Category Archives: Oh Hey World Updates

Are You Building a Passion Community?

October 13, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

We’ve been working on the concept of community pages for awhile to connect people with shared passions. If you follow this blog regularly, you know that we’ve had this concept baked into our product for quite awhile (see post from August).

Our new community pages came from the interest we received for finding people with shared passions, yet our tag result pages not being the focus of our user experience. Frankly, most people never figured out they could add tags to their profiles.

The new community pages put the entire focus on the specific communities of like minded people. What’s different from the old tag result pages? A few things…

Larger photos
Community-specific profiles that help you understand why someone cares about a particular community, cause, topic, or brand.
A big “join” button so it’s clear how to indicate you care.

Here are a few early communities already setup:

Kiva – The peer to peer microfinance lending platform likely needs no introduction. People that care about Kiva, are extremely passionate about giving people a hand up rather than a hand out.
Geek Estate – the real estate technology community that I started in 2007. Geeky real estate professionals trying to figure out how to use technology to their advantage.
AVC – I’d wager a guess that this is the most passionate community on the entire internet. Certainly the most passionate communities of business startup geeks.
Mothers Fighting for Others – Every child needs an amazing home where they are loved. MFFO supports 40+ children who otherwise never would have anyone to love them.
Oh Hey World – For those who love Oh Hey World, we’d love you to join the OHW community page and tell us why.

Are you building a passion community with an interest in discovering each other and connecting with others in person?

If so, we’d love to hear from you – shoot me an email at drew at ohheyworld.

Note: To join community pages, you’ll have to sign into Oh Hey World, check-in to a city, and THEN visit the community page of interest (a bunch of communities are linked from my OHW profile). We’re currently working through the UI/UX/Design – we’ll end up with an intuitive flow focused on communities and not the check-in…but we’re not there yet.

Drew Meyers

Drew Meyers is the co-founder of Horizon & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of Geek Estate Blog, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and myKRO.org, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.

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The Short Of It

October 10, 2013 Drew Meyers 2 Comments

A startup is a turbulent ride. Constant ups and downs. Stress. Sleepless nights. Lots of not knowing what the next day will have in store. Not knowing where money for next month is going to come from.

While doing consulting over the past few months – I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what the next step is for Oh Hey World. Do we double down on the current strategy revolving around sharing your location with everyone that matters, or change the messaging and experience to narrow in on a particular type of customer?

What do we really want to create with Oh Hey World?

A place for like minded people to meet. A community that gives a shit about making the world better, who happen to travel. Like anything else, making an impact doesn’t happen alone. It happens when you have a community of people who care about the same things to tap into for ideas, feedback, and support.

The other night, I watched Jeff Turner’s CRS presentation from 2012 (as a result of his recent post).

He completely and utterly understands the power of community. Like Jeff, community is what I crave in my life.

The thing is — this thinking has been sitting right there on our mission page for 6 months:

In short, we’re the travel community that gives a damn about making the world a better place — and means it.

We just need to focus completely on that one thing.

Attracting a community of travelers that give a damn about impact.

Do you?

Drew Meyers

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Applying for Jobs, and Passions

October 3, 2013 Drew Meyers 2 Comments

I think my friend Jon Sterling has the process of weeding people out down to a science…

Best decision in October so far is this ad text: "Instead of a cover letter, I would like to see three slides about a passion of yours."

— Jon (@mistersterling) October 4, 2013

If you want a job with Oh Hey World — please do NOT send a cover letter, send a few slides about your passions instead. Prove you give a crap about something, as there clearly aren’t enough people in the world that care about anything.

Are you one of them?

Prove it.

enthusiasm

[photo via http://www.marketingsavant.com/]

Drew Meyers

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More Community Generated Welcome Kits

August 22, 2013 Andrew Nguyen Leave a comment

We’ve shared some community generated welcome kits around the world a couple months ago. The Oh Hey World (OHW) community is growing. That means more community generated travel tips:

Bud at A Boundless World knows what to do in Shanghai, China.
Jon at AreaVibes provides tips for Toronto.
Wayne from Ayoopa has outdoor tips for Houston.
Henry Shim gives the skinny on nightlife in Seattle.
Jim Duncan gives the low down on the scene in Charlottesville and Crozet.

Planning a visit to experience the Seattle summer? Check out OHW staff generated Seattle tips for the budget backpacker, family traveler, and more.

What tips have you gathered on your summer travels?

Andrew Nguyen

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Tech Startup Learnings: Finding a Co-Founder vs Outsourcing

August 21, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

Starting a tech startup as a business person, you’ll get all sorts of advice regarding getting the MVP for your vision built. Do you outsource? Or wait to build anything until you find the right technical partner for the long term? Everyone has an opinion, and I heard arguments from individuals firmly on both sides.

I am in the camp of finding the right long term partner. As a result, once I decided to do a tech startup in February of last year, I proceeded to spend the next 6 months scouring my entire personal and professional network for that perfect co-founder. I’m certainly glad I did, as it led me to Eric Roland.

