I'm fascinated by things which are artificially engineered that we take for granted as "natural". To me, this is the truest form of the word design. It's not about what colour it is or how it feels in your hand or what the average success rate is on your usability conversion funnel. Design is about creating something, anything, in a specific way, for a specific purpose.

Anything can be designed.

Did you know that many fast food chains design their chairs specifically to cut off blood circulation and be uncomfortable after about 15 minutes? Fast food means fast turnover. They want you out the door. When your bum goes numb. It's not a coincidence.

Did you know that Apple took the original iMac back to the drawing board, shortly before launching it, to make one major revision to the case? They realised that the unboxing experience sucked, there was no easy way to get the massive CRT out once you got the box home. They added a handle. They changed the entire product, just to design the experience of the customer during the first 15 seconds after they opened the box. 15 years later, we're still talking about unboxing experiences that all started here.

Did you know that there are several companies out there who create problems for customers deliberately and automatically, purely to give them the opportunity to provide "awesome customer service"? Gosh it does look rather good when hundreds of users are tweeting about how great you are because you gave them a free account for 3 months. How much did all that marketing it cost again? Nothing.

Oh, your computer suddenly started slowing down after 2 years. That's just how these things go. Time to buy a new one. Probably just a coincidence.

Right?

I'll finish writing my book on this subject. One day. But until then, if you think my ramblings about designed experiences are border-line conspiracy theories, take a look at just how much detail goes into designing the sounds a car makes (and doesn't make).

Not the engine.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You probably never really pay attention to the sounds your car makes. But somewhere in the world a group of people were paid a large amount of money to design every conceivable detail about it in an effort to design and control your behaviour.

Fascinating.

Related posts:

1. Designing User Experience: Business Edition
2. SitePoint Web Design Business Kit: Full Review
3. Interview With Tristan Jud of Able Net Design
4. SitePoint Web Design Business Kit Unboxing

I don't know what it is about the British rail system. The ancient trains. The constant engineering works. The delays. The dysfunctional "privatised" system. The rude staff. The breakdowns. The extortionate ticket prices.

I suppose I do know, really. It's just fucking shit.

I've always had a bit of a problem with the British rail system because I am unwavering in my naivety. I approach situations assuming that, logic and reason dutifully applied, they will work as you would expect them to.

Today, on a trip from the UK to Austria, my train to the airport was inexplicably delayed and subsequently terminated half way between London Liverpool Street and Stansted Airport.

We'd left adequate time to get to the airport, my girlfriend Evi and I. We didn't think to factor in a delay, a termination, a transfer to another train, another delay, another change at another station and another delay, before finally finally arriving at our destination. The airport. Stupid, really.

But this series of events did lead to an interesting experience in observing human nature. One which I'd like to share with you.

Despite all indications from my iPhone that we had no hope in hell, we arrived at the airport 15 minutes prior to our flight departure. The Stansted Airport live departures website was still showing our flight status as "Gate Open". There was hope.

The train conductor helped us, explaining the process for getting a refund on our train tickets - should we miss the flight. He let us off the train before everyone else, pointing out the fastest way to get up into the main terminal.

We sprinted, possessions askew, through the terminal to security. Could we jump the queue? We asked the man there to provide assistance to disabled passengers. We couldn't. But he could take us directly to the fast-track security area, where we could pay £5 each to get to the front of the line. Lead on.

Breathless we arrived at the fast-track desk, "Do you… take… cards?" I panted. "Certainly!" said the lady behind the desk, her eyes growing wide at the departure time, now a mere 12 minutes away, printed on our boarding passes. "But I'm not going to - you've got to run, go now." - she ushered us through the fast track and wished us luck.

Shoes off, bags on, jacket off, tray, next tray, laptop - check, liquids - check, anything in your pockets? No.

*BEEP*

Fuck. iPhone in my pocket.

"I'm going to have to search you."

God dammit.

I'm never one to say no to a good groping by another man, normally. But this situation called for haste and his stroking efforts, while gratefully received, were not getting the job done.

"Please hurry, I'm going to miss my plane, here - look at my boarding pass."

"OK, everything seems to be in order."

Thank you.

Stomp back into shoes, grab bags, run.

Run.

Run Forest the-fuck run.

"Excuse me! Coming through! 5 minutes to plane!"

We hurled down Stansted corridors to Gate 49, the furthest possible gate from the main terminal. Excellent.

Down an escalator, up an escalator, round a corner, up some stairs, another corridor, legs giving up, breathing becoming rapid…

"Last call for flight FR1903 to Linz departing from gate 49."

There's still hope, I can see the gate! Where's Evi? She's somewhere. She'll catch up. Focus.

I screeched to a halt at Gate 49. In the distance, I'd seen the last passenger walk through the door to the plane perhaps 20 seconds prior to my undignified and out-of-breath arrival.

"Please… plane… must…"

I stammered, boarding card and passport thrust out in front of me to the gate attendant, Susan.

"Sorry, this flight is closed."

Imagine a bored-looking Jo Brand. That's what Susan looked and sounded like. In fact she might actually have been Jo Brand, in witness protection. Or undercover. Or something.

"Ok, but I just saw the other people go through the door - so I'm only a few seconds behind them, and I'd love to join my fellow passengers in celebrating another on-time flight by RyanAir. Did you know, that RyanAir was voted both the cheapest and the most consistently on-time airline in 2012? They even play a trumpet on the plane every time you land on time."

She ignored me, typing away on the computer at the desk. Evi arrived, equally out of breath.

"Hello, please let us on the plane - we're so sorry we're a little bit late. I have to work tomorrow, I need to be back in Austria."

"Sorry, this flight is closed."

I looked out the window. There was our plane, sitting outside the terminal. It didn't look very closed to me. The stairs were still attached to the plane, both front and rear, the doors were open. The cargo doors were also open, and in fact the ground staff had only just started loading the checked baggage into the undercarriage of the plane.

"But the plane is right there - we're right here - and, you're going to love this next part: we have tickets to be inside it."

"Sorry, that's not how it works."

"How does it work?"

"The gate closed at 11:30 - it's now 11:55 - the flight leaves at 12:00."

Deadpan.

"But I saw the other passengers boarding the plane at 11:54?"

"The flight is closed. You're not getting on it. Those are the rules."

"Do you know Jo Brand?"

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing."

She finally looked up from the computer. She'd closed the flight and marked boarding as complete while she was standing there talking to us.

She picked up the 60 or so boarding card stubs of the other passengers, and walked off.

We sat there for a while. Catching out breath. Swearing. The plane sat there, just out of reach beyond the perfectly polished glass of the terminal exterior... for another 16 minutes.

A few minutes after it eventually pulled away, Evi turned to me.

"You know, it's funny" she said, "every single person today went out of their way to help us. They didn't have to, but they did anyway. Except for the last person."

She was right.

The conductor on the train didn't have to help us, but he went out of his way to give us information and to let us get off as fast as possible. The man assisting at the disabled-passenger security line didn't have to help us, but he went out of his way to take us to a place that could get us through as quickly as possible. The lady at the fast-track desk should have charged us money, but she didn't, she let us through. The many passengers who we barged past on our frantic dash to the gate didn't have to move - but they recognised the anguished sounds of distress from a fellow human being and obliged us with quick passage.

Then there was Susan.

Susan something. She wouldn't tell me her last name. Just that she's the only Susan in all of RyanAir. Susan just stared at us blankly with an expression and tone that communicated - very clearly, to her credit - "I really don't give a shit."

And now. We're sitting in a shitty airport hotel. £500 of expenses down the drain. I'm not sure if my travel insurance will cover it.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not a huge deal, but it's made me think about two things.

First, how often do we take moments of compassion from others completely for granted? Almost everyone in this little story did something remarkable that deserves to be appreciated.

Second, how often am I the "Susan" in someone else's life?

It wasn't your fault that we were late, Susan. You didn't do anything wrong. You did your job. To the letter. I just hope that everyone who you ask for help is as strict and unwavering in their stance as you. You deserve to receive just as much as you give.

Which leads me to my final conclusion:

Perhaps I also don't give enough. Perhaps none of us do.

No related posts.

The response was overwhelming, and overwhelmingly positive. In the first 6 hours my site got 35,000 page views after hitting the number 1 slot on Hacker News. As of right now, the traffic count is just over 91,000 page views - and Ghost has been featured all over the place. Notable mentions so far include Christina Warren from Mashable, who wrote about it. Michael Carney from PandoDaily interviewed me about it. Someone even wrote about it in Chinese. That's pretty cool.

The feedback has been amazing, and while it's impossible to reply to all of the messages individually, I'm getting to as many of them as I can and I want to thank each and every one of you who took the time to send me a message or share the concept because you liked it. Now that the initial storm has died down a bit, I wanted to take some time to answer some of the more common questions and talk about what's next.

FAQ - Continued...

The most common question, bizarrely:

Oh my god, why is that whole page made of images? What's wrong with you? // I can't take you seriously // Don't you know anything about the web? // You are literally Satan re-incarnate.

This was really the only negativity I got in response to the post, and it surprised me. I put together the concept page as... just that... a concept. It was a way for me to get the ideas out of my head and "down on paper" - or so to speak. I used photoshop as a tool to write down my idea with text and images. If I used a sketchbook as a tool to create images and handwritten notes, then uploaded scans of it, I doubt anyone would complain. The concept page was never supposed to be a finished product because I had no idea if there would be any interest in it. I had no motivation to waste hours coding a custom layout for something might only ever be read by a few people and then forgotten.

Hardware manufacturers make hundreds of foam cutout prototypes of products before they build one with working buttons and screens. I'm aware of all the usability problems with a web page made of images, and equally, foam cutouts without buttons or screens aren't particularly user friendly either. They're not supposed to be.

Let's move on.

What? Why no comments? I need comments.

Because comments add a layer of complexity that is beyond the core focus of this platform, which is publishing. Again, that's not to say you couldn't have any comments. This could easily be added with a dedicated plugin where you own the data or (as mentioned) there are third party providers such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, Livefyre and Facebook who all have great platforms. The point of this isn't to say "you can't have comments" - it's to say "comments aren't on by default". It's about simplicity, more than anything else.

Yeah, but WordPress are already going to revise their dashboard, WordPress.com is experimenting with a potential simplified version... so why bother with this?

Sorry, but Tumblr already did this - it's not the future of blogging, it's the past.

Ghost isn't about sharing "Fuck Yeah [Dogs/Sharks/Girls with Tattoos]" - it's about publishing - which means writing - rather than mashing a few buttons to make sure that everyone can see and appreciate your latest funny picture/status, which is surely the most funny picture/status you've ever posted.

Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook already have this locked down. It's not the future.

So... are you actually going to build this thing?

The concept page was a way for me to test demand and interest. To see if anyone actually agreed with my frustrations and, more importantly, my solutions. I plucked a random figure of "10,000 pageviews" out of the air before I hit the publish button. If it got less than 10,000 pageviews, I would surrender to the fact that it would only ever be an idea. I've now exceeded that goal 9 times over, so yes, I'm looking at how Ghost can now be made into a reality.

