February 25, 2011

evil plans: please look after this englishman

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[“Bur­den”: You can buy the print here etc.]

My old buddy from my early Lon­don social media days, Lloyd Davis has an Evil Plan. A US road trip with a big social media angle:

“Please Look After This Englishman”.

In March 2010, I tra­veled, some­ti­mes with others, some­ti­mes alone, coast-to-coast across the USA from Bos­ton to Los Ange­les. Our main method of trans­por­ta­tion was the train – We chose to pre-plan our iti­ne­rary and to orga­nise twee­tups whe­re­ver we could in order to meet peo­ple and make new connections.

One of our goals was to visit the SXSWi fes­ti­val in Aus­tin TX via a more inte­res­ting route than direct flight nut pri­ma­rily we wan­ted to see whether it could be done and what help our online social net­works could be.

I lear­ned that let­ting go of con­trol of where we were sta­ying and what we would do led to far richer expe­rien­ces. Yes it was inte­res­ting and exci­ting to meet new peo­ple and those I’d only ever twee­ted at but the high­points of the jour­ney inc­lu­ded not kno­wing where we were going to stay in New Orleans until a friend of a friend lent us her house for four days or when I unex­pec­tedly found myself pla­ying uku­lele with 25 Hawaiian-shirted senior citi­zens in Mary­land.

South By South West is an annual pil­gri­mage for a lot of peo­ple. Lloyd likes to take that annual SXSW pil­gri­mage to an extreme. An annual spi­ri­tual search, as it were. “Aus­tin as Jeru­sa­lem 2.0″, as it were. As oppo­sed to just another trade show for han­ding out busi­ness cards, get­ting drunk and han­ging out in strip clubs. It’s ins­pi­ring to see…

[Got a good #Evil­Plans story you want to share? Feel free to ping me via gapingvoid@gmail.com, Thanks!]

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One Response to “evil plans: please look after this englishman”

  1. Loving the pic, hahahaha, defi­na­tely true in all aspects. An idea can really become a pain in your head.

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