Inspiring Travelers

Travel Inspiration: An Interview with John Bardos

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Today, I’m chatting with John Bardos — someone I met while in Chiang Mai early last year. In addition to travel, he’s big on social impact and leaving this world a better place, so we share a lot of common ground in that regard. Here’s a bit more about him, from his own mouth…

1) What do you do?

John BardosI blog at JetSetCitizen.com and run a teach English abroad portal at YouCanTeachEnglish.com, but I also work on non-profit projects like the UnconferenceforSocialGood.com and ABCfrog.org. Basically, I run several websites and volunteer for various projects around the world.

2) What was your biggest obstacle to traveling and how did you overcome it?

I think the developed world has a responsibility to share our good fortune and abundant wealth with the entire planet. There are still almost 2 billion people that live on less than $2 per day. I think it’s an abomination that developed countries have gotten so rich, while so many go without basic food and water. We have the resources to eradicate abject poverty, we just need the will.

I think a big part of that will be to increase global awareness. While air travel is incredibly polluting, I also think it’s important for more people to live in other countries, particularly the poorest regions of the world.

3) What are you most excited about right now?

I’m pretty excited about the Unconference for Social Good. I’ve been organizing meetups to try to get people to discuss ways to make the world better. I would love these unconferences to spread to more cities around the world.

4) What’s next for you?

My last unconference was postponed due to the state of emergency in Calgary from the recent flooding, it is now rescheduled for September 28th.

I’m also working on a social enterprise that I think has the potential to raise a lot of money for charities around the world and improve global awareness. I’m working to make that a reality now.

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

I really like CharityWater.org. Providing clean drinking water to everyone on the planet is such a basic and inexpensive intervention that it’s hard to top in terms of improving the wellbeing of the poorest people in the world.

I don’t think there is any organization that is run more effectively than CharityWater.org. Everything they do is absolutely brilliant, from branding to fund raising to accountability. This is a great cause to help.

A big thanks to John for sharing his successes and projects; if you’d like to connect or find out more about John’s recent travels, you can find him on his OHW profile.

John on Twitter and Facebook
The JetSetCitizen.com blog

We regularly feature inspiring travelers who have taken the leap into travel as a part of our travel inspiration interview series. If you’re a traveler keen on being profiled here, sign up for an OHW account and fill in your profile — then shoot Shannon an email (shannon at ohheyworld dot com).

Oh Hey World Updates

Getting Up to Speed with Oh Hey World’s History

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OHWiconWhether 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…

Entrepreneurship

The Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship

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branson centre of entrepreneurshipOf course I know who Richard Branson is, but I have to admit, I had no idea that the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship existed until today when I randomly saw a Tweet from my friend Bryan Byrne about a Hangout Branson was doing today with Elon Musk and entrepreneurs from the Centre of Entrepreneurship. I only caught the last 15 minutes of it, but it was just enough to see a few entrepreneurs from the Caribbean program (they also have a program in South Africa) ask several questions.

The centre focuses on four areas:

Access to Knowledge: A 12 week training programme focusing on practical business skills delivered by experts in the field as well as in workshops, 1on 1 coaching and mentorship.

Access to Networks: A platform of collaboration with peers and other national, regional and international entrepreneurs and facilitation of exposure to investors.

Access to Markets: A platform to showcase Branson Centre entrepreneurs to local and international markets.

Access to Resources: A physical hub with the infrastructure required to start, run and scale up a business including a small bank of pro bono hours with professional service providers such as legal, finance and marketing.

Here is the Hangout replay:

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I love seeing programs like this focused on helping entrepreneurs in the developing world. If you know any other programs similar to this in other areas of the world, please leave them in the comments.

Note: If you’re interested in meeting others who think, go ahead and add “Branson Centre of Entrepreneruship” as an interest on your Oh Hey World profile (if you don’t already have an account, you can create one using this link). Learn more about connecting with others in the passionate communities you belong to.