How can I find out when it's done? // SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

Ok, ok - there's a holding page up on http://TryGhost.org - put your email address in.

How are you going to do this?

There's three main ways of going about this, each has merits as well as drawbacks.

1.) Build it from scratch - Many people (particularly the Hacker News crowd) expressed the sentiment that there was little point in forking WordPress. When you're going to strip out so much, you get to a point where you might as well start from scratch anyway. Take away the crutches of being stuck with older technologies and put together something which is as sophisticated in code as it is in UI/UX.

• Pros: The idea of something completely new is exciting, opportunity to build something very sophisticated, complete control over everything.
• Cons: Lose the  WordPress ecosystem which includes millions of users and thousands of developers, potentially spend the next 6 months fighting over whether to use PHP/RoR/Django/Python/Node/Whateverthefuck because everyone loves to evangelise the technology they know best.

2.) Fork WordPress - This was the original idea I put out. Take the WordPress codebase, as is, and modify it to turn it into something new. Initially the codebase is practically the same, which means developers already know it. Then it can change over time and evolve into its own thing.

• Pros: Easy start with existing codebase, potential to evolve, doesn't lose WordPress ecosystem initially.
• Cons: Stuck with existing codebase - the good as well as the bad,  eventually needs to be rewritten completely, less control, loses the WordPress ecosystem after a while anyway, makes it complicated to transition from legacy code to new code.

3.) Make it a plugin/extension - Lots of people asked why Ghost couldn't just be a WordPress plugin. It would certainly be the easiest route of the 3, it's possible to completely remove /wp-admin/ and replace with with /ghost/ ... but I feel like it kind of misses the point. This route bolts Ghost on, but it's still WordPress under the hood. From a UI/UX standpoint it would function - but it wouldn't revolutionise anything else. It makes WordPress itself about blogging again, rather than creating something new.

• Pros: Very easy development, very easy deployment, keeps WordPress ecosystem forever, doesn't force anyone to change.
• Cons: The least exciting (for me, personally), much less control, it would be much harder to maintain something like this on a non-profit basis - which loses a piece of what Ghost is about.

What's the answer?

I've spoken to a lot of smart people over the last few days. The one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that a fork is the worst of both worlds. So the one thing that I suggested as a way of making this happen, is the least likely to work in reality. Remember the foam prototype metaphor earlier? Learning and iterating - that's what happening now.

That leaves a choice between WordPress plugin or fresh build. The answer? Both.

A WordPress plugin will act as a proof of concept and a working prototype, initially, because it's easier to leverage the existing WordPress ecosystem to create it than to go into a cave for 6 months trying to build this amazing thing that everyone will have forgotten about.

The plugin will not be perfect. It will add the Ghost UI/UX and as much functionality as we can cram into it. It will completely remove /wp-admin/ and replace it with /ghost/ - effectively using WordPress core as a basic foundation to build on top of. It will give people who don't want to switch away from WordPress access to the Ghost UX which they want to have, and it will give people who want the full Ghost platform a taste of what's to come.

It will allow us to develop and learn and iterate on the concept pretty rapidly, which has a great deal of value.

This is step one. Assuming the plugin is actually used by people - it would then justify exploring building the standalone version of Ghost from the ground up. The plugin would subsequently serve as a great marketing tool for the platform. Think of it as an upgrade path. But that's a long way away. Having the idea is the easy part. Making it happen is what counts.

Happily - amongst the thousands of people talking about Ghost for the last few days - several have been talking about how they've already built some working prototypes of my mockups and turned them into WordPress plugins or just local development sites. These will likely go on to be the starting point of the first Ghost plugin.

There's a lot to do, and I'm amazed by the number of people who have offered their help with this. In the next few days I'll be kicking off work on the plugin properly and start putting together a more organised structure which explains how you can get involved and contribute to the project if you're interested. So... watch this space - and thanks for all your support so far.

Follow @TryGhost

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That was just over two years ago.

The Back Story

A little more than two years ago, I wrote a blog post that was the beginning of Designing Emotion and @Adii and I decided to write it up into a short eBook. It was going to be pretty straightforward, to begin with. We'd come across this new concept that explored the psychology behind design and marketing, and we were going to put together maybe 10,000 words on why we thought it was a big deal. As we started writing, I submitted an article to Web Designer Depot (who I was writing for a lot at the time) on this subject - to gauge interest, and to promote a little bit of what we were doing.

I didn't know, at the time, that Wiley & Sons (the publishing house) scour places like Web Designer Depot looking for potential suckers, victims, new authors. Within a couple of weeks of the article being published - we'd been approached and offered a contract to write and publish a real book on the subject.

I've held off for a long time on telling the next part of this story because, frankly, it's embarrassing and depressing.

Designing Emotion back then was, at best, a half-baked seed that had the potential to one day be an idea, that had the potential to one day be a real concept, that had the potential to one day be a book. Suddenly we were taken from "Let's write this thing for fun in our free time and put it out ourselves" to "Write a 345 part outline for a 200 page book to be written in the next 2 months and published worldwide. Oh, and we'll need to review this 1,245 page contract about royalty terms, advances, and [other shit that sounds important]."

Gulp.

To cut a long story short: We tried, and it didn't work. There were two main reasons for this:

First - Adii and I already worked the equivalent of 4 full time jobs. Writing a book for a publisher is the equivalent of about 3 more full time jobs that neither of us had time for. We would have struggled to keep up with the writing schedule if the idea was fully formed. The reality was, we were researching, documenting, and writing at the same time as we were learning what the hell we were even talking about. In short: we weren't ready to write a book.

Second - Wiley & Sons are best known for publishing the "For Dummies" series and, unfortunately, they take a "For Dummies" approach to publishing. Our book was going to be about grand ideas, about concepts and new ways of thinking, about exploring subjects that hadn't been explored before. Our commissioning editor (the guy who signed us) seemed to get this, but every other editor we had (and there were several) couldn't wrap their head around it. They wanted us to write a book with numbered bullet points, quick tips, pictures, chapter summaries about what the reader has learned, and a whole host of other things that would make us fit perfectly into the "For Dummies" cookie cutter template. We didn't like it, and we fought for over a year to work with the publisher and the editors to try and let us write the book we'd wanted to all along.

Game Over

About a year ago, we drew a line in the sand and Wiley released us from our contract.

We were frustrated, angry, and thoroughly worn out. Adii bowed out completely at this point, he'd had enough. I don't blame him whatsoever - with a company as large and as profitable as WooThemes - it wasn't really surprising that he wanted to focus his efforts on things that were working instead of those that weren't. I had a slightly different perspective, however. Once the manuscript had gotten to about 70% complete, I'd put together a presentation and started giving it at large design, development and marketing conferences all over the world. I still give this presentation now, talking about the building blocks of Designing Emotion - the foundations of the book... and you know what? The feedback, every time, was (and is) unreal. People get it - and they're interested by it. I've had more positive feedback from giving keynotes on this subject than any other - I know that this is something worth talking about.

For that reason - this semi-complete manuscript has haunted my dreams. It started out as a simple idea, progressed into a big idea, transformed into a big book, was utterly destroyed by incompetant editors and reduced to rubble. At one point, our lead editor added the bolded words to the following passage because she believed our readers wold be unclear on what we were talking about: YouTube is the second most popular digital site in the virtual world. - you know, just in case you thought that "YouTube" was a physical location somewhere on planet Earth.

Our Amazon pre-order page went from "delayed" to "delayed further" to "delayed until further notice" to "removed". People asked, and still do ask, "What's going on with the book? When can I get it?"

I haven't even wanted to look at the damn thing for the best part of a year now. It really did kill me. While I was busy failing to complete Designing Emotion, my friend @RobHawkes got his own book deal, wrote the book, published the book, sold out of the book and had it go for a second print run. Epic levels of depressing on my part.

So that's the back-story. Sorry, I rambled a bit. Anyway, here's what's happening next:

Releasing Designing Emotion

I'm publishing book myself, one blog-post-length section at a time, on emotion.onolan.org. I'm doing it like this for a couple of reasons. First, I've written a proverbial fuck-ton of this thing already, and it seems like a shame not to share it. There's lots of content that I think people who enjoyed my keynote on the subject would find interesting and benefit from in some way. Second, I'm trying to remove all the dreadfully heavy feelings of responsibility that come with the sentence "I'm writing a book" so that I can actually finish writing it. Where it is the original idea that Adii and I had years ago to just write something, slightly longer than a blog post, and share it with people.

So, there it is. That's how it's going to go. Once it's finished, I'll look at how to make the entire thing available as one complete piece. For now, I invite you to think of it as a large, interesting, and regularly published blog series. Follow along, and tell me what you think.

Oh, and here's the cover - My friend @RickNunn photographed it - I designed it. It's been under wraps for too long - I hope you like it.

No related posts.

Instead of writing about the things I'm still figuring out - I thought I'd write something about what I've learned so far in the last year. I get a lot of emails and messages at the moment from people who envy this travelling thing that I'm doing and who would love to do the same thing. Maybe this will help someone.

I've written in the past about how whenever I get too comfortable, I make a big change in my life and I look for a new challenge. These are the lessons I've learned from doing this.

First: Who you are is more important than what you do.

I've only figured this one out recently. Really the question isn't "what do I want to do with my life?" - it's "who do I want to be in my life?". The perspective of the question changes the answer. The former is loaded, and leaves you with a mandatory fixed path for the rest of your existence. The latter is wide open. There are an infinite number of ways to be who you want to be, that aren't limited by your work.

Who do you want to be? This is the root of your own happiness.

Second: There is nothing you're "supposed" to be doing with your life.

Stop beating yourself to death with it. You can force the issue as much as you like inside your own head. It's not going to get you anywhere. The notion that there's "one thing" out there that's right for us is as silly as the notion that there's only "one person" for everyone. The difficulty with a career is the same as the difficulty with a relationship. After a certain number of years, you get comfortable. It's easier to stay where you are than to give it all up and start over again. Think of your work as a girlfriend. Does she make you happy enough to marry her?

If you aren't completely happy - maybe it's time for change.

Third: It's never the "right" time for change.

You will never be ready. You will never have enough money. You will never reach some magical point in your life where the universe says "Ok bro, now is the moment, go for it. lol." There will always be huge barriers to making a change in your life. Don't think that everyone else falls into doing that-thing-you-want-to-do by luck or chance. They fought to get there. There is no right time to go freelance, to start a company, to change career, to find a better relationship, to travel the world, to move to a new country. There never will be.

If you want something - don't wait for a sign. Make a decision.

Fourth: Every decision has sacrifices.

