In mid-February, I needed to make a trip to Colombia for my job in heavy duty mining equipment sales. While I've been traveling all over the world for the past fifteen years, this would be my first trip to South America. Prior to the scheduling the trip, I wasn't nervous at all; it was just another trip to a new location that I hadn't been to - I was psyched! But, as I started going through the checklist of prerequisites, trepidation started building.
It wasn't until I visited the county health department to get my vaccinations that I began to worry. To say that they put the "fear of God" in me would be an understatement. And then it happened, I saw a news story about a foreign visitor to Colombia that had been kidnapped. What's worse was his family wasn't aware of it for at least three days - they thought that he just hadn't checked in. By that time, it was going to be very difficult to track this guy down.
While on the LAN flight to Bogota, I sat in my economy class seat wondering what could be done to improve personal safety while traveling. Heck, you can get into trouble just as easily in Chicago for that matter! That's when I thought of how great it would be if there was a button to push that would let my wife and my work know that I was in trouble.
I'm an early adopter; I love tech. But, I really don't need another device to carry with me when I travel. That's when I thought of the Apple Watch that Apple had announced last September. This could accomplish a couple of things:
- I already wear a watch and so do a lot of other people, especially travelers.
- It's easy to get to in a tight situation.
- Apple developed an amazing app ecosystem for the iPhone; surely they'll be allowing this for their watch as well.
Now, to put the plan on paper.