Chris Guillebeau's Blog, page 109
July 18, 2013
Ready Or Not
If you want to get something done, don’t give yourself enough time to finish. Keep it short and tight. Give yourself a fixed deadline.
WDS is the ultimate fixed deadline for our team, because there’s no way in the world it can be pushed back. Thousands of people book plane tickets and hotel rooms for particular dates! And then, before we even realize it, they start arriving in town, many of them a few days earlier than expected.
So there you have it—in a situation like that, you simply have t...
July 15, 2013
WDS 2013: A Partial (and Impartial) Recap
We did it! Ten days ago, nearly 3,000 people descended on Portland for the third annual World Domination Summit.
Everyone asks what WDS is, and here’s what I usually say as a brief answer:
WDS is an annual gathering of creative, unconventional people from all over the world.
This brief answer doesn’t tell the whole story, and the reality is that WDS now means lots of different things to many different people.
In this post, I thought I’d share a selection of the many posts that attendees have bee...
July 11, 2013
WDS 2013: Still Working On It
I had hoped to write up my comments on last week’s adventure with 2,800 people, but I’m still in recovery.
There’s just too much to process, at least for me as the host. I hope to do so more next week in some fashion.
In the meantime, here are a few posts that are making the rounds from our attendees. There are more than 50 so far that I’ve seen, so this is just a super-brief selection. I’ll be back with more comments and will post many more next week.
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July 8, 2013
World Domination: Achievement Unlocked
Over the past few days I’ve had very little sleep at night and an amazing time from 5am to midnight.
Working with an incredible team, we welcomed 2,800 people to the Rose City for an adventure like no other.
Several hundred initial photos are now available on our Flickr stream. I’ll be back on Thursday with a longer update, and then next week with a roundup of blog posts as presented by the attendees.
But first… it’s time for a long nap.
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Image: Armosa Studios
July 4, 2013
Offline for World Domination
WDS 2013 Ambassador Orientation
Photo by George Mihaly
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Greetings from Ground Zero in Portland, Oregon.
Today and tomorrow, thousands of people (yeah) are arriving in town for the third annual World Domination Summit. We knew there was a lot of interest in WDS when we first started back in 2011, but the level of growth has been surprising even to us.
The team and I are thrilled to welcome everyone!
What Is WDS?
WDS is a gathering of amazing people from all over the world. Each year a big group...
July 1, 2013
Free or Low-Cost Lodging Anywhere in the World
In more than a decade of frequent travel, I’ve stayed everywhere from five-star hotels to sleeping on the ground—and I don’t mean camping, I mean sleeping on the ground with my bags next to me.
As I roamed the planet during my quest to visit every country, I had all sorts of difficulties—especially with visas—but finding a place to stay was surprisingly easy. There was always somewhere I could stay, often without spending a lot of money.
We’ve previously looked at how Frequent Flyer Miles can...
June 27, 2013
Spring Cleaning (In Late June)
It’s been a jam-packed week here at World Domination HQ.
We have thousands of people coming to town in just a few days, a sentence that sounds odd even as I type it here in the WordPress interface where this blog is published. Nevertheless, it’s true!
Next week we’re also attempting to set a WORLD RECORD. Our team is doing a great job and all systems are go!
I’m working on some big changes to everything I do and create and work on. There’s a lot happening behind the scenes, but not a lot to sh...
June 24, 2013
Practical Ways to Burn the Ships
You may be familiar with the story of Hernán Cortés and his arrival in Veracruz. In order to prevent his crew from turning back from battle out of fear, he ordered them to burn their ships. That way, there was no return—the only way out was through. No going back!
There are a least a couple of problems with the story:
1. Cortés was a colonial conquerer on his way to… conquer. He was an imperialist, much like Columbus in the Americas, the British in India, or the Belgians in the Congo.
2. The...
June 20, 2013
Free Presentation on CreativeLIVE: Today at 10:30am
Greetings from San Francisco. Later this morning (10:30am PST) I’ll be presenting a one-hour interactive session based on The $100 Startup.
This session is produced by my friends at CreativeLIVE, a fantastic online platform for sharing educational content through remote learning.
The entire session, along with many other great sessions from other speakers today and tomorrow, is FREE. What! Yes, free.
Check it out if you’re near a computer in a few hours, or enroll for free to get notified of...
June 17, 2013
Worth It All
Sometimes it’s hard to know if it’s all worth it. You’re out in the woodshed, slaving away on this thing you love, night and day. But does anyone else care?Will anyone else care?
At times, you may be tempted to pack it in. You’d like to return to normal, to the way things were before this new way of life came along.
The problem is, what’s really normal? And would you really be happy if you gave up now?
Sometimes it’s OK to pack it in and move on. That’s what most people do, most of the time. Bu...