People often tell me they're jealous of my lifestyle. Particularly when I'm posting photos of kiteboarding in sunny locations - which seems to attract particularly loud choruses of "go fuck yourself". The reality is that most people want the positives of this lifestyle, but they will never be willing to make the sacrifices. I don't see family, I don't see friends, I gave up my dog (who I love more than anything), I don't own any personal posessions beyond my camera, laptop, and kite (at all), I don't watch TV, I don't have a place to call home, I don't know where my next paycheque will come from, I have no way of having a serious relationship with anyone, I can't buy anything, and there is never anyone around me who I've known for longer than a few weeks. The bigger the benefits of what you want, the bigger the sacrifices will inevitably be.

Everything comes at a price. You have to be willing to pay it.

Fifth: You will never be sure

I wasn't sure about going into web design after studying music at university. I wasn't sure about leaving my agency job to start freelancing. I definitely wasn't sure about selling everything I owned to travel the world. In fact, I was completely fucking terrified on every occasion that it was going to be a huge mistake. Even once you've got past the timing and the sacrifices and you've made the decision... You still won't be sure. Sometimes you'll feel like you're crazy and, helpfully, others will often confirm this for you. People are afraid of change, including you. The question is whether or not you can overcome it.

Leap of faith required.

No related posts.

I dread those words. Partially because at most airports they seem to want to see your boarding pass more often than a fat kid wants cake, partially because it means I'm leaving somewhere.

I don't like leaving places. It's the worst part of doing this non-stop-travelling thing. It's rare that I feel "done" with a place when the time comes to move on. Just when I've settled into a nice new routine, met a bunch of cool new people, and figured out all the local customs... it's time to go again. It's an unavoidable hurdle that comes with this lifestyle, only made bearable by the fact that each time I leave, it's usually to go somewhere else equally amazing.

So I'm in Canada. I did the whole leaving thing with Egypt last week, and it was maybe the hardest place to leave so far. It was really a wonderful place to live and work - not least because for a 3rd the price of my rent was in England, I had a 2 story penthouse apartment with a roof terrace. Now I'm in Toronto, and while it's not quite as hot as I've become used to - it's very nice here. And there are green things, which is a newfound novelty after a couple of months in the desert.

While I was in Egypt, Lezaan flew out so that we could spend a week planning the future of Travelllll.com. I'm not sure how we managed to nail so many different things in such a short space of time and squeeze them in around kiteboarding, scuba diving, horse riding, partying, and general relaxation... but we did. I'm really excited about the future of site - it's going to be a lot more than it is at present and work has already started to get it there. Watch this space.

I'm here for a month now, before flying into Colorado in June to speak at TBEX - then Austria for a couple of weeks - then I'll be back in the UK for a little while to catch up with people and assure HMRC that I am in fact still paying tax, despite what my general movements may look like.

After that... who knows. The great unknown awaits, and I'm going to go and find it, catch it, and beat it with a stick till it does something cool.

Oh, and I'm trying to write on this blog more often. So if you notice that I haven't posted for a while, please tell me to get the fuck on with it.

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For the last few years I've been driven to do a lot of things. I had almost unlimited supplies of motivation which I used to build a business, and another one, to become a public speaker, to contribute to open source projects, to build a name for myself. It seems surreal now to think back to that mindset. Don't get me wrong, I got a lot done - which was definitely a good thing - but the very idea of time-off or a "holiday" seemed like a total waste of time to me. Even when I had a day off, I was always working on something. Looking back, I never slowed down for long enough to appreciate what I had. I was always just reaching for the next "thing". The next idea. The next purchase. The next project.

Eight months later, my outlook has changed quite a lot. I've slowed down. I still have big ambitions, but they're fueled by different motivations. I've written before about how not owning anything makes you question everything, and as you might have deduced from my post yesterday - I've been trying to justify my own goals.

I've started working on fewer things. At the moment I'm working on Travelllll.com - 1 client project - and nothing else. Sure, I still have lots of ideas for things I'd like to do. Last week in fact I had an idea for a very simple iPhone app that I really want to see happen (drop me a line if you're an iOS dev looking for a side project), but there's no rush. I actually have time to relax, unwind, and recuperate. I'm slowly discovering how to do that.

The interesting part, for me at least, is that the more I slow down - the more productive I become. When I spend the morning kiteboarding, I come off the water energised, invigorated, and focused on my tasks for the day. When I spend an evening relaxing with friends, I usually get up at 4:30 the next morning to start work - completely rested.

For the last few weeks I've been trying to decide on a new talk to give. I'm speaking at a large travel event in Colorado in 2 months called TBEX - and the more I've searched for something interesting, inspiring and relevant to talk about... the more the answer has eluded me. This morning I decided to take an extra hour in bed - not to sleep - just to relax and mull a few things over in my head. Within 20 minutes, without actually trying, I'd come up with the perfect idea for my new talk.

It feels unnatural to me *not* to work. Society (and genetics) have programmed me to feel guilty if I'm not doing what I'm "supposed to".

Well here's my new motto: fuck doing what I'm supposed to. I'm going to do what gets the job done. And if what it takes to do that is a lot more fun than what everyone else is doing, then so be it.

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What do you do now?

You’ve bought the Ferrari. You have a private jet. You’ve built your dream house, and you second dream house. You’ve got all the Macs and cameras and gadgets a person can physically own.

What do you do now?

You’ve travelled the world. You’ve been to every place you have any desire to go to, and even some places you didn’t. You’ve volunteered in Africa, you’ve climbed the Eiffel Tower, you’ve seen the Amazon rainforest.

What do you do now?

You’ve given to charity. You’ve started non-profits. You’ve paid off all of your friends mortgages. You’ve become an internationally renowned public figure and swept up every award that can be won in your line of work.

What do you do now?

You’ve learned to cook, play an instrument, build a shed, fly a plane, read palms. You’ve gotten fit, found a healthy diet, and improved yourself to your maximum potential.

What do you do now?

All of this has only taken 5 years. Your ambitions have been fulfilled. Your bank account is flush. Society deems you to be successful. You still have about another 60 years to fill before your time here is over.

It’s Saturday morning, it’s sunny outside, and the day is yours… close your eyes.

What do you do now?

Stop trying to make money to pay for stuff you don't really want, and go do that.

See also:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Today was an interesting day.

I’m in New South Wales, Australia at the moment - I’m here on a month long road trip with Destination New South Wales and MTV on a tourism campaign. The #unmapped trip has just reached the halfway point, and it’s been absolutely incredible so far.

I’ve been fortunate enough to go on quite a few of these trips over the last few years, but this one is the most extravagant and the best organised of them all. Basically there are 5 of us from all over the world, on a bus, and where we go is decided entirely by the New South Wales Facebook page. We ask people where to go and what to do… and then we go and do whatever they tell us to.

So far this has involved Mardi Gras, Skydiving, Abseiling, Rock Climbing, Mountain Biking, Surfing, and Guinnea Pig racing (yes, seriously). Today was a day that topped them all, however.

Right now, the bus has stopped in the Hunter Valley (Australia’s most prestigious wine region), and late last night we got confirmation that one of us would be allowed to take a 1 hour flying lesson in a plane at the local airfield. I wanted to do this really badly, but after a fearsome round of Rock/Paper/Scissors it was Kelly who came out on top.

I was gutted, but having come to terms with defeat - Kelly offered me a chance to buy the flying lesson back from her… if I would submit to some sort of humiliating challenge. We put a call out to the Facebook page for suggestions, and someone came up with an idea that proved to be a winner.

Becoming a Pilot

This morning I turned up at Hunter Valley Aviation, at Cessnock Airport, for my 1 hour introductory pilot course. I wasn’t nervous (something to do with jumping/falling out of similar sized planes rather recently - see here), but I was extremely excited. I met my instructor, Maddy - who showed me the aircraft control system in our Cessna, as well as how to correctly fasten the seat belt (vaguely important, apparently).

After a quick taxi to the runway and a few more brief explanations of plane functions, I pushed in the throttle and took off, solo, for my first ever flight.

I won’t bore you too much with dramatic tales of the view, although those were certainly present. It was actually a very relaxing experience, and honestly very similar to flying a plane in a video game. I got to circle the area at 3,000 feet for just under an hour before heading back in to land the plane (didn’t realise I was going to have to do that part) successfully on the runway.

The whole thing was surreal and amazing. I would absolutely jump at the chance to do it again. If you ever get the chance to do it, don’t hesitate. The Hunter Valley is a pretty incredible place for it, too.

Oh - the whole "no phones on planes" thing is crap apparently - there was no problem with me using my iPhone to take photos and tweet while flying. WIN. It's like tweeting while driving, but in 3 dimensions.

(The plane was a Cessna, I spelt it wrong in the image)

Paying The Price

The challenge was set… though my road trip partners decided it would be best to keep me in the dark until mere hours beforehand as to what it would actually be. Eventually, I was informed we would be going to a place called “The Chili Factory” which was close by.

Now, I assumed that this would simply be some sort of speciality chilli shop. With lots of different sorts of chillies… and maybe I’d have a few vaguely hot ones. Nothing worse than a Vindaloo curry…

I was wrong.

As we stepped out of the #unmapped bus, we met Alex - one of the owners of The Chili Factory - who asked introduced himself and then said,

No but seriously, are you sure you want to do this? It’s no joke… we got banned from the last convention we went to because we took up too much of the ambulance crew’s time…

Gulp.

It turns out that The Chili Factory is famous for one thing. They are in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the producer of the hottest chilli in the world. It’s called “The Scorpion Chili” - and it’s fairly spicy. Let me explain just how spicy: The humble Jalepeño Pepper, widely regarded as “pretty hot” - is usually around 2,500 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). For the average person, this is enough for some serious tongue tingling.

The Scorpion Chilli weighs in at 1.5million SHU.

I was nervous, though I don’t think I was anywhere near nervous enough for a sane person. What happened next was a pretty extreme experience all around. The thing about The Scorpion is that for the first 1-2 minutes you don’t feel anything. It’s just like eating a Jalepeño. After that, the heat starts to build up in your mouth like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. By around the 5 minute mark, every part of your respiratory and digestive system is on fire.

It’s really hard to describe what it was like, because I can’t compare it to anything else I’ve ever done before. I felt like I wanted to throw up, pass out, fall over, cry, scream and gag - all at the same time. The worst of it passed within about 2 minutes, but they were a very long 2 minutes. After that it was just a constant unbearable heat for another 10 minutes. The milk didn’t help much, if at all.

Anyway, here's the video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve got to say - I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun. It was absolutely *awesome* - and an accomplishment that I will doubtless be boring people with tales of for many years to come.

I’ll be writing more about the road trip over the coming weeks (including the documentary filming with MTV - preview), and doing a bit of a general recap of my travels recently. Stay tuned, and eat some chillis. They're good for you.

Oh, and if you want to see me do more ridiculous things - please please head over to the New South Wales Facebook page and hit the "Like" button, then comment on the wall and tell them where they should take us and what we should do.

(I can still feel The Scorpion literally burning its way through my digestive system. Alex warned me that The Scorpion's exit from the body tomorrow will be just as fiery as its entrance. Not looking forward to that part if I'm honest.)

