

For those who aren’t familiar with Le Web, it’s a yearly conference with over 1800 attendees with themes relating to the web, technology, but with a broad appeal that will tickle the curiosity of non-geeks as well. Some of the speakers this year include Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, productivity geek Tim Ferriss, TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington (who will undoubtedly get into mudslinging as he does every year), an unusually sober Paul Carr and Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan. A rather varied bunch then!

If you’re also attending, drop me a line or leave a comment, as I’d love to meet some new people!

[As a complete aside, titling this post "On the road again" caused me to start singing Richard Séguin's "L'Ange Vagabond", which contains the lyrics "On the road again". I ended up downloading the album from iTunes - gobsmacked iTunes UK has a French-Canadian album from 1993 in its catalogue! Time for a trip down memory lane...]

If you regularly travel or attend events, you probably pull your phone out of your pocket every few minutes. You also most likely rely heavily on it as your main means of communication, so losing it becomes a real pain.

What I did during SXSWi was create a note containing my contact details if my phone was found. As it was a total geekfest, my Twitter username and email address was enough, but if you’re staying at a hotel, you could ask them to leave it at your hotel’s reception desk, etc. As long as it fits within that single screen.

Set a PIN code on your phone to avoid anyone having a jolly by making international calls when they find it and hope that, if you do lose it, a Good Guy/Gal finds it who hands it back to you.

Quick handy tip, do it next time you go away!

[Update: Some readers pointed out they didn't know how to get from creating a note to making it visible as wallpaper so here are some further details.

1. After you've created the note, take a screenshot by pressing the top & front buttons at the same time. The screen will "flash" and the image will be saved in your Camera Roll.
2. Go to your Photos app & to Camera Roll, and select the photo you want.
3. Press the button with the arrow on the far left and select "Use as Wallpaper"
4. Go to Settings and set your PIN code so that your phone now requires a PIN code.

When you'll next wake your phone up from standby, you'll see the wallpaper telling someone who finds your phone how to get a hold of you, while protecting your personal data by keeping it locked with a PIN.]

I arrived a day early to Austin on Wednesday night after a reasonably uneventful flight – just how I like them. The city was preparing for two weeks where everything changed; First, a week where geeks descend upon the city, then a week of musicians taking over every club, bar and hole in the wall.

On Thursday, once settled in, I met with the lovely Kara, an Austin local I met last year, who drove David, Rebecca & myself down to San Antonio for the day. We visited the Alamo and walked along the river, stopping by for our first Tex Mex lunch of the week (certainly not the last).

Friday, panels started slowly, but there was truly only one I wanted to see – Clearleft‘s Paul Annett’s presentation entitled “Oooh that’s Clever! Unnatural Web Design” focused on the small delights designers can add when creating a site. He bravely invited volunteers onto the stage to reenact the Silverback App site’s parallax effect alongside a gorilla costume-clad Elliot Jay Stocks. A surreal start to what was going to be a surreal week.

The evening was just as memorable; The Boiling Pot on 6th is rather unique, in the sense that the crab, sea bugs & meat gets unceremoniously dumped on the table, everyone gets a bib and a hammer and the fun begins.

Saturday, panel topics ranged from “Tips for Making Ideas Happen” with Scott Belsky, “First year as a freelancer” with Thomas Myer to “Mobilizing your Online Community” (the worst panel I attended all week, I left promptly) and “Building your Brand with Web 2.0 Tools”. The latter had an excellent panel composed of Saul Colt (Freshbooks), Chris Brogan, Loic LeMeur (Seesmic), CC Chapman & Dave Delaney, but the excitement of SXSW caused them to behave like fratboys rather than an intelligent, knowledgeable panel for a good part of the hour. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Brogan!)

The evening was a whirlwind of events: Brief visit by the Diggnation party where Alex Albrecht was seen throwing (Adidas-sponsored) shoes at the audience, followed by a few hours at the Frog Design Party, ending up at the Belmont Lounge for a cocktail before bed.

