Touring With A Smartphone
I remember touring with a gameboy, a diskman, and a huge CD case. In the van there would be a notebook filled with printed mapquest directions to venues and friends’ houses. I even remember lining up at pay phones, waiting to check in with significant others.
Recently, I went on my first tour with a smartphone. It more than replaced all of the things that I used to bring. I found myself reading the news, posting video blogs to Facebook, shouting out directions to the nearest Subway… It kept me quite entertained.
An interesting problem we ran into, was that with four smartphones came four different directions to the club. Different software combined with a bit of user error lead to some arguments about which exit to take on multiple occasions. We made it work, and only had to turn around a couple of times.
A huge benifit was the ability to not only trade contact info, but start a twiiter/myspace/facebook relationship with other bands almost instantly. It greatly sped up the proccess of getting on a first name basis, and playing more shows with the bands we liked.
The ipad just came out too. That would kick ass for movie watching in the van. Anyone want to donate one?
