Source: http://worldcityweb.com/home/MIA/publications/magazine/17/672/

If you take a plane to work...

by Ken Roberts

A generation ago, I remember my father joking that you could tell the miles a salesman was traveling by how much more tan his left forearm was than his right. In those days, before air conditioning was common in the automobile, windows were down and the left arm was exposed to the sun on those long, lonely trips down miles and miles of asphalt. The deeper the tan, the greater the miles.

The currency of today, particularly in this neck of the woods, is frequent flier miles. You take a plane to work, not a car.That is one of the ways we describe you and our other readers.

With that in mind, we have created one of several new features in WorldCity this monthSky Warrior.

Each month, we will ask a sky warrior about his or her least favorite airports, most frequent destinations, essential mobile gadgets, favorite restaurants, and so on. This month, we start with Jim Hartenstein, who heads the Latin American operations for Wendy’s International. What drives him crazy when traveling? What is his favorite hotel?

Let us know what you think about this new section. Let us know what other questions you would like us to ask our Sky Warriors.

As I think about the other two new features we are adding this month, I am reminded of a phone call I received not too long ago from Michael Carricarte, a good friend and the CEO of Amedex, which sells insurance throughout Latin America.

Michael was preparing for a speech and he wanted some figures about South Florida’s place in the global economy, figures he had heard me recite about multinational presence, trade statistics, consular offices and figures, as I soon discovered, he was banking I knew by heart.

“I can pull something together for you. When’s your speech?” I asked.

“I go on in five minutes,” he said.

The two new features connect to our annual publications, the multinational directory, Who’s Here, and the two annual trade statistics publications, Miami TradeNumbers and TradeAmericas.

In the first, we will take a look at some aspect of the multinational business community each month, slicing and dicing it different ways to provide insights into the 1,300-plus multinationals in South Florida that are listed in our Who’s Here directory. The first installment, on Page 41, looks at the logistics industry. Subsequent features will look, for example, at the largest South Florida-based multinationals there are more than you think and multinational offices run by women fewer than you might expect.

In the second new feature, the TradeNumbers section, we will offer insights into what the trade statistics tell us. We dig deep, crunch, stretch, twist and then cajole meaning from the import and export statistics. In the first installment of this report, on Page 35, we look at how certain other U.S. Customs districts are chipping away at South Florida’s dominance of trade with Latin America and the Caribbean.