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Here we go again. There’s nothing that can be said about this lifestyle if not that it’s exciting.

I suffer from frequent boredom in life, and now - just as Sydney was beginning to become comfortable and easy - I’m thrown unceremoniously back onto the road and out into the unknown.

I like it.

I started travelling because I like being mentally stimulated, I like new experiences, I like exploring the unknown. Nothing has ever motivated me more to discover things for myself than the people who couldn’t teach me telling me that I’d never learn.

So I’ve departed Australia. After nearly 3 months I’ve arrived at sunnier shores and bluer waters (if that’s even possible). Now I find myself in my new place of residence; a beach hut on an island called Boracay, in the country where much I've already spent a great deal of time; in The Philippines. It’s quite a change in pace, culturally as well as socially.

For the first time now, I’m travelling completely alone. Up until now I’ve been going to places either with people who I know, or to see people who I know. As of right now, those safety wheels are gone. Time to get real.

Australia wasn’t just an easy start in terms of staying with friends who I've known for a long time… it’s also really not that different from the UK. In fact being in the center of Sydney isn’t all that different from being in the center of Manchester… London… or any other large city in a first world country.

Now I’m in a place I know, because I pretty much grew up here. When I was about 10 my family moved over to The Philippines and I went to an international school for a little under 7 years just outside Manila. But despite knowing the country, it remains vastly different to the aforementioned first world cities - and I find myself much more stimulated and excited being here.

After 18 hours of flying I arrived at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport, which is rumoured to be the worst airport in the world. I'd been waiting to pass veridict on the former, after an 8 year gap in visits, but frankly - I don't know what sort of crack everyone is smoking. It wasn't that bad when I was last here in 2004 and it's actually a lot better now. It isn't a nice airport, sure, but Christ - it's really nothing bad enough to write home about.

If you want to see a shit airport, forget about NAIA Terminal 1 - take a look at the old Manila Domestic Airport which I travelled to next to catch my flight down to Boracay:

Now, it's a little hard to tell from this photo why the airport is shit - so allow me to elaborate a little: This photo is of the entire airport. It's a 1 story building with a corrugated iron roof, and at the end of this room is a little glass door that leads to the planes sitting on tarmac outside. It's hot, dirty, and cramped. It's much worse than terminal 1 of NAIA, but really - it's still not that bad in the grand scheme of things.

I waited in this airport for a good 3 hours, being generally shattered from the previous 3 planes, until we finally boarded the little island hopper to me the remainder of the way to my final destination. Disappointingly, the planes have improved in both size and quality since I was last here:

Last time I went on a plane about half this size, and it was a rollercoaster ride from start to finish. It was great! I was sitting in a seat just behind the pilot. This time the flight was disappointingly mundane, and the cockpit was closed. Boo.

But, after 45 minutes Boracay came into view.

Boracay is a very small island a couple of hundred kilometers south of Manila. It's one of most popular tourist destinations in the country with what is widely regarded as the 2nd best beach in the world. To say that it's changed a bit since I was last here would be a bit of an understatement. In 2004 this little island was comprised largely of a few expatriate tourists living in The Philippines, and local shops in the form of.. well... shacks. Now it's like a little Miami beach, the streets are paved and the shops have glass windows. There's even a Starbucks.

I arrived just in time for the most beautiful sunset I've seen in a long time, and then put myself straight to bed in my modest but comfortable accommodation at Casa Camilla - which is the first time I've booked a place to stay via AirBnB. It worked out to be about £14 per night - not bad. Rest was dearly needed because I'd pre-booked something a little strenuous for the very next morning.

I made a few changes to my "equipment" line up (if you can call it that) just before leaving Australia. Up until now I've been traveling with one carry-on sized bag weighing in at roughly 13kg. After a few months living with the contents, I wanted to fine-tune. First, I got rid of quite a few of the very-functional-but-surprisingly-ugly travel clothes which I'd picked up (at great expense) prior to departure. There's a point at which form really does take precedent over function, and with clothing that line is a fairly important one. To summarise - I looked like crocodile dundee uncomfortably often.

Secondly, I made the fairly large decision to drop my most prized posession from the travel itinerary... my D700 and lenses. Up until now I'd justified the whopping 7kg of camera gear because there just wasn't any other way for me to get the image quality I needed. Then I discovered the Fujifilm X100 (review), and I became an overnight convert. Literally. All the images you see on this post were taken with the X100, and weighing in at around 300 grams, it's made my bag nearly empty and light as a feather. Buying it in Australia was a good thing, too. I got a great price as well as a tax rebate at Sydney airport upon departure.

I also got rid of a few things which I'd picked up due to being overly cautious. A big laptop case which was overkill. An external harddrive which I wasn't using for anything that wasn't already on Dropbox. Some document holder things which were taking up more space than added organisational value. A few padlocks.

My bag now weighs just 6kg. And I actually like my clothes.

The biggest change, however, was the addition of a 2nd bag. A big one. I could fit inside it quite easily, and it weighs about 18kg. Just when you thought I was getting smart and efficient, I went the other way. Bazinga.

When I last lived in The Philippines, I used to do a lot of wakeboarding - and I loved it pretty much more than anything else. When we eventually moved back to the UK I never had the time or the inclination to keep it up... there was nowhere to do it easily, or without freezing to death - also, boats are expensive. Just before I left The Philippines, though, I came to Boracay. In 2004 I witnessed a sport called kiteboarding for the first time and was immediately fascinated. I desperately wanted to try it right then and there, but the lessons were expensive and it was a short trip. So it never happened.

In December I had to decide where to go next after Australia. I decided to come back to Boracay and make up for the missed opportunity 8 years ago and take some kiteboarding lessons... and pick up a set of a equipment on the way. Oops.

It took me 4.5 hours to complete the course. Normally it takes people 12-15 hours, but I've been flying trainer kites for a few years ever since that first sighting in 2004. My wakeboarding, sailing, and windsurfing experience all helped, too.

So here's what my average day looks like at the moment:

I get up, usually around 5:30am, check the wind forecast and take a long walk along White Beach to grab breakfast at a local place just as the sun comes up for the day. A full cooked breakfast sets me back just short of £2, so obviously I have to be very careful with my budgeting for the rest of the day... ahem. I've never been a morning person, ever, but waking up really isn't much of a struggle here.

Then I walk on to the other side of the island to Bulabog Beach (which is where the wind is!). I spend about an hour on the water - which is incredible - before retiring to my office in a little bar/restaurant right on the beach looking out over all the kiteboarders on the water. Boracay is the number 1 kiteboarding destination in Asia, I counted 86 kites out on the water at one point on Sunday. It's very cool to watch.

It's a pretty comfy office, with decent wifi and coffee. (The photo above was taken on my iPhone rather than the X100)

I work here from about 9am to 4pm, doing a mixture of client work and managing Travelllll.com as well as scheming on other business and travel ideas while watching friends and strangers out on the water. I've met so many great people through kiteboarding already that I've pretty much decided to use it as a travel guide of sorts for a while.

I've never been interested in tourist destinations really. I like exploring different cultures and places... but the traditional guides of "things to see in ____" don't do anything for me. So, stupid as it sounds, I struggle to decide where to travel to next. Going from kite-spot to kite-spot seems like a nice solution to that problem. And it should be a little different to the standard destinations travel writers go to - which is definitely a good thing. No one in the world wants to read another blog post about backpacking around Thailand.

Back to my average day: Once I've finished working, I might head back on the water for another hour - or just go and get some dinner with some of the other people at one of the local kite centres. Eventually, I make may way home around sunset. As you can see above, it's a pretty stressful lifestyle that people lead around here.

Then I settle in at a restaurant on the beach just in front of my resort (which is where I am now) and do a little more work. Occasionally I indulge in a beer or two at a cost of about 50p each during happy hour, which is actually happy-4-hours from 4pm to 8pm.

Then I get up and do it all over again the next day.

To say that I'm enjoying it, at this point, wouldn't be doing any part of it justice. I can't remember the last time I was so thoroughly pleased with pretty much everything. I was worried about a lack of human contact after leaving Australia - I don't really like striking up conversations with strangers - I'm no good at it. What I've learned though, is that when you're out and about by yourself you suddenly become much more approachable to other people. So I've managed to meet absolutely loads of people just from them coming over and saying hello. Very easy really.

So far, this lifestyle is turning out to be greater than I even imagined it could be.

I've got another week left in Boracay, then it's on to the much more remote island of Sibuyan. Stay tuned.

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I'm not depressed - far from it. Being on the road for almost three months now, a lot of things have changed.

I expected a lot of things when I started traveling, and most of them ended up being accurate. One thing which I didn't expect, or plan for in any capacity, was just how drastically my general outlook on the world would change following the removal of material possessions. I don't know why I didn't expect it, really, cause it's something that's written about frequently. Prior to departure I'd absorbed countless articles discussing the sense of freedom from giving up all one owns. But I've never really been that attached to "stuff" - and I had no reservations about giving up mine - so I didn't really see it as a big deal.

The shift in perspective doesn't really have much to do with the things you own owning you, as such. It's a state of mind. Whilst living a "normal" life, even as a relatively non-materialistic person, I was always thinking about the next "thing" to buy, or pay for, or do. I had absolutely no appreciation for how much time my mind spent locked into this rut of: earn money, buy something, do cool things with it, earn a bit more money, buy another thing.

Now that's all gone. Not only do I have no "stuff" - but I can't buy any new stuff at all unless I'm both able and willing to carry it on my back inside my hand-luggage-sized backpack around the world. Which is an extended way of saying: there's nothing I want or need to buy, and even if I did - I couldn't.

There's a frustratingly large gap in my head where a bunch of things which I used to care about once resided.

Introspection

Right now I'm in Sydney, Australia - staying with some friends over here after speaking at WordCamp Gold Coast last month (which was excellent). As soon as I got here, everything settled down. Between October and November I travelled something like an average of 5,000 miles a day with an average of 2 days in each place. From Lincoln to Seoul, to Amsterdam, to Dublin, to Bristol, to Bournemouth, to London, to The Gold Coast... and finally Sydney. I hadn't had time to even think up until I got here.

Then I started noticing this shift in outlook, and I started trying to fill this large (and growing) gap in my head. I don't know if this is the same for everyone, but I found that I started questioning my goals in life... my dreams... my ambitions. What is really the point of anything I'm doing? Will I look back on what I'm doing *right now* in 10 years time and say, "those were good years - you really accomplished something."

When you have nothing else to think about, nothing else to even occupy your idle mind with, those types of questions run riot through your mind.

That's also the reason that, despite my best intentions, I haven't been posting on this blog much. Because the question of "who gives a fuck about what I'm writing as I travel around the world?" is haunting me. I'm not sure what the purpose of this blog is yet, and it needs one. I've always posted journal-type-entries on my personal blog... and I'll continue to do so. But it needs to be more than that if I'm going to invest a lot of time into it. I'm still trying to work out what the best angle for that is.