Sunday morning started well with “Ditch the Valley, Run for the Hills”, moderated by the lovely John Erik Metcalf, on running a successful business outside of the San Francisco area. Opinions were divided, with Scoble suggesting a strong link with the Valley is essential to get a business off the ground, and others proving otherwise. (Louis Gray’s notes)

Next session was “Making Whuffie: Raising Social Capital in Online Communities” by Tara Hunt, which realistically I should have skipped on. It’s a great presentation, but one I had seen twice already.

In the afternoon, the “From Flickr and Beyond: Lessons in Community Management” and “Are PR Agencies a Dying Breed?” panels were enlightening, with more detailed notes to be blogged soon.

Monday‘s first panel was “Beyond Aggregation — Finding the Web’s Best Content” with ReadWriteWeb ‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick, Louis Gray, Gabe Rivera (TechMeme), Melanie Baker (AideRSS) & Micah Baldwin (Lijit) I’ll be blogging this one in more details too but here are Louis’ notes for an early look.

“Enough To Be Dangerous: Managing ‘Expert’ Clients” looked promising but somewhere along the way, I got bored by the duh-that’s-obvious statements and the misinformed observations about the use of Flash in business sites, and walked out to get some Austin sunshine onto my pasty skin and spend some time with new and old friends.

Tuesday, last day of the event, I went to the Great British Breakfast to shmooze a little with the Digital Mission brits. Returning to the Convention Centre, I’d had enough of the fluffy community and social media panels (How many of them? Simon counted) and thought I’d dive into a few topics I knew nothing about; Get Satisfaction’s Thor Muller’s “Welcome to Your Posthuman Future” provided just that. It was like jumping head first into Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” book.

After lunch, I attempted to get in the Kawasaki & Anderson keynote, but it was so crowded that I gave up and wandered the halls one last time. Hoping to finish the week on another unexpected-and-interesting note, I headed to the “DRM: The Fight Isn’t Over Yet” Core Conversation by Fred Benenson of Creative Commons, but Core Conversations are always very hit-or-miss and again, it wasn’t worth staying for.

The Media Temple Closing Party provided a great opportunity to meet new people, where I couldn’t help wondering where they/I’d been all week! It’s always that way,

Wednesday, the long trek home began, flying at 11am from Austin, spending a few hours around Charlotte airport and meeting Glenn Jones for a beer, followed by an overnight flight.

And now, I’m home. The South By Lurgy’s hit me and is holding one of my lungs ransom. But I’ve had a great week, I already miss many of the great people I’ve met and I’m ready to do it again next year.

If I were to make three recommendations to SXSW organisers for next year:

1. Identify the level of the panel more clearly:

Mark panels as Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced on the pocket schedule and ask speakers to stick to that level. The vast majority of panels I attended were far too Beginner level, which sometimes felt like a waste of time. The panelists aren’t necessarily to blame, as they aimed to be as inclusive as possible, but when every panel is lowest-common-denominator, it can be tricky to learn new things.

When I did find a slightly more advanced panel, I reacted just as Simon Willison did “For the record, the asychronous scaling panel is exactly the kind of meaty technical content I want to see more of at #sxsw” When I did find those panels, however, they made my day.

2. Don’t get greedy:

This year, there was a rumoured 12,000 attendees at the Interactive festival. To put it simply, that’s too many. Being refused from entering panels or made to watch a keynote from a second or third re-broadcast room is disappointing, having made the 9,000 miles round-trip to Austin. Having to trek over to the Hilton in the short break between panels was also less than convenient.

It’s great to see the event get more popular and I certainly don’t want it to be reserved for some sort of technical/social elite of the web, but the Convention Centre was creaking at the seams this year.

3. Keep the team in charge of wifi:

I must tip my hat to the team in charge of the wifi at the event. While it wasn’t completely flawless, it was a marked improvement on last year. I hear the AT&T network was a bit more spotty (my roaming mobile picked T-Mobile) and that mobile AT&T vans were brought into the area to boost the service levels for everyone. Someone clearly went out of their way to keep the wifi running smoothly – my bank account will thank you greatly when my data roaming bill comes through.

Finally, to all the wonderful geeks I met for the first time, or had the pleasure of seeing again: See you all next year!

Here’s how the conversation went:

Her: HSBC Personal Banking, my name’s Linda. How can I help you?