Oh Hey World Updates

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

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microfinance resultsIf 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.

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”.

Dave Dean interview
Inspiring Travelers

Travel Inspiration: An Interview with Dave Dean

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Dave Dean interview

Dave Dean is an inspiration on multiple levels because he overcame some obstacles to travel over the years, he juggled his travels with co-founding a successful travel technology site, and he’s a generally a good guy keen to give back in interesting ways. Dave is a friend and one of my earliest memories from one of my first meetings with Dave was the huge grin on his face as he stepped into the room decked out in a checkered girl’s school dress.

I’ll leave you hanging there about why exactly Dave walked around in a school dress and you’ll have to read on to find out the cause he supports and what he’s working on right now.

1) What do you do?

After trying to juggle a travel addiction and a corporate IT career for over a decade, a couple of years ago I decided that one of those things had to permanently give. Since then, I’ve been living out of a backpack and travelling full-time, building online businesses and slowly making my way around the world.

2) What was your biggest obstacle to traveling and how did you overcome it?

The first time I left to travel, back in 1998, the hardest part was money – I was straight out of university and didn’t have much of it, and the exchange rate to almost any other currency was terrible! I took various part-time jobs, sold everything I had and left for the UK with a backpack and a suitcase, hoping to stay with relatives, get a job and start earning in pounds rather than New Zealand dollars as soon as possible. I achieved that goal with under a hundred pounds left in my bank account …

3) What are you most excited about right now?

Business-wise, it’s my travel technology site,  Too Many Adapters. After 18 months of slow growth it has finally started to gain some real attention recently, resulting in more readers, involvement with some large global travel and tech brands, and even a little more money. Long may that last!

4) What’s next for you?

After finishing up three months in the US with a southern road trip, I’ll be heading to Mexico and Central America for the first time in September with the intention of staying for six months or more. Great weather, food and people … and hopefully even learning some passable Spanish. What’s not to like?

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

Do it in a Dress is a wonderful cause that I became involved with a couple of years ago. The basic idea is to raise money by doing something – the more outlandish the better – in a girl’s school uniform, with the aim of putting girls through school in Sierra Leone. So far I’ve run a half marathon, jumped off a bridge and sailed a yacht for two weeks in that sexy blue number. A quarter of a million dollars was raised last year, and the campaign has just started again for 2013. Here’s hoping for another highly successful year, and more girls back in school in west Africa.

Dave, thank you so much for sharing a bit about your current projects and you have me curious about what shenanigans you’ll come up with for fundraising this year! If you’d like to connect or find out more about Dave’s recent travels, you can find him on his OHW profile.

Dave on Twitter and Facebook
The Too Many Adapters blog
His personal blog, What’s Dave Doing

We regularly feature inspiring travelers who have taken the leap into travel as a part of our travel inspiration interview series. If you’re a traveler keen on being profiled here, sign up for an OHW account and fill in your profile — then shoot me an email (shannon at ohheyworld dot com).

Inspiring Travelers

Travel Inspiration: An Interview with Monica McCarthy

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McCarthy_Monica_interviewI’m chatting with one of my favorite travelers this week and her story is one that really illustrates the different paths you can take in life and still find ways to make travel a reality for you. Monica runs a successful business but also finds the time to travel through places like Asia and most recently to the Dominican Republic.

1) What do you do?

Let’s see… I’m a NYC-based actor and Los Angeles transplant. I took a hiatus for a bit during which time I renewed my passport and sense of wanderlust. Upon returning the Great White Way I founded a boutique web video production company (Show & Tell Stories Productions) for start-ups, small businesses and anyone looking to share their stories on camera.

So these days I guess you could say I direct, produce, write and speak about the importance of creative expression, while traveling as much as possible.

2) What was your biggest obstacle to traveling and how did you overcome it?