So I've been asking myself a lot of questions, I've been looking for a lot of answers, and I've been diligently continuing work as normal - but taking a step back from the social side of things for some reflection.

Realisation

A few days ago I was talking to Rob, and he mentioned how many industry fights I'd missed over the last couple of weeks. Then I turned on Twitter today to find another stream of personal insults aimed at me from one particularly agressive American web developer who likes to ram his neo-liberal political views down everyone's throat and then attack them if they don't agree with him. These, both things which I usually would pay lots of attention to and get involved in, suddenly seem desperately pathetic.

That latter argument I don't even have the energy for anymore. The former argument is so well rehearsed that I needn't even have looked at it to know what it was about. One web developer points out that another (more famous) web developer is talking shit. A day of destroyed producitivity for hundreds of people ensues as everyone takes sides. Again.

As always, it is far easier to criticise something than to build something. As always, those who've built something take the criticism personally. Nobody wins.

I guess I've realised that really I don't care. To survive in the web design bubble (or any online community bubble), you either have to embrace it and conquer it - or you have to get the fuck out, because you've realised that this has become a far too accurate depiction of your life:

I'm choosing the latter.

Realignment

I've made huge changes to my life in 2011, so I guess now it's time to make some changes to my work - too. I'm going to start transitioning my skills and my experience to apply my knowledge and expertise to my own ideas and my own projects. I started a website called Travelllll.com a few months ago. It's doing rather well. Over the coming months I'm moving into a much more active role on the site, to build a business and a product which I can have some fun with.

I also have a couple of other ideas that I'm working on - ideas which came from my month of introspective questioning - ideas which I think matter. I'd like to explore those, too.

I'm still doing client work, but I turn down about 75% of the enquiries that I get at the moment. If you're a great WordPress theme developer - leave me a comment - I'm running out of people to refer clients to.

What I'm really realigning, is my activity in the web design community. Technology has so many exciting applications to industries which are drastically lacking behind. There are far too many talented people squandering their time arguing over whether or not an <a> tag should always be inside a <p> tag, rather than using their powers to instigate positive change in both the web... and the world.

For me, it's time to get outside my comfort zone and try new things. Again.

No related posts.

The Korean DMZ now claims the title as the most heavily guarded border in the world, but it also has other more obscure accolades. The DMZ is recognised as one of the best preserved areas of temperate climate in the world, and has become an inadvertent nature reserve. While  the 4km wide strip of land - which is so green that it can be identified from outer space - has been notably hostile to human life, it has created a thriving population of birds, black bears, and even leopards - all of which are thought to be extinct in all other corners of the earth but this one. The DMZ was also host to the two tallest flagpoles in the world, a true display of phallic competition between the North and South, until a few months ago when they were finally trumped by the Dushanbe Flagpole in Tajikistan.

While often perceived as quiet or inactive; the incursions across the DMZ are regular, and recent. Not even a year has passed since the last shots were fired by both sides across the DMZ.

Reading up on the history of the area on our way to meet our guide... I'm decidedly intrigued, if not slightly nervous, about the whole thing.

No Time for Nerves

Our journey to the DMZ begins on a large, empty bus with a very enthusiastic tour guide. None of us are really sure what to expect. It’s a short journey out of Seoul to reach the border, a stark reminder of just how close the capital is to the North - the significance of which only becomes clear a little later. The closer we get, the more barbed wire fences appear and the more guard huts we see.

Upon arrival to the tourist centre, we’re made to wait for 10 minutes and examine the wall where South Korean families who were divided from their Northern relatives during the war have left messages of support and prayers that they will one day be reunited. While we’re looking at the wall, our tour guide is submitting our names and passport details to the Korean military to allow us entrance into the demilitarised zone itself.

When we reach the military checkpoint which serves as the entrance to the DMZ, it's guarded by armed and uniformed officers. Our tour guide explains that all South Korean men are required to serve in the Korean army. When drafted, they go through a physical to determine which regiment they’ll end up in - then they must serve at least 14 months. The soldier who comes onto our bus to inspect all of our passports and issue the bus driver with an access pass doesn’t look more than 18 years old. The single stripe on his helmet means that he’s a new recruit.

Inside the DMZ, having driven carefully around various blockades, our first stop is place called The Third Tunnel.

After the Armistice Treaty was signed in 1953, North Korea tried - repeatedly - to launch a stealth attack on the South. The first tunnel was discovered in 1974 when some South Korean soldiers noticed steam rising up from the ground. The second, was discovered in 1975, and the third was discovered in 1978 when one of the tunnel’s engineers defected from the North and told the South of its location. There are an estimated 20 tunnels running under the DMZ; all designed to launch a surprise attack on Seoul, all designed to move around 1,000 troops across the border some 100 meters underground every hour. When questioned, North Korea has always denied any knowledge of a surprise attack - claiming that the tunnels were for coal mining.

No coal has ever been discovered in any of the tunnels - but there are traces of black paint where someone has tried to make it look like there might be coal. Not the most foolproof of ruses, really.

Going Underground

The entrance to the third tunnel is housed in an unremarkable concrete visitors centre. As we enter, we’re told to use provided lockers to secure all cameras, phones, camera-phones, things which look like cameras or phones, and things which may once have been related to a camera and/or phone. No cameras in the tunnel, we’re told. No exceptions. Then down the steep incline we go into the tunnel itself, picking up a hard-hat on the way. The route down to the tunnel is a pretty well engineered one. Once the South Koreans discovered the tunnel they sealed it off underground with three thick concrete barricades, then created their own tunnel leading down to meet it.

Once we reach the bottom of the ramp, the harsh rock walls become more damp and a plumbing and ventilation system becomes evident. These exist both for the supply of air to the visitors and for diverting the constant stream of ground water which seeps down through the rock. The actual tunnel, created by the North Koreans, is tiny. The reason for the hard hats immediately becomes evident as we take it in turns to crack our heads (hard) on outcrops of rock in the ceiling of the tunnel. It’s a dark, dank place - no more than 5 feet high and 4 feet wide in most places. We make our way along, backs hunched uncomfortably, for about 10 minutes in a single-file queue of people heading deep into the shaft and another returning on the other side. There isn’t much in the way of personal space.

At the end of the tunnel we reach the third blockade. It’s really not that impressive. It’s a concrete wall with a small window in it allowing you to see the (artificially lit) second blockade. Each blockade is about 15 meters apart, and about 15 meters beyond the final blockade is North Korea. To think, I came within 45 meters of a North Korea Gowalla pin. Dammit.

Sidenote: If you want to keep up with where I am in the world and what I’m doing, you should totally follow me on Gowalla. Go on. It’ll be awesome.

Having completed the tunnel tour and delivered a few choice-words to the woman at the top selling overpriced drinks to tourists who are, without exception, close to cardiac arrest following the steep climb back up to the concrete eyesore of an entrance... we’re guided into a separate visitor centre just next door where we’re shown an extremely surreal video presentation. The video talks about the DMZ with narration in the style of cinema trailers talking about upcoming blockbusters. You know the sort - “This summer. One man, against the world, has - a gun.” - [Cue explosions].

The video talks about the DMZ, pretty much like it’s Disney World. They’re marketing it as a nature reserve, a tourist attraction, an essential Korean landmark, and an important step in the great unification of North and South Korea.

Now, I may be a little bit out of touch, but I wasn’t quite aware of an impending unification of the North and South. I remember the two nations making a simultaneous hand-holding appearance at the Olympic Opening Ceremony a few years ago… but further to that I’m not sure what progress has or is being made. Just two weeks ago North Korea threatened to launch "direct fire" on the South over reports of the distribution of leaflets in Seoul defaming the North Korean capital. "The scattering of leaflets is not a simple provocation, but an undisguised war action," said the North. They followed up by saying they were "ready to take direct fire to destroy the citadels of the psychological warfare."

These types of reports make it hard to imagine a box of cupcakes being sent from the North to the South with a note saying "Hey guys, letz unify."

A View of North Korea

Back to the tour, we’re taken to an observation point high up on a mountain inside the DMZ from which one can, on a clear day, see right across to North Korea. As we pull up to the place where we can experience the exciting feat of looking at nothing in particular, our tour guide explains the rules:

Listen very carefully. Behind the yellow line taking a photo is ok. But if you take a photo in front of the yellow line, the Korean soldier will shoot you…  only kidding, they’ll just delete everything on your memory card.

The DMZ, as you will remember, is a tourist attraction. Totally safe, not a threat, no big deal. Disney World.

Indeed, having extracted ourselves from the bus we watch as several people - too stupid or too brazen to listen - are harshly shouted at and have their memory cards deleted. The view itself doesn’t offer much in the way of top secret information. It’s actually pretty hard to tell where one territory ends and the next begins - it’s just a big, open landscape. Our tour guide explains that the easiest way to tell where North Korea starts is where all the trees stop. They’ve all been cut down for fuel.

Having been suitably unimpressed by the coveted view from the observation point, I get chatting to one of the guards who, as it turns out, speaks perfect English. Sam* - I quickly establish - is from the USA. As a Korean national living abroad, he’s been called back to serve in the military. He has to do it, he tells me, or he’ll lose his Korean citizenship. The past 7 months have been the longest of his life. He spent the first 2 months being worried about being killed by a sniper rifle from across the DMZ, but now he says he's settled in. I ask him what he’s going to do when his 14 months is up, “Go back and finish my undergraduate degree.” he says. It’s a very surreal conversation, because there’s so very little that separates the two of us, and yet here he is - in full uniform - drafted in the Korean military with little-to-no personal freedom, guarding a country he can't wait to leave.

Half way through our conversation Sam’s head snaps around and he barks aggressively in Korean at a man who has just tentatively raised a camera to his face - a reminder that while he’s very friendly, he still takes his job seriously. He quickly apologises to me and says “I don’t really understand the point - you can find photos of this place all over Google images anyway… but what can I do? I have to follow orders.”

For a the tourist attraction that it's being marketed as, the whole situation feels serious and uncomfortable. And to think, this is the "friendly" side of the border.

Dorasan Station

Our final stop inside the DMZ is Dorasan Station. The train line running between the North and South Korea opened in 2007 and was the first method of transport across the DMZ. It carried freight between the two countries once a week for just a year before the North shut the whole thing down and accused the South of  a confrontational policy (I'm not sure what that means) after a change of government following the 2008 elections in South Korea.

A brand new station intended for passenger travel now stands in Dorasan, and it’s covered in advertising about the unification of Korea. It’s a bizarre building. Modern to a fault, with plenty of state-of-the-art facilities which you would expect to find in the richer parts of Seoul, but it’s completely abandoned. It has no purpose. The security scanners and baggage halls sit empty, the ticket office sells tickets to go and look at the platforms, not get on a train. The entire thing - it would seem - is nothing more than a symbolic gesture.

As we leave the DMZ and are checked again, rigorously, by armed and uniformed military (both Korean and American, this time) our tour guide imparts on us a few choice closing words:

I envy all your your countries. Bigger than Korea and not divided into two. Someday I hope that we can be unified once more.

