After a quick Tourism Currents pre-launch meeting with my business partner Becky McCray….

….and did I mention that she’s a BusinessWeek Top 20 Entrepreneur to follow on Twitter? Well, she is!

….and don’t you know it makes her crazy when I do this kind of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” off-topic diversion….

Anyway, we arranged a one-night planning session in Dallas, meeting roughly halfway between our homes in Oklahoma and Texas (because you can only do so much organizing even with regular video Skype calls.)  On the drive back to my house, I was so pumped up about the great learning material that we’re developing to combine tourism marketing and social Web tools, I just HAD to talk about it.

I used Utterli and my cell phone to call in an audio post (that I can embed in a blog post, as I’ve done here) from the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Waco, Texas.

Because I know how to live it up!

(If you can’t see the audio player box below, here’s the URL directly to the recording.)

The publication of my Social Media and Tourism ebook yesterday marked the start of an exciting business collaboration with Oklahoma-based entrepreneur and small town business expert Becky McCray.

We are going to work together as speakers, trainers and consultants, showing others how to use social media for economic development.

There are a number of ideas and products in the works including interactive training packages and possibly paid membership to a Web-supported community.

Here at the beginning, Becky will focus largely on small town entrepreneurship and I’ll focus on what we call “Tourism 2.0″ – how travel and tourism can use social media tools to raise awareness of their destinations.

We see them as part of a greater economic development whole for any size of town or city, anywhere.

As a small town entrepreneur herself, Becky noticed lately that many “Shop Local” campaigns seemed to be targeted to larger cities, and she had specific ideas about how to execute such a project in a small town.

Being Becky, she went ahead and wrote the book on it:  a step-by-step guide to starting a “Shop Local” campaign in a small town.   I recommend it for any business person, especially in this tough economy.

I assure you that as we launch the rest of our business, you’ll hear about it on this blog, from me on Twitter or from @BeckyMcCray on Twitter.

Thanks for your support!