Me: I’m going to be travelling to the US, leaving tomorrow and want to ensure you make a note on my account.

Her: Tomorrow? Ok. Where are you travelling to, mam?

Me: Austin, Texas.

Her: *silence* *exasperated tone* So mam, are you going to the US… or to Texas?

Me: *muffled laughter*

Ahh yes, HSBC: International bank and staff that have never left their own town…

Optimising your trip planning is another way to make travel less stressful and more enjoyable. Since I need to practice what I preach, here are some of the travel tips I’m putting into action before heading off to SXSW later this week.

Got any tips to contribute? Leave a comment and I’ll update the post to reflect your suggestions.

Before you travel

Call your bank to let them know you’ll be away: There are few things more embarrassing than your credit card being declined. Banks are very twitchy these days and a flag can be raised for a single “out of the ordinary” transaction. If you’re not a frequent traveller, your first purchase abroad is likely to do exactly that so pre-empt that by telling them the dates and location of your trip.

While you’re speaking to them, find out whether you’ll be charged for using ATMs abroad. If you are, try to get them waived ahead of time.

Check that you’re on the best tariff for your mobile: If you intend to use your phone will abroad, call your mobile operator to find out if you’re on the best tariff. Sometimes it’s free to upgrade to an international tariff, you just need to ask. In other cases, there’ll be a small fee but may be worthwhile if it’ll save you a significant amount.

Get some currency ahead of time: Airports have the least favourable exchange rate, so try to get a handful of bills in the currency you need ahead of time. You don’t need to take out a fortune (and it’s best not to carry too much at once in case you lose your wallet) but it’s worth having enough for a sandwich, a train ticket or a taxi in case you need it.

Give family and work colleagues a copy of your travel itinerary: Leave printed copies of your flight, hotel and passport details with at least one friend/family member, and with the office manager if you’re travelling on business. They’ll know where to find you in case of emergency, and you’ll be grateful that they have a copy of your passport details if yours gets lost/stolen.

Use a good quality suitcase: Don’t underestimate the importance of a solid, well-built and manoeuvrable suitcase. It’ll get battered by the careless airline luggage staff, get wheeled through a city (don’t even think about having a suitcase without wheels!) and give you a backache if it isn’t easy to manage.

Also, pack reasonably. Speaking from experience, two large suitcases and a laptop bag is difficult to control singlehandedly. Add the challenge of rush hour public transportation and the post-travel exhaustion and you’ll be swearing like a sailor.

Check the weather as you pack: This might sound obvious, but check it just before you leave as the weather might change. For example, Austin is 31 degrees Celcius at the beginning of this week, but shoots down to 11 degrees on Thursday. While that’s still balmy when arriving from the  UK, if all I’d packed were flipflops, I’d be rather cold.

If you’re travelling for business, no matter how hot the weather outdoors is, assume that the conference centre or office you’ll be visiting will have air conditioning (especially if you’re going to the US) so bring something warm to cover your shoulders.

Leave plenty of food behind for your significant other: Women, be sure to leave your husbands a generously stacked fridge/freezer. Otherwise you’ll return to find out he’s eaten at KFC every night

[Update: Nearly forgot this important tip...

Set your out of office before you go: If you use Gmail, use the Canned Response and setup messages letting people know you'll be away. It'll lessen the stress by telling your clients, colleagues and friends not to expect a response from you until your return. If you can afford the time, occasionally skim your emails during your trip. Remember that your friends & colleagues will most likely survive without you if you do not respond, so only reply to the essential ones.]

During your trip

Dealing with jetlag: There are different schools of thought on this, but here are my views. If you arrive early at your destination, a brief nap in the afternoon is fine, but it’s important to set an alarm, get up and spend the evening being reasonably active in order to adapt to the new timezone. If you arrive any later than 5-6pm, do not let yourself fall asleep early or you’ll be groggy all evening – if you wake up at all – and will take longer to get used to your schedule. Have a shower, do some muscle stretches or do something up

Get basic supplies to your room: If you’re staying at a hotel for a few days, you may want to pop by the nearest shop and get some water bottles and a few handy snacks. It’ll save you a fortune in minibar bill and be a convenient stop-gap if you’re rushed and can’t go eat a full meal before your next engagement. If you’ve got a sensitive stomach, bottled water will also ensure you don’t have a negative reaction to the local water.