My biggest obstacle to traveling was that I was so scared of missing out on directing and acting work back home. I’m not interested in having a career built on online products and services, so this presents quite a challenge! Also, I felt I couldn’t “justify” spending the money on something that wasn’t related to furthering my career.

I guess I overcame my perceived obstacle to traveling by making it as much of a priority as my career and by putting other goals on the back-burner until I could find a way to do both. I’m working towards a travel-centric lifestyle and I have to accept that sometimes that means sacrificing availability for auditions and gigs, and sometimes that means sacrificing the ability to jump on a plane whenever I want. But the compromise is well worth it.

In terms of how I took steps towards increasing my frequency of travel, I started with quick, easy trips (like the train to Montreal or a long weekend in Madrid) before embarking on “bigger” trips like three months in Southeast Asia or spending time in one of my “bucket list” countries like India. Traveling, especially solo, can take some getting used to at first, but it quickly becomes addicting!

3) What are you most excited about right now?

Hmmm so much! I’m excited to explore the value of creative expression from a global perspective. I’m excited to marvel more and worry less. I’m excited about creating more original content. I’m excited about all the ways that technology is making it easier and easier to discover and share stories.

4) What’s next for you?

I’m in one of those intersections of life where the possibilities feel wide open! In addition to developing upcoming video projects for clients, I have some personal projects coming up like:

Writing a short film that would love to see come to life on the big screen. In some ways it’s a love letter to NYC and the wonderful melting pot of culture that it really is.

Having recently completed a daily iPhone video challenge, I’m looking forward to creating online video content of my own… just not every day!

Training for my first marathon. (Eek!)

Visiting my parents in their new home in Maui.

And of course, international travel! I’m currently looking into a shorter trip in the fall to either South America or Eastern Europe and then possibly Australia for the winter.

I’m also developing workshops for people interested in creating more video content and for those looking to ramp up their public speaking skills. If either of those topics are of interest, I invite you to join the Show & Tell community to be the first to do know when the details are announced.

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

This is actually very timely for me as I’ve been pondering more and more what cause, philanthropic or otherwise, I’d like to become more involved with. In general terms I’d say I’m passionate about learning the stories of people with circumstances and perspectives that vary greatly from my own. Freedom of expression is also something I care deeply about and I’d like to explore the impact on people and societies where those freedoms have been taken away. If you know of any organizations that fit the bill, please send them my way at monicanyla {at} gmail {dot} com.

A big thanks to Monica for sharing her successes and projects; if you’d like to connect or find out more about Monica’s recent travels, you can find her on her OHW profile.

Monica on Twitter and Facebook
The Show & Tell Stories blog

We regularly feature inspiring travelers who have taken the leap into travel as a part of our travel inspiration interview series. If you’re a traveler keen on being profiled here, sign up for an OHW account and fill in your profile — then shoot me an email (shannon at ohheyworld dot com).

Interview Series

An Interview with Wayne Lopez

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Today we’re talking to Wayne Lopez, the founder of Ayoopa; a site that allows you to rent travel gear locally from other individuals. One of our primary goals at Oh Hey World is to connect like-minded people with each other. Being a co-founder of a tech company in the travel industry, one of my personal interests is learning more about other entrepreneurs building travel tech companies. I ran into Wayne in the comments of Tnooz a few weeks ago, and reached out to him to have him answer a few questions.

Without further adieu…

1) What do you do?

waynelopezAt Ayoopa we INVIGORATE LIFE! It’s an online rental marketplace for travel stuff on-demand, with stuff being a scientific term meaning gear, equipment, things. We curate our supply of travel stuff from local people who want to remove the clutter in their life while at the same time making money on their unused goods. Think of it as rental consignment. Then we make it easy for people traveling (adventurers, active lifestyle, traveling Moms) to get quality travel goods for rent through our website.

2) Why do you do what you do?