It’s hard to tell how much of this unification message which is being pushed on us is sincere, let alone realistic. I get the feeling it might be a marketing message which conveys what the South Koreans want the rest of the world to see - rather than what’s actually there.

The tour itself was absolutely fascinating, and highly recommended if you ever find yourself in Seoul. The sociopolitical history of Korea is both convoluted and decidedly unfinished. A small glimpse into a world that we in the West haven't known the likes of since November 9th, 1989.

[box type="info"]This trip was organised by Travelllll.com and Expedia, with flights provided by KLM. Our (most excellent) activity tour guides were provided by AJU Tours.[/box]

[hr] *Some personal details modified / omitted to protect the identity of the soldier.

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Errrdsflkgj... come in?

Are you ready to go?

Wait... what? [groan] Is it time to go?

And so it begins.

This week is the start of my new life. I’ve sold pretty much everything I own and reduced my life to one carry-on sized bag. For at least the next year (but I have no defined time-period) I’ve decided to take my office on the road and travel the world whilst still continuing to work as normal. Having departed from Lincoln in the UK and saying goodbye to the amazing friends who’ve done so much for me for the year that I lived there, I spent a couple of days in Northampton with my friend (and ExplicitWeb co-host) Hannah and her husband David.

The first leg of my journey started, as most of my journeys do, with a degree of disaster. I’m not a morning person, to put it mildly. Not at all. So when Hannah found me sprawled lifeless in bed about 5 minutes after we were supposed to have left the house to catch a train to London, there was a frustration in her voice.

(Apparently “is it time to go?” when phrased as an answer to the question “are you ready to go?” isn’t deemed to be a satisfactory response.)

[Frantic packing]

Avoiding near misses with toddlers en route to the station, we did just about get there on time. Hannah shakes her head at me and seems to have a degree of scepticism with regards to how I’m going to cope with travelling alone. She’s not the only one. My best friend, Rick, has a pool running in Lincoln on how many days it’ll take before he has to come and bail me out of a prison in Thailand, and my favourite so far has got to be Phil - who said “I don’t understand how the shittest person in the world at public transport wants to make a living out of using public transport.”

Ok, so I might have a bit of reputation for missing trains. Let’s not get hung up on that. It’ll be fine. Right? Right.

Departure

A few hours later I’m sitting on a KLM flight to Korea with my travel companions for the week, Chris Richardson and Paul Dow. We’re headed to Seoul on a trip co-organised by Travelllll.com (one of my own ventures) and Expedia to visit both Seoul city itself as well as the Korean Formula One Grand Prix. These guys are seasoned travellers, so, that’s probably a good thing - for my safety.

Korea is the only divided nation in the world, with 49million people in the South and about half that in the North which, of course, is famous for its communist regime, fragile relations with pretty-much-everyone, and (worryingly) a nuclear weapons program. South Korea, where we’re headed, is known more for its high-tech and rapidly growing economy. With a GDP of £1.4trillion in 2010, it’s the 13th largest economy in the world. Most of that revenue comes from brands which we all know, like Samsung, LG, and Hyundai.

South Korea is the world’s 11th largest producer and consumer of electricity, and the 5th largest importer of oil - totalling about 3million barrels of oil every single day. It is also the number 1 country in the world in terms of internet connectivity and speed. In the next six months, most South Koreans will have broadband that runs at over 1,000 megabytes per second at a cost of less than $30 per month. More on that later.

Korea is somewhere that I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time. When I was at school in The Philippines we used to compete in the Asia Pacific Athletic Conference each year. Essentially, all the international schools in South East Asia take turns to host various sporting events and compete with each other. It was always a big deal whenever we got to host APAC Varsity Volleyball or Basketball because it would pretty much take over the entire school for a couple of weeks and teachers could be bribed into scrapping their lesson plans and letting us go and watch the various matches instead. Branded as a “class trip” you understand. It was for educational purposes.

The boys from Seoul International School (SIS) were always of particular interest, because while we were restricted to a rigorously enforced uniform and general dress code which included rules about hair - these guys would rock up with various beards, goatees, mustaches, braided-warrior-hair and the occasional set of dreadlocks. You know when Bugs Bunny plays basketball with the massive-muscled-aliens in Space Jam? It was a bit like that, except they were bigger. We didn’t win much.

APAC swimming (years and years ago) took me around Singapore, Hong Kong and The Philippines - but I never had the opportunity to visit SIS for those meets. I’d hear stories from the returning basketball teams though. They’d talk about girls (good) with FaceTime on their phones in 2002 (very good), and magic heated toilet seats (!!). This seemed to me like the sort of place I might enjoy.

Arrival

Some 18 hours after leaving London Heathrow, we touch down in Ilcheon Airport after a surprisingly painless flight where the flight attendant only crashed the food trolley at full-tilt into my knee once (far below average) and the couple across the isle provided mild entertainment as they, not particularly subtly, disappeared in the middle of the night to join the mile-high club for an hour or so and then returned looking very-fucking-pleased-with-themselves.

There’s something quite exciting about arriving in a place where you can’t understand a single word of the language and, as an added bonus, you can’t read or pronounce a word of it either. I was very pleased to be offered 50% off something on the metro from the airport, for example, I’m just not entirely sure what it was. Possibly a special sort of tea which you feed to your cat.

As a language, our Taxi driver later reliably informs me, Korean is very easy to learn. It is made up of just 26 characters and takes on average 2 hours to learn in its entirety. I think he may have been a little optimistic on the latter count - given that it’s taken Paul, Chris and myself 3 days to master the words for “beer” (beyh-ah) - as in “can I have a beer?” and “thank you” (kamze-nida) - as in “thank you for the beer”.

Having mastered two cash machines and a metro ticket machine (not as simple as you might think), we wander aimlessly around Bucheon for several hours. The map to our hotel says we need to be on one side of the city, little do we know, the hotel itself is on the exact other side of the city. On the plus side, after the walk we are familiarised with the apparent multitude of seedy "girl bars" everywhere. We went back to one later, for research purposes, and I can tell you that a neon pink sign saying "She Bar" with a flight of stairs inside the front door, yielded nothing more than a completely empty bar with very expensive drinks and no evidence of a "She" ever having occupied the premises. We did get a free bowl of hula hoops with our beer though, so that made up for it a bit.

We stopped for dinner at a place with appetising photos in the window. Naturally the staff didn't speak a word of English, and at this point we hadn't even learned the word for beer. What the menu lacked for in pictorial content it made up for in squiggly symbols, so our ordering process consisted of pointing at pictures of beer on the wall, and then arbitrarily selecting the first thing on the menu. Which turned out to be very tasty indeed.

One issue which did come up, though, was when our waitress presented us (unprompted) with several bowls of seaweed in water. This lead to a good 25 minute discussion about whether we should drink it or dip our hands in it. Also, what would be more embarrassing/insulting - drinking something you're supposed to dip your hands in, or dipping your hands in something you're supposed to drink? Eventually we decided that there was only one thing we were sure of, which was that you weren't supposed to eat the seaweed out of the soup with chopsticks - which we discovered by eating the seaweed out of the soup with chopsticks. Stifled giggles from other tables were the main giveaway. Our entire meal including drinks came to a grand total of £3.80 each, very pleasing!

A short walk back to the hotel and jetlag started to set in quickly. While not being able to understand a word of the language we'd successfully been helped with directions, food, accommodation and transport. Korea so far - not bad at all.

Next up: off to the most heavily guarded border in the world - the Korean Demilitarised Zone that divides the North from the South.

[box type="info"]This trip was organised by Travelllll.com and Expedia, with flights provided by KLM. Our (most excellent) activity tour guides were provided by AJU Tours.[/box]

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Thinking back to that first day when I decided to throw in the towel on my job and take the plunge into freelancing, it seems like a lifetime ago. I remember the feelings of fear, apprehension and excitement - all at the same time. It was a big decision and a huge step to give up the stability of a monthly pay cheque and rely completely on myself to make a living. Today those feelings are all back again, as I take my next big leap of faith.

Working for yourself has one huge advantage that often goes overlooked: It doesn't really matter where you are. As long as you have a decent internet connection and some electricity... you could be working from home, or a cafe, or... anywhere else really.

The Past

At the end of 2009 I landed a new contract with Virgin Atlantic Airways to design and build a new travel blog for vtravelled, their social-travel web application. The next summer, vtravelled were invited to attend a travel-blogger press trip to Valencia, Spain which would include attendance to the 2010 Formula 1 European Grand Prix. Having an understandably busy schedule, no one from vtravelled had time to go on the trip but, knowing my love for Formula 1, they asked me if I'd like to go on the trip on their behalf. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity without hesitation.

What followed was one of the most amazing weeks of my life, I couldn't help but write about how much I'd learned from the experience.

As some of you already know, I have some experience with travel. I was born in Scotland to Irish and English parents, I grew up in The Netherlands (learning to read and write Dutch well before English), before spending six years in The Philippines. I only came to live in the UK for the first time (that I can remember, anyway) in 2005. When people ask me where I'm "from" ... I genuinely don't know what to tell them.

Growing up all over the world had its advantages. I was exposed to more cultural diversity and given more opportunities than many have in a lifetime and I was unbelievably lucky to do so much in so little time. But the grass is always greener, and while people who have grown up in one small town long to travel and see the world. I longed for somewhere to call home, for friends who I'd known my whole life, for a place which felt like I belonged there.

To this day there are only about 3 people who I'm still in contact with who I've known for longer than 2 years. My Facebook profile is filled with 338 acquaintances. People who I once had something in common with.

So initially my interest in the trip to Valencia was purely based on Formula 1 - I wasn't that concerned about "travel". But then again, I didn't expect to meet such an amazing group of people. I definitely didn't expect for the trip to change my outlook on work, life and everything in between. But it did.

Me, jumping out of a plane on a trip to Costa Brava.

I got on well with the organisers for that trip. Before long I was being invited back on other travel-blogger press trips to Spain not on behalf of Virgin Atlantic, but just as myself. I also started speaking at travel conferences and events, often talking about WordPress - but directed at users, not developers. Quite a difference.

The Future

The more I travel now, the more I realise how much I enjoy it. The more I travel now, the more I feel like I'm doing something with my life.

The more trips I went on, the more I met people who live a location-independent lifestyle. They travel non-stop, moving from country to country living and working as they go along. About 6 months ago a realisation finally set in: I've been location-independent for two and a half years... I just haven't been doing anything with my independence.

I can work from anywhere and, at the end of this year, I plan to make 'anywhere' my new home.

In November I'll be speaking at WordCamp Gold Coast, in Australia - and I'm not coming back. I'll be staying in Australia for two months with friends in Sydney, before starting my new life in early January by revisiting the Philippines and then going on to China, Japan, Korea and Thailand. After that, I don't really know where. I'll figure it out when I get there.