What did that process look like for me?

A massive number of emails and phone calls (many on Skype since I was abroad much of the time) to friends, ex colleagues, and business connections. They generally followed the same pattern…

Me: “Hey, I’ve been starting down the path of building a travel startup and am in the market for a co-founder — know anyone I should be speaking with?”

Them: “Sounds like a cool project. Well, I’m not that person, but you might try talking to [insert engineer name] or [business person name who knows engineers]. I’m happy to introduce you.”

Me: “Thanks, an introduction would be amazing.”

Repeat that process, over and over and over and over. One phone call leads to another phone call leads to another phone call.

Which one of those conversations led me to Eric? One with John Rowles, whom I knew from his days blogging at BloodHound back in the heyday of the “RE.net”. He and I had met once or twice at conferences, and had some business development discussions while I worked at Zillow. He was a business guy, that knew technologists. I hadn’t spoken to him in 2-3 years, but timing worked out incredibly well as the startup Eric and he had been working on was winding down.

If you’re building a true technology company — then doing development in house is the only way to go in my mind. A technology company is not going to succeed with outsourced development, and in a perfect world, I’d rather have the right technical person at the helm from the beginning rather than trying to plug him or her in halfway through. If you’re doing a content/media business, or offline business that just needs a website, or if you need one specific product customized for your business but technology is not your core — then outsourcing is a viable option, and likely a cheaper one.

That’s just one person’s experience. Questions? Leave them in the comments…

PS – It goes without saying I owe a huge thank you to John for connecting me with Eric.

Drew Meyers

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Getting Up to Speed with Oh Hey World’s History

August 8, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

Whether it be for product feedback, partnership development, or potential hires — I talk to a number of people about what we’ve been working on, and a large percentage of those discussions is spent outlining Oh Hey World’s history of how we’ve gotten to where we are today. Here are a few blog posts that you should definitely read if you’re looking to get acquainted with our company…

I’m planning to do a longer summary of learnings soon, but this will have to do for now…

Drew Meyers

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The Ability to Find Nearby Members of the World’s Most Passionate Communities

August 7, 2013 Drew Meyers 1 Comment

If you are really passionate about something, then the chances are high that you’d have a good conversation with anyone else passionate about that same topic, activity, or cause.

There are a lot of passionate communities in the world. Kiva. Startup Weekend. Bold Academy. AVC. Mothers Fighting for Others. Unreasonable Institute. Startup Chile. Sailing. Cycling. TurnOn!. Foodies. Semester at Sea. The list goes on and on.

Anyone who has ever built a community knows that connecting members in person is the single most important thing you can do.

But how do you find the people in the communities you are a part of, and figure out who in that community is nearby to you in the physical world?

What’s needed is location aware community management. A directory of everyone in a given community, with proximity as the default sort order and notifications to let you know when others are nearby.

Good news. This exists already, if you know how to use it (we’ve got some UI/UX in the works to make it more obvious).

For Community Builders:

You can already use Oh Hey World to organize your community members by geography. Simply have them add your specified interest – ie “Kiva” – as an interest on their profile. If you are signed in, the results are ordered by geographic proximity to your most recent check-in.

In order to have a tag auto-created upon sign up, use these links to sign up for Oh Hey World and join the community that shares your passions.

Kiva – click here (see this updated community page)
AVC – click here (see this updated community page)
Vittana – click here (see this updated community page)
Microfinance – click here
Travel tech entrepreneurs – click here
Unreasonable Institute – click here
Startup Weekend – click here (see this updated community page)
Travel Bloggers – click here
HUB – click here (see this updated community page)

You can use these links to join the site and easily add any other interest you like onto the network. We have homeschooling travelers on the network as well as food-passionate travelers. Some involved in real estate and others keen to connect over a passion for the history and culture of a new place.

If you have a community you’d like to connect through the OHW network, just shoot us an email and we’ll work with you on the best way to onboard your users and connect them through the system.

Questions? Shoot them over to: drew at ohhheyworld dot com. Or leave them in the comments, we’d love to hear what you think.

Note: If you want people to join your community, you can use the following URL structure to auto create any tag upon a user registration – http://www.ohheyworld.com/?registration_code=0d8d9476-aafb-4510-8754-12e316e98fcc&organization_tags=travel%20bloggers. Just replace the “=travel%20bloggers” with whatever tag you want to add, for instance “=startup%20abroad”.

Drew Meyers

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Community Generated Welcome Kits for Seattle

June 11, 2013 Drew Meyers 1 Comment

If you follow this blog, then you already know about Oh Hey World’s Welcome Kits. We’ve already covered community generated Welcome Kits, tips for digital nomads in Southeast Asia, and OHW-curated welcome kits stateside — but we haven’t covered the city with the most welcome kits created.

My old stomping grounds — Seattle.