If you’re attending SXSW, the nearest location to the Convention Centre and the nearby hotels is CVS Pharmacy at 500 Congress Avenue (at 5th St).

Have a multivitamin every morning: Travel, whether for business or pleasure, usually involves long, busy days and can take its toll on your body. Rich restaurant meals may also not be as vitamin-packed as usual. I’m packing fizzy Berocca to get my vitamins, but also to force me to have a pint of water to start the day.

Drink water. Then drink more water: The problem with holidays and business trips is that everyone wants to buy you a drink. Between all the alcohol and coffee you’re likely to consume, it’s important to rehydrate with water to ensure your body and mind don’t conk out halfway through your trip. From your flight to your nights out, it’s essential.

The pressurised atmosphere within the aircraft causes high levels of dehydration even though you may not feel hot or even feel like you are sweating. The inside of an aircraft at altitude has 5% less humidity than that of a desert. (Source: Travel Rants)

Use the hotel safe: If your hotel room provides a safe, use it for Pete’s sake. If you feel that the hotel can be trusted, leave your passport, house keys and flight tickets in the safe. If it fits, leave your laptop or camera in it as well when you don’t need it. You’ll be happy to travel lighter, and your mind will be at ease. However, if your hotel is slightly shady, you may prefer to keep your passport and other important belongings on your person at all times.

Stay alert when you’re out: Avoid flashing your gear; you love your iPhone, your MacBook Pro and your fancy camera, but don’t get them out in public unless necessary. Pay attention to where your belongings are at all times, and never leave them unattended. Try not to drink so much that you get sleepy while on the commute back from an evening out or you might find yourself travelling lighter by the time you wake up from your alcohol-induced snooze.

Take time to regroup your thoughts: In an entirely new environment, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Take a moment to breathe and remember why you’re on your trip. Remind yourself of your objectives; Are you there to grow your business or party like it’s 1999? (Or both?) Don’t let your goals out of sight and focus your day around them. Be positive and cheerful, everyone will love you. Of course, be sure to also take in the sights and sounds of the city you’re visiting!

When you get home

Download and backup your pictures NOW: If you delay copying photos and video to your computer on your return, you know you’ll never bother. While you’re still buzzing from your trip, put your images on Flickr, your videos on YouTube and send the link to friends and family. If you’re a geek, be sure to tag the photos appropriately so that other attendees to the same event can find your pics.

Sort through your stuff: Whether it’s business cards, memorabilia or schwag, just like pictures, sort through them now. Jot down actions, connect with the people you met via LinkedIn and follow up with the interesting people you met. Chris Brogan has a few more tips on what to do after a conference.

Take a breather: SXSW is infamous for the state it leaves its attendees in. Last year, it seemed everyone got ill after getting home. Exhaustion, long travel and lots of handshaking (no doubt swapping colds, flus and the occasional stomach bug) will leave most people drained. If you can, give yourself a buffer of a few days to recharge your batteries before jumping back into real life and you’ll feel much more positive about travelling.

South by Southwest Interactive is “Spring Break for Geeks”, with around 7,500 attendees; developers, designers, marketing people, social media folks like me, hippy dippy creatives… All there to learn, exchange ideas and have a lot of fun in the meantime. Not sure it’s much of a break, considering how much there is to do in only a few days.

I’ll be blogging whenever I can and twittering as usual, so if you’re attending, drop me a line to say hi. Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to meet face to face at the conference center, or over a drink at one of the many evening events.

Texas, this time don’t disappoint me, I don’t want any snow. I want 25 degrees Celcius, sunny weather, a light breeze, oh and a cocktail umbrella on my drink too please!

It’s an hour or more that you should recuperate and use for your own benefits so here are a few suggestions for arriving smarter. [Credit to Christopher S. Penn for the "Arrive Smarter" theme & Tarek for pointing me to it originally.]