My office will be a Macbook Air, my living-room will be an iPad, my bedroom will change depending on wherever I am, and my entire life will fit into a single carry-on-luggage-sized bag. I've already sold half of my possessions in preparation.

I'm petrified. And I can't wait.

I've had this post sitting as a draft for over a month. Not only have I been waiting for final plans to be confirmed, but I've also been pretty scared of publishing it. This post is my own, self-imposed, point of no return. If you're reading this... then I've successfully located the 'publish' button. There's no going back now.

More to follow.

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As of the 22nd of July 2011, it's taken me about 8 hours to finally do it, and it was an extremely painful process that involved a lot of research and trial/error. I hope that this post can spare you some of that pain.

Why Your eBook is Stuck in Adobe Editions

So, a little bit of back story to help you understand why this is so convoluted: eBooks which are sold nowadays often come encrypted with Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is a way for publishers to restrict the way in which you use your downloaded content - primarily with the goal of preventing piracy.

The downside, however, is that it makes it incredibly hard to do what you want with your files - for example - putting them on your iPad or Kindle.

When you buy PDF eBooks from certain online retailers (in my case, whsmith.co.uk) they are advertised as "PDF" - but they aren't really. You get a download of an ACSM file, which you have to open through Adobe Digital Editions to download your eBook. Once it's downloaded, it's locked into Digital Editions, and there is no compatibility with iPad or Kindle.

The only way to get the file onto your iPad or Kindle is to get it out of Adobe Digital Editions, so it functions as a normal PDF or EPUB file.

Digital Editions saves a PDF file to your hard drive (/Documents/Digital Editions/Your_eBook.pdf) but if you try to open this file with any application other than Digital Editions, it will throw up errors or say that the file is corrupted. Usually something like:

"The file [xxx] could not be opened. It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize."

This is because the PDF file is encrypted with Adobe Adept DRM, which is surprisingly difficult to get around. We need to remove the DRM from the file in order to transfer it to a Kindle, or import it into iTunes. Unfortunately, most DRM removal software will not be able to handle this type of file. Trust me, I tried a lot of them.

It's worth noting, at this point, that it is completely legal to remove DRM from a file which you have purchased. You aren't doing anything wrong unless you're removing DRM from a file which you don't own. So let's get started.

How To Remove Adobe DRM from Your Ebook

First: You're going to need a PC. Mac users (I'm one of you), there is no way to do this that I've found on a Mac, so you're going to need to find/borrow/steal a PC, or set up a virtual machine with something like VMware Fusion. Here's the step-by-step:

Step 1: Install Adobe Digital Editions on Your PC

If you're already on a PC, you've probably already done this. Mac users, get set up in a PC environment. You need to download Adobe Editions, activate your computer with an Adobe ID, then download your ACSM file, and get the eBook into Digital Editions.

You MUST have Adobe Editions installed and activated on a PC before proceeding to the next step. The DRM removal app used later will not work if you copy your PDF file from your Mac to PC and try to decrypt it.

Step 2: Install ePubee

The little application that does all the magic is called ePubee. Get it here. The trial version of ePubee is free, and will let you remove DRM for 3 eBooks before you need to upgrade to the paid version. No watermarks or limited features, which is nice.

Step 3: Remove DRM

Click on the "input" button and navigate to where Adobe Editions has stored your encrypted PDF file, and select it. On Windows this is in My Documents > My Digital Editions > Your_eBook.pdf

Click on the "output" button and select where you want to save the new (DRM free) PDF file which you can put onto an iPad/Kindle. I just select My Documents for this.

Click on "Remove DRM"

You should get a success message, and a shiny new PDF file titled Decrypted_Your_eBook.pdf located in My Documents.

Step 4: Back to The Mac

If you're a Mac user, that's all you needed the PC for. You can now upload the file to Dropbox or email it to yourself, and go back to working on your Mac. PC users, skip this.

Step 5: Optional File Conversion

Both iPad and Kindle will read your new PDF file, now that it's DRM free, however both will sometimes render the file better if you convert it to their preferred format. For iPad this is .epub - for Kindle this is .mobi.

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This, thankfully, is rather easy. Head over to Zamzar, upload your file, select the format you'd like, and put in your email address. In a few moments (usually under 3 minutes) Zamzar will email you your converted file. There are other tools, such as Calibre (for Mac) which will do this straight on your computer rather than through the web.

I have found that conversions (to .mobi in particular) don't work well for books which are graphics heavy. It does the text no problem, but any special coloured info-boxes (typically found in non-fiction books) or images just come out as a blur.

That's All

I really hope this worked for you, and more than anything I hope I saved you the hours of screwing around with Python scripts through command line interfaces that I went through. DRM is no fun for people who just want to use the files they've paid good money for. Adobe, unfortunately, always love to make everyone's lives more difficult at every possible opportunity.

Here's to their eventual demise.

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On Travel Blogging & Bubbles

Travel blogging is a very young industry. They still think social media is awesome magic and haven't come to a conclusion on how everyone should be making money out of their blogs. Should you get paid by the companies providing the trips? Should you get paid for writing content with links in it? Should you get paid for banner advertising? Affiliate marketing? These questions and more are up for constant discussion, but no consensus.

It's so easy to get sucked into the details of the industry that you care so much about and forget about the bigger picture. I spent most of this weekend telling people to take a step back, look outside the travel sector at what other companies and individuals are doing. Blogging has been around for a long time and other industries have already paved the way. Travel bloggers: your only job for the rest of today should be to make sure that you watch Gary Vaynerchuk's keynote at the Blog World Expo - it covers so many of the things that were being talked about at TBU, and yes, it really was 3 years ago that he was talking about this stuff. The audio quality is terrible, but the content is really really worthwhile. If you enjoy the talk - you should definitely pick up a copy of his book on Amazon for a mere £6.69 too.

A couple of people asked me this weekend if I'd learned anything - I said "no". I'm pretty savvy on blogging, branding, freelancing and all the main topics being discussed. And yet, having told everyone to take a step outside of the "travel bubble" and explore the bigger world of the web, I realise (once more) that I too am in a very secluded little bubble. I'm no better. We web designers could sometimes do with spending less time on every minute detail of how the web works, and more time on actually doing something with it.

When I spend time at travel events I suddenly realise how nice it is to get away, even for just a moment, from the nuances of web standards, validation, browser support and whether or not an anchor tag always be wrapped with a block level element or whether it can sometimes be treated as one based on context and still remain semantic.

To any travel bloggers reading this: you won't have understood that last sentence. To any web designers reading this: I put it to you that you probably shouldn't care.

On PR & Opportunity Cost

There were lots of things on the table at TBU, but these were probably the the two at the top of the list. I thought the discussion about PR agencies was interesting (and generally positive), but I've seen a couple of followup tweets and blog posts implying that the entire conference was all about how travel bloggers and PR agencies should be working together. Please don't let this be your only takeaway from TBU. There's plenty of great things to be said about PR agencies, but let's not get carried away here: they are one piece of a larger puzzle, and not always an essential one. Work with PR agencies if it's beneficial to you, but please don't feel like it's the only thing you can or should be doing. Social media is not PR. Again: watch Gary Vaynerchuck's keynote above.

As for "opportunity cost" - let's clarify something briefly: A few bloggers throw this term around a great deal in regard to blog trips. They say that bloggers who go on (unpaid) trips are providing valuable exposure to companies in return for no financial compensation, so the opportunity cost is that the time spent on blog trips could have otherwise been spent on paying work. But opportunity cost, dear friends, works both ways: The opportunity cost of going on a blog trip is paying work. The opportunity cost of not going on a blog trip is all the content, networking and relationships that come with it.

So you choose: a week of paid work, probably sitting at home - or a week of unpaid work where you spend time traveling, getting to write about it, meeting people who may give you paying work in the future, and building your reputation. One is not superior to the other. Decide what suits you best and then move on.

After all, the opportunity cost of wasting time discussing opportunity cost is also time that could otherwise be spent on paying work.

On My Talk

My session was all about WordPress (surprise!). I didn't plan on writing an entirely new talk for TBU, I was going to cobble together bits from my numerous other WordPress sessions and workshops, but on Thursday night I decided that the audience was going to be so different from my standard range of geeks (love you) to take the easy option. Around 91 new slides and 0 hours of sleep later, I'd put together a session targeted entirely at travel bloggers using WordPress. It was the first time I'd delivered the same talk back-to-back, 3 times in a row, but I think it went ok!

The slides, if you'd like a copy, are embedded below.

Finally - to everyone at TBU: Thank you for a fantastic weekend. It was an absolute pleasure meeting all of you. If there's anything I can help with, please don't hesitate to drop me a line :)

Oh, and a special mention goes to the Caliberi crew. It was great meeting all of you ;)

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What is it?

UI Labs is a free plugin for WordPress that comes with progressive enhancements and experimental user interface features for the WordPress administration area.

In a sense, this is for UI touches that aren't appropriate or currently feasible for core implementation - mixed with totally new ideas that I hope might indeed get picked up by core some day. Essentially, if you're interested in a constantly evolving WordPress UI with some clever (and useful) touches, you should check out the plugin. It's like GMail Labs, but WordPress, got it?

Experiment #1

The first UI experiment inside the plugin is colour-coded post statuses. Its purpose is quite simple:

Sometimes you have lots of posts with different statuses mixed together, it's hard to tell what's what because they all look the same.

The UI Labs plugin will take that list of posts and transform it into something which is a little easier to scan:

It's a simple as that really. Give it a try - you might be surprised what a difference it makes to your workflow. Either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Please Note

At present this is not an official WordPress plugin of any kind and has absolutely no influence over future WordPress UI decisions. Will it ever go that way? Maybe. I would love it if the core team wanted to adopt the plugin - but for now, this is just a little project for me (and perhaps other people) to get creative with the WordPress UI and test new things.

Related posts:

1. Joining The WordPress UI Team
2. Designing WordPress: Keeping 30,000,000 Users Happy

Customer Service Priority Levels

Customer service exists, for the most part, to help customers when things fail. On that basis, the best customer service in the world would be no customer service at all. If I never needed customer support again, then that would quite simply mean that everything was working as it should. So the very first step in customer service should be to figure out how to do less of it.

Stop trying to serve people in the best way and getting overly caught up in how to do it. Make your product better, make it so good that people don't need your help at all. Use every bit of customer service that you do as a guideline for how to make your product better and eliminate customer service in the future. Make your product or service just work.

In the mean time, while you're doing that, recognise that some problems are more important than others - and treat them as such. Not all problems are equal. Some things need immediate attention, while others can wait a little while to be dealt with. Too often customer support is all lumped together when the priority of support requests should be something like this:

1.) The Whole Thing is Failing

Whatever your product or service is, its core feature is dead. If you offer hosting, your servers are down. If you sell software, it has a bug that prevents the program from running. If you sell boats, they are sinking. The crux of this point is that customers have given you their money with a core expectation, which isn't being delivered on.