A Few Neat Ways to See Seattle

Tips for those interested in sustainable architecture via Kjell Anderson of LMN Architects.
Tips with a focus on the young professional scene and Queen Anne from Taryn Jensen at the Gates Foundation.
Zillow’s CEO (& OHW advisor) Spencer Rascoff has a few tips for those visiting the Emerald city with kids.
Adam Shinners offers tips specific to sailing in the Puget Sound.
Sam DeBord from Seattle Home provides some food recommendations.
Jay Thompson gives a walking tip (and I’m sure he’ll add a few more soon)
Finally, a few Seattle tips from yours truly…

Have any other recommendations for people visiting Seattle? Leave them in the comments here.

Not in Seattle and want to help travelers have a better experience when visiting your own beloved city? Email Shannon to get access ahead of the general public…

Drew Meyers

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Community Generated Welcome Kits

May 30, 2013 Shannon O'Donnell 2 Comments

The Oh Hey World Welcome Kits are one of the features we debuted after our launch, and we have loved the feedback and support from the community over the past month. Although the Welcome Kits are still a new feature (and thus you have to ask for the account permissions to create them), you’ve done just that. The OHW user base is growing every day and these kits are fast become one of the more interesting ways you can see a unique lens through which to see a new city.

Today I’d like to highlight a handful of the interesting Welcome Kits created by Oh Hey World community members; each member has their own passions and interests so their tips and kits reflect that unique view (versus the OHW staff curated kits that are meant as overviews for certain types of travelers like digital nomads, outdoorsy people, etc). With these, you really get a feel for how different a city can be depending oh who you’re experiencing it with.

With that in mind, here are some of my favorite kits — we’ll be featuring more kits as soon as you create them!

Wonderful International Welcome Kits

Madrid, Spain tips with a lens toward young professionals via Anna Zalazar of Annzventures
Tel Aviv tips with a focus on the best eats in the city via Annie Cheng of The Table Less Traveled
Santiago tips with an eclectic look at history, startups and food via Leslie Forman of Leslie Forman.com

Neat Ways to See US Cities

Miami tips with a boating, high end shopping, and architecture lens via Ines Hegedus-Garcia of Miamism.com
New York City tips with a focus on nightlife, food, and the East Village via Jessie Spielvogel of Split Aces Media
North Carolina tips in Charlotte, Waxhaw, and Hilton Head Island with bent toward outdoors and equestrian interests via Lori Bee of Lori Bee.com
San Francisco tips with a theatre, biking, and yoga focus via Brad Coy of SF Real Estate.com
San Francisco tips for the young professionals in the city from Leslie Forman
San Francisco tips with a look at nightlife through lounges, foods, and bars via Alyea Sandovar
Portland, OR tips with a street food and hiking lens on the city via Val Dawson of This Way to Paradise
Houston tips with a look at shopping, restaurants, and sports via Margie Kaplan of MK Luxury Homes & Condos

And these are just the beginning! We on the OHW team really love seeing your custom welcome kits (and you have me dreaming of visiting most of these cities now). If you’d like to sign up for early welcome kit access shoot me an email (Shannon@OhHeyWorld.com).

PS: Check out some of our OHW staff curated welcome kits in the US and tips for Digital Nomads in Southeast Asia. We also have community generated kits for Seattle.

Shannon O'Donnell

A storyteller and knowledge-seeker captivated by the world. Formally an actress and web-nerd, I left in 2008 to travel solo, volunteer, and hunt down delicious vegetarian eats all over the world. She recently published "The Volunteer Traveler’s Handbook, and her travel stories and photography are recorded on her world travel blog, A Little Adrift.

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Welcome Kits in the United States from OHW Staff

May 25, 2013 Shannon O'Donnell 2 Comments

Last month we announced a new feature on Oh Hey World, the addition of Welcome Kits. This seemed like a great way for us to add even more value to travelers as they land in a new city and look for interesting connections and people in each new place. At the core, our OHW welcome kits provide the basic relevant information you need upon landing in a new city.

We have two types of kits, those curated by OHW staff, and those by the OHW community. We shared the OHW staff picks for digital nomads in Southeast Asia a few weeks ago, and now I’d like to take a look at the welcome kits you can use on travels throughout the United States. We aimed to cover all the hub cities to start, so you’re find OHW curated welcome kits for those.

Some cities even have niche interests covered with specific profiles for outdoors travelers and those with more tech interests (check out Denver and Boulder for sure!).

Featured United States Hub Cities

These are just the beginning as the OHW community grows and others add welcome kits that allow travelers to pinpoint the exact activities that match with their interests. And coming up later this week we’ll highlight some of the wonderful community-generated welcome kits that have been created from OHW members with specific interests and experiences in various cities all over the world. The idea behind these kits is to give you a concise set of ideas curated to your passions — we’re still expanding our scope be we hope these tips in the hub cities in the US give you some great ideas on your next trip there!

PS: You can also take a look at a number of community generated kits.

Shannon O'Donnell

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A Few Neat Ways to See Seattle

Wonderful International Welcome Kits

Neat Ways to See US Cities

Featured United States Hub Cities

Exploring the Wild Blue Yonder