Listen to an audio or video podcast

Podcasts vary in quality, style, length and topics, so whatever you want to listen to, you should be able to find it. I tend to opt for a more focused podcast on the journey in; it wakes up the brain, gives some interesting ideas and motivation for the day. On the way home, I prefer the freestyle and slightly silly podcasts, which are sometimes informative, but always lighthearted.

• TEDTalks video podcasts: TED offers some great food for thoughts from some fascinating people all over the world. Pick a topic you feel has little to do with your day job or industry and just listen. Some notable speakers for me have been Jill Bolte Taylor, Ze Frank and a number of people who spoke about creativity, imagination & education. [TEDTalks iTunes link]
• BBC Radio 4 World of Business podcast
• Heidi Miller’s Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter: Brits tend to be much too self-deprecating and rubbish at self-promotion, so this one’s for you, my lovely limeys! Heidi’s podcasts cover a range of topics relating to promoting your business, yourself, and smart networking. [DSSP iTunes link]
• Look for audio readings of Cory Doctorow‘s books, it’s always good to listen to.
• Poke around the Podcasts section in the iTunes store and let me know what discoveries you make!

Tip: If you’re an iPhone/iPod user, set it to automatically sync a few “most recent unplayed” podcasts through the options in the “Podcasts” tab in iTunes. That way, you’ll always have fresh stuff to listen to even if you haven’t had the time to pick podcasts manually before travelling.

Pick a book that will help you towards your goals this year

If you’ve picked a themeword for 2009, to help you drive your year forward, browse the web for a list of a few books, ebooks or research papers that will get you closer to your objectives. Or just pick a book to make you think, laugh or cry!

Here are some of mine, to accompany my themeword “Impact” for 2009.

• Tara Hunt‘s The Whuffie Factor, which will be published soon is on my must-read list
• Cory Doctorow’s Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom is half holiday fiction, half social critique. I’ve already read it but definitely recommend it.
• Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational is proving to be a good read on why and how we take certain actions, and how we may think we’re rational, we’re in fact predictably working on emotions or subconscious cues.
• If you’re a productivity buff, you’ll know this guy, but if you’re new to it, you might enjoy Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Work Week. Or Leo Babauta’s The Power of Less (which will be available soon in the UK)
• Sitting on my bookshelf for far too long is Charlene Li’s Groundswell is much overdue to be read.

Keep offline reading material handy on your computer

If you’re the type who uses a laptop on the commute in, you may not always have the luxury of an Internet connection so when you find interesting PDF ebooks, stick them in a “To read” folder on your desktop to dig into when you’ve next got some spare time.

Alternatively, if you’re into that dead tree printing stuff,  carry a hard copy if you really must, but use the reverse side of paper you used before, or recycle the paper later by either giving it to someone else you feel would benefit or by chucking it in the recycling bin.

A few great ebooks:

• Leo Babauta from Zen Habits (same guy as above) recently published an ebook called Thriving on Less, which is rather appropriate in this year where much of our usual habits need to be re-examined to avoid excessive spending and keep us afloat through tough times.
• 37 Signals’ Getting Real: While I don’t really go for the 37S Koolaid, I must admit it contains some great tips for working with small teams and producing quality apps.
• Seth Godin’s Flipping the Funnel may be nearly 3 years old but it remains very relevant. Seth has created a number of ebooks over the years, so why not browse his site and download a few?
• Chris Brogan wrote Using the Social Web to Find Work is highly relevant in this era of job uncertainty. A worthwhile read.
• Finally, not so much an eBook but rather a Slideshare presentation you can download: Chrystie Corns, Social Marketing Manager at Where.com created a cracking presentation giving insight into what it’s like to tweet, blog and use social networks for a living.

Make a conscious effort to relax

Not interested in any of the above and prefer to snooze or stare out the window on your way into work? That’s fine, in fact, it’s great! Your brain needs that restful time. But let’s do a deal, if you’re going to go for zen, do it well.

In other words, don’t let the train’s delay, the elbow in the ribs, the loud guy on his phone or the snow wrecking havoc piss you off. Take a deep breath and admire the glint of the sun on the buildings. Smile at strangers. Just enjoy the mental time off.

