The Setup
The last you heard from me, I was struggling mightily with a moblogging session to Javamancy, with mixed success. It has been several days since I managed to acquire public terminal access back to Javamancy, and geez, it’s been quite an ordeal.
The Premise
Maybe I’m too jaded, but in the past, whenever I traveled to technical (and even medical) conferences, my level of expectation for free WiFi access, or at the very least, free Internet access, is extremely high. And why not? Across the globe, particularly in the Pacific Rim and Europe, there’s definitely an expectation for ubiquitous access to distributed services, including Web services, and business folk as well as professionals (yeah, such as myself, even).
So why not in Hawaii?
Well, apparently at least on Oahu near the southern coast of the island, where there are certainly plenty of hotels and various facilities, it is definitely NOT a free Wifi zone. Is there a for-profit conspiracy going on?
Jump to the “Mike”
During the first day of the APMA conference, there was one of those singing inspirational speakers, Mike Rayburn. Apparently, he’s a DC metro fellow, having grown up in Rockville, Maryland, and even goofing off (with the rest of us) over at Veneman’s Music Store, while it still existed on Rockville Pike waaay back in the past. Anyway, Mike had some interesting points to make (although, for the life of me, I can’t remember exactly the terminology he used). And his schtick is one of those music-related associations for generalities of life, so sometimes there is a disconnect during translation.
“Where’s the fire, Mike?”
His concept of innovation involves the paradigm shift away from focusing on limitations or problems and using what-if scenarios for a given “issue”. He also states you should try to think of impossible “issues” to attempt to tackle. Then to take a small step in the direction of resolving those “issues”… just a little step. Then, finally, to be receptive to opportunities that may potentially relate to all of the things that may somehow filter or trace back to your bag of “issues”.
During his presentation, he used his medleys and parodies of pop music (and mostly retro rock) to hammer on his talking points. Quite entertaining, but as you can clearly read, of somewhat variable retention value. Perhaps if he had another session…?
The Action
In his own way, he somewhat fired me up to attempt to find free WiFi somewhere.
This is what I’ve discovered:
- Unfortunately, the Hiltons in Hawaii continue to milk the Internet access fees for what they’re worth;
- The Starbucks on-premises at the Hiltons are actually secret licensees of the Starbucks [SBUX] brand and are not subject to the Starbucks Card program, including providing the free WiFi access;
- The local Starbucks stores have not been successfully converted to the AT&T branded free WiFi access (yet), and the T-Mobile hotspots in the three stores I’ve personally visited are unfortunately misconfigured;
- There is surprisingly an official (but tiny) Apple Store at the Ala Moana Center open-air mall, but with the massive throngs of window shoppers congesting the store, there was very little space (or privacy) to work on the blog;
- Walking about the mall itself looking for rumored free WiFi enabled bars and restaurants turned up nothing, despite assurances from other convention-goers that they were under the impression that there was at least one bar there that offered it;
- Traveling around looking for free WiFi access with a 17″ MacBook Pro is tough, even in a protective backpack– although it’s a lot thinner than many large notebooks, it’s still quite bulky (and hefty).
So, I’m still searching…
In the meantime, I’m sticking to engaging in a variety of offline activities in this otherwise island paradise. 
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