We’re true believers in collaborative consumption. Why keep buying when there are goods already around you. What we’ve seen is that in the travel space, goods can be quite costly. Sometimes it precludes you from enjoying your travel. You have to worry about storage, the environment and even getting true value from something used infrequently. We think in many cases, renting is a better option. Our goal with Ayoopa is to make it convenient to get access to goods only needed for temporary use.

3) What are you most excited about right now?

We’re excited that collaborative consumption is really taking the U.S. by storm. Parts of Europe, Australia and South America are further along in this concept. With companies like Airbnb, RelayRides and TaskRabbit, it’s making it more acceptable to use similar services like Ayoopa.

4) What’s next for you?

Right now we are focused on the Houston area. We find there are a ton of casual adventurers who live here. But we’ve also found that there are a lot of business travelers who come to Houston for conferences, trade shows and general business travel, so we’ve spun up our first mobile app. It allows them to reserve items they need that they either forgot or didn’t want to carry with them on their travels. Pretty soon we expect to expand to Austin and San Antonio then other strategically targeted cities throughout the U.S.

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

I’ve been involved with Junior Achievement and other programs to teach under privileged kids about business, economics and entrepreneurship. I think it’s also important to stress the role technology has in our everyday lives. So I continue to participate in these types of programs so kids can increase their awareness and get opportunities that don’t always exist in their communities.

If you’re keen to connect with Wayne further, you can find his current location on his OHW profile. A big thanks to Wayne for sharing his motivations and current projects. If you’d like to connect on social media with Wayne:

Ayoopa on Twitter and Facebook

Wayne on Twitter

We’ll be featuring a number of other travel tech entrepreneurs in the coming weeks. If you are an entrepreneur in the travel vertical, and want to be profiled, please sign up for an OHW account and add “travel tech entrepreneurs” as an interest on your profile — then shoot me an email (drew at ohheyworld).

Interview Series

An Interview with Paul Bennett at Context

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Today we’re talking to Paul Bennett, the co-founder of Context Travel; a walking tour company that organizes small-group and private tours led by scholars and experts in different topics for intellectually curious travelers. One of our primary goals at Oh Hey World is to connect like-minded people with each other. Being a co-founder of a tech company in the travel industry, one of my personal interests is learning more about other entrepreneurs building travel companies. I came across Paul from a conversation I had with Rovaira at Pulse.ph and reached out to have him answer a few questions.

Without further adieu…

1) What do you do?

I run a global boutique walking tour company called Context along with my wife and co-founder, Lani Bevacqua. We organize small-group and private tours led by scholars and experts in different topics for intellectually curious travelers. The people who join our “walking seminars” are generally not tour people. They don’t want to be in a big group, listening to some schmaltzy tour guide, reciting a script. If they’re visiting the Roman Forum they want to do it with an archaeologist from a local university who’s written a book about the topic. Context ensures that they’ll get the most out of that experience and not waste their time.

2) Why do you do what you do?

I hate tours but I love learning about new places. I used to be a journalist and so got in the habit of connecting with local experts (sources) whenever I went somewhere. After a 2-year trip aboard a 38-foot sailboat with Lani, we decided that there were others out there like us who valued local expertise and would pay to engage with an expert during their trip. I also believe that the era of packaged trips will soon end. Who really wants to spend 10 days with 20 other people in a pre-packaged experience? Not me. Everything we do is a la carte. If you want to take a single, 3-hr tour with us during your trip, that’s fine. If you want to take two Context walks every day for a week across several cities. That’s cool too. We’re set up to allow the traveler to shape their cultural learning around their needs and interests.

3) What are you most excited about right now?

I’m always in love with our newest cities. We opened Kyoto and Tokyo this winter, and we have an amazing group of people there doing innovative things like a tour on Japanese aesthetics and a Manga walk. We also just opened Amsterdam and are working on a walk around Dutch social experiments like legalized drug use and prostitution and the proliferation of bicycles. For me, this is the most interesting part of travel: digging deeply into a place and what makes it unique.

4) What’s next for you?