[Image: Birdbath's Piccadilly Filly (or 50 Things you never knew about London Underground) on Flickr, Creative Commons license]

If you’re also attending Mobile World Congress, then pop by and see me at the Taptu stand, 7D42, in hall 7 and join me for a coffee or a beer!

[* Thanks to Alex Payne at Twitter, I now have the username Vero, which uber-rocks!]

In my eyes, the first changes they should make are:
1. Encourage carpooling by improving routes reserved to buses and cars with two or more people in it;
2. Improve bus service so that it doesn’t take 3 times longer to get from A to B on the bus than in your own car (see Ottawa’s OC Transpo bus service for an example of a well thought-out plan);
3. Do not include Science Parks in the areas covered, because that’s just money grabbing rather than problem-solving and makes the city look like a bunch of greedy idiots.

Without further ado, here’s the email… Share this information far and wide!

————————-

Hello,

Firstly may I thank you for registering on the Cambridge Congestion Charge website. Secondly may I take this immediate opportunity to say that this will not be sending out regular emails to you.

The Cambridge City Council has launched its public consultation. This basically seems to consist of an online web questionaire and a series of public roadshows around the Cambridgeshire region. I would urge you to take the online questionaire if you haven’t already done so, and visit one of the roadshows as well as contact your local Councillor (easy to use contact details are at the bottom of this email). In the run up to Christmas and New year this important issue may slip your mind and then it may be too late for you to get your point of view across.

As you may know one of the main driving points behind introducing a congestion charge in Cambridge is the investment of a substantial amount of central government money into Cambridge’s transport infrastructure. This money has been offered in return for introducing a congestion charge.

The full proposal document which will form the basis of the City councils bid to get the central government money has been written and is available for download from http://www.cambridgecongestioncharge.co.uk/cambridgecongestioncharge/cambridgecongestioncharge.pdf (copy and paste this link if you need to). The document gives insight into the extensive planning that the council has already made and pinpoints the locations of cameras that would catch motorists that don’t pay, along with plans for mobile vans operating at random locations. I strongly urge you to read this document as either way it will change your way of life in the near future. It is quite long and you have to read it closely to establish exactly what they want to do (such as make Huntingdon Road a one way street for cars going out of the city) but it really is worth it. If you don’t find out about it now and make your views known you may regret it in just a couple of years time.

It also seems that normal “Joe Public” will have to pay a charge of £5 per day at current pricing which doesn’t take into account inflationary increases.

Some useful links and information for you:

City Council Proposal Download
City Council Online Survey (watch out for closed and / or misleading questions & note that this is very difficult to find on the City Council website)

City Council Road Show Locations (watch out for odd opening times)

• The small hall, Guildhall, Cambridge – December 11 – 3-9pm
• The recreation ground, Histon and Impington – December 12 – 3-9pm
• The dining hall, Chatteris Community College – January 10 – 4-9pm
• King Edward VII Memorial Hall, High Street, Newmarket – January 21 – 3-9pm
• Sawston Village College, Sawston – January 23 – 3-9pm
• Commemoration Hall, Huntingdon – January 24 – 3-9pm
• The Grafton centre, Cambridge – January 26 – 9am-5pm
• The Grafton centre, Cambridge – January 27 – 11am-4pm
• Trumpington park and ride, Cambridge – January 30 – 6.30-8.30am and 5-8pm
• Madingley Road park and ride, Cambridge – January 31 – 6.30-8.30am and 5-8pm
• The Maltings, Ship Lane, Ely – February 5 – 3-9pm
• Haverhill Arts Centre, Haverhill – February 6 – 3-9pm
• The Free Church, Market Hill, St Ives – February 13 – 4-9pm

Link to Contact details for all Cambridge City Councillors including email addresses, postal address and phone numbers: http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/about-the-council/councillors/

Please remember to make your view known, especially directly to the council, and please feel free to come back to the cambridgecongestioncharge.co.uk website and continue contributing.

If I can be of any assistance to you regarding this matter or using the website please do not hesitate to ask.

Best Wishes,

Cambridge Congestion Charge Website Administrator
www.cambridgecongestioncharge.co.uk