We’re putting together a program in Buenos Aires. We’re also moving into the final phase of an internal quality improvement program that’s taking the level of our walks—already considered by many to be the best in the tour industry—and raising it. This is a quiet, hard-to-perceive change for someone from the outside, but it’s critical. We compete against the rest of the “day tour” industry on quality, and I think we’re setting ourselves up to have a major impact over the next 2-3 years on this metric.

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

Context does a lot of work in sustainable travel, and we’re one of the few travel companies that’s also a B Corp. But, that’s work related. For me, personally, I volunteer with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, which is a mentoring program for at-risk youth in urban areas. It’s a cliche to say that kids are our future, but it’s true. I think that many of our social issues in the U.S. can be addressed by targeting kids—teenagers, especially—and opening their minds to different possibilities. The schools aren’t doing it. Hell, in Philadelphia where I live we just closed down half the libraries and cut the music program from all the schools. It’s frightening to think what that means for low-income kids.

If you’re keen to connect with Paul further, you can find his current location on his OHW profile. A big thanks to Paul for sharing his motivations and current projects. If you’d like to connect on social media:

Context Travel on Twitter and Facebook

Paul on Twitter

We’ll be featuring a number of other travel entrepreneurs in the coming weeks. If you are an entrepreneur in the travel vertical, and want to be profiled, please sign up for an OHW account and add “travel entrepreneurs” as an interest on your profile — then shoot me an email (drew at ohheyworld).

 

Interview Series

An Interview with Valentin Dombrovsky of Travelatus

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Today we’re talking to Valentin Dombrovsky, the founder of Travelatus; a site that focuses on event travel. One of our primary goals at Oh Hey World is to connect like-minded people with each other. Being a co-founder of a tech company in the travel industry, one of my personal interests is learning more about other entrepreneurs building travel tech companies. I stumbled across Valentin in the comments of Tnooz, and reached out to him to have him answer a few questions.

Without further adieu…

1) What do you do?

ValentinDombrovskyWe make Travelatus – ultimate event travel solution. We want to make trips devoted to visiting concerts or sport events easy giving the user opportunity to plan and to book all necessary services (event tickets, accommodation, transportation) using simple “one window sale system”. We develop a recommendation system in order to enable easy discovery of interesting events as well. In future we want to enable group trip planning, making it easier for groups of friends to have great event travel experiences.

2) Why do you do what you do?

We found out that event travel is a great opportunity to see great events in great places combining great experiences. We also see that this opportunity is underestimated right now because it’s not easy to plan such trip using modern online travel solutions. So we found the gap in online travel sphere that we want to fill with our solution.

3) What are you most excited about right now?

The most exciting thing for me is that after a long period of development we were able to launch Travelatus. We started with a bit different idea and it took us more than a year to get to the current version of our service. We got help from Czech accelerator StartupYard and at last managed to create the service with a team of only 3 people. This was a long and a glorious journey for us, however, I understand that it’s only the beginning. But still I try to look into the future with optimism and look forward to new obstacles to overcome. 🙂

4) What’s next for you?

Right now we continue development of the service – next plans include creating better planning system, enhancement of recommendations system, enabling group planning and finally making the real “one window sale system” available.

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

I’m keen on online travel, startups in general and running. I try to support communities that are related to all these things – making things together is always easier than alone, no matter what you’re doing.

If you’re keen to connect with Valentin further, you can find his current location on his OHW profile. A big thanks to Valentin for sharing his motivations and current projects. If you’d like to connect on social media with Valentin:

Travelatus on Twitter and Facebook

Valentin on Twitter

We’ll be featuring a number of other travel tech entrepreneurs in the coming weeks. If you are an entrepreneur in the travel vertical, and want to be profiled, please sign up for an OHW account and add “travel tech entrepreneurs” as an interest on your profile — then shoot me an email (drew at ohheyworld).

Exploring the Wild Blue Yonder