These customers need to be helped right-fucking-now. Not in 5 minutes, not tomorrow. They've given you money in exchange for services, and you're giving them no services. If YOUR service is failing then don't send them to support forums, don't ask them to open tickets, get a phone number and help them personally. You messed up, now you fix it.

Treat these customers like royalty, because they trusted you and you are letting them down.

2.) Money Money Money

Remember why businesses exist? To make money. If someone needs customer support for the process of giving you money, you should probably help them out pretty quickly if you want to stay in business. Money is a difficult thing because it comes with stigma. People are very conscious about their money and their financial data. Someone thinking that they may have been charged twice after completing an online order is a much bigger problem than someone finding a software bug. Problems relating to money cause panic.

Again, these customers need to be helped very quickly indeed. All of the confidence which the customer has in your company rests on how you deal with this level of customer support. Completing a payment takes trust and commitment from the customer, any problems to do with payments or money will seriously hinder your reputation in the eyes of that customer.

3.) There's a Real Problem

Nothing is perfect, which means that you're always going to have to deal with some customer support. Maybe one feature of your product isn't working right, but everything else is fine. The crux of it is that most of what you've sold is right, but there's a small problem that the customer wants help with. Your phone works fine, except when you hold it a certain way. Your new accounting app works fine, except when you assign 2 contacts to the same invoice. Your new car works fine, but the hand-break is loose.

These customers need help, but they don't need it right now. They have a real problem and it needs to be addressed, but nothing awful is going to happen between now and then. The core part of the product works, and they haven't had any problems relating to money. Acknowledge the problem, offer an interim solution if applicable, fix the problem. If you can't fix the problem, give the customer something back to acknowledge that they paid for 100% of a product and you only delivered 90%.

4.) There's a Fake Problem

Sometimes your thing works just fine, but the customer has a problem using it. At a base level, this is your fault. 2yr olds have no trouble using iPhones, so your customers should have no trouble with whatever you've built. For now though, you just need to help them out. If they bought a theme, they can't figure out how to install it. If they bought a flat-pack set of shelves, they're putting it together backwards. If they have a camera, they're shooting with the lens-cap on. The crux of it is user error.

These customers don't need help quickly. They just need help.  There's a small caveat here though: The actual importance of the customer support issue is sometimes vastly different from the perceived importance. For example, the customer shooting with the lens-cap on thinks that the camera doesn't work at all. They think that their support query is level-1 importance - aka "help me out right-the-fuck-now" - which is exactly what you should do.

For everyone else, help them out when you can. If they need a lot of help - then explain that their issues are outside the scope of customer service, but you're going to help them out as much as you can anyway.

5.) Feedback and Suggestions

Often times, customers have feedback and suggestions for your products. They see how it works, and they've thought of a better way of doing it. Other times, they'll just have things they want to ask you that aren't a problem - like "Do you want to sponsor my conference?" or "Have you considered making/selling [relatedproduct]?"

These guys are very low stress, low maintenance customers. They're getting in touch, but most of the time they probably don't even expect a response. They just want to get in touch and tell you or ask you something fairly inconsequential. You should always respond to them, but if you have thousands of customer support queries to deal with then these guys go to the bottom of the list.

Customer Service Channels

Once customers have been grouped by importance, the next question is what channel is going to be most appropriate to dealing with their problem. Different channels for different problems and different types of customer. Pick one based on whether or not it's suitable:

1.) Text Based Services - Email, Twitter, Forums

People try to distinguish between these, but the distinctions are largely irrelevant. The key is that the customer is trying to get in touch with you through the medium of a keyboard. The keyboard (assuming it's attached to a computer) has a profound effect on people, and apparently changes personalities. The keyboard is a method of communication which uses 0 of the human senses. You read the words someone has written, but you don't see how they feel. You read what they've written and then you interpret it (usually wrongly) to try and figure out what it all means.

Benefits:

• Quick to produce, quick to consume.
• Very easy.
• Can reply to lots of people with the same message.
• Historical data of conversations if preserved.
• Free.

Drawbacks:

• People can (and WILL) interpret text wrongly, so will you.
• Can take longer to resolve complex problems.
• Public conversations for all to see.

Conclusion:

The perfect medium for 90% of customer support, but you need to exercise extreme caution in how you express yourself to ensure that customers interpret you correctly. I add a :) to the end of a huge number of my replies to other people on Twitter not because I'm a 14 year old girl, but because I want to make sure I'm interpreted with the correct tone. There's a big difference between. "Don't be such a dick!" and "Don't be such a dick! :)" - People will often read text and interpret it based on their own assumptions of whether or not you're being friendly. Most significantly, if text based communication starts going down hill, it's a slippery slope. Once friction has been created, it becomes very EASY for both parties to send snarky replies to each other.

The biggest advantage of this medium is that it's "quick and easy" - so if it stops being those things then you're using it for the wrong reasons. If something isn't getting resolved with a keyboard, switch to voice.

2.) Voice Based Services - Phone, VOIP, ScreenSharing

Voice communication has been around for ages, whether by telephone, over skype, or even through some sort of remote screen-sharing support utility. Voice communication is handy because you can get a lot of back and forth done very quickly. An hour of emails flying back and forth about an issue can almost always be resolved with a 10 minute phone conversation. The downside of course, is that everyone has to be around at the same time

Voice is a great next step after text because it introduces tone. We actually get to make use of one of our senses to interpret the way in which something is being said rather than just guessing. It's easier to understand the problems and the emotions of the customer, and at the same time it's easier for them to understand you. You become a real person to them, and not just some faceless text on their computer screen.

Benefits:

• Tone and emotion are conveyed.
• Much easier to resolve complex problems.
• Private conversations.
• Easier to calm down angry customers.

Drawbacks:

• Generally slow for most communication.
• Often difficult to schedule.
• Non-reproducible. No FAQ's on the phone.
• No way to go back and look up what was said by who.
• Can be very expensive if used a lot.

Conclusion:

The biggest problem with phone-calls is the perceived time that it will take. We know that one email will take 2 minutes and one phone conversion will take 10 minutes. What we often fail to remember is that to accomplish something complex: twenty emails will take 40 minutes and one phone conversation will still only take 10 minutes. As a rule of thumb, if you can predict that a problem will take more than 5 emails or tweets to resolve... then pick up the phone.

3.) Face Based Services - Retail Outlets, Meetings

Not very relevant to most tech based businesses, but still relevant to agencies and other people who conduct some form of customer service through meetings. The age-old face-to-face situation is what we used before introducing all these newfangled layers of technology to help us out. Speaking to a customer in person is great because it uses at least two of the senses, if not more. The more senses that we have in action, the easier we find it to empathise with our customers, and vice-versa.

Benefits:

• Tone and emotion are easily conveyed
• Easy to resolve complex problems
• Private conversations
• Cheap

Drawbacks:

• Painfully slow
• Generally painfully hard to schedule
• Macho men
• Non-reproducible
• No historical data

Conclusion:

Face-to-face customer interaction isn't much better than voice communication all round and is really only used for convenience, or for when two individuals really need to get to know each other prior to engaging in a large business agreement. It's easy to communicate and help people in a face-to-face environment, but there is also the added drawback that men often feel the need to be macho and to assert their authority in real life (You know, to prove that they're real men), so sometimes logic/sense is replaced with testosterone.

4.) Physical Services - Post, Fax

If you force your customers to communicate with you like this then Jesus hates you and kittens die every single time you do it. With a few miniscule exceptions, there is absolutely no reason that your customers should be the subjected to the torturous bullshit of "writing a letter" that will only serve to aggravate them further.

Benefits:

• Nothing

Drawbacks:

• Everything

Conclusion:

Don't fucking do it.

Customer Service Methods

Once you've prioritised your customer service requests, chosen which one to deal with and what channel to use: you actually need to do something with them. They've gotten in touch with you (generally) because they have a problem of some sort. It's time to solve that problem. Here's how:

1.) Say you're sorry

This should (but doesn't) go without saying. As already established, if a customer is contacting customer service, then it's because they're having a problem which is probably your fault. Apologise and mean it. Actually give a damn. Don't just apologise because I wrote it here or because other people tell you that you should, apologise because you care so much about your product that you're genuinely embarrassed that it isn't functioning correctly. Be sincere.

As humans, we all have huge egos. We all like to think we're a lot more important than we are, and we definitely all like to be treated as though we're a lot more important than we really are. "The customer is always right" is a misleading statement which many people enjoy disputing, the sentiment which the statement really conveys is "The customer is always most important". The customer isn't always right, in fact they're wrong a great deal of the time, but they never stop being most important. Showing a customer humility and making them feel important is the absolute key to making customers happy. If you are defensive, condescending, or anything else that implies that they don't really matter to you - then you lose.

User error is your fault. Build it better, document it better, and apologise when customers make mistakes because you didn't make your product's functions clear enough.

2.) Resolve the issue

Fix it. If someone is getting in touch with you then it's because they need something to happen. Your first goal (after apologising) should be to find a way to solve their issue. If there's a bug in your software, patch it. If they aren't happy with their makeup, change it. If they say the food is cold, exchange it for them. For the most part, customers care more about you trying to fix an issue than whether or not you actually fix it. People want to know that you care about them and that you recognise the problem and want to fix it - the rest is often secondary.

In January 2011 I moved to a city called Lincoln in the UK. After moving into my new house, I discovered Virgin media (my broadband company) were suffering from a big network fault which meant I got 50kbps speeds instead of 50mbps speeds. Ouch. The company literally couldn't fix it. They needed to assign a budget and a team to the area, get planning permission, and then carry out the work to upgrade the infrastructure. It's going to take 4 months to upgrade, but I'm still with them because I got such amazing customer service and people *trying* to help me and find interim solutions.

If you can't completely fix the problem, try to at least partially fix it. If one part of the product is broken, suggest another way in which they could accomplish the same task. For example if one part of your WordPress plugin was broken, you could suggest another plugin to the customer which they could use in the mean time to complete that one specific task while you fix the original product.

3.) Give them a refund/discount

If you can't fix the issue or the customer has been majorly inconvenienced by the issue, give them discount or a refund. Do not be shy. Yes the point of being in business is to make money, but a happy customer is worth much more to your business in the long run than an angry customer. If you give an angry customer their money back (you *always* let them keep whatever they bought too) then they will probably become a happy customer and use you again + recommend you. If a customer feels like you've cheated them out of their money then not only will they never be a customer again, but they'll tell all their friends to avoid you too.

While companies should do this all the time, they often don't. So this method has the added bonus that it may be unexpected and pleasing to the customer. Being given a refund/discount when you feel that you deserve one is good. Being given a refund/discount when it hadn't even crossed your mind is really good.

4.) Give them a freebie

If nothing so far has worked and the customer is still unhappy, or the issue was so large that you feel it warrants it. Give the customer a freebie. Even if you've already given them a full refund. This is really just an extension of the last step. Essentially what you're trying to do is not just refund the customer for the problems they had (making you 'even') but to go the extra mile and compensate them for the inconvenience which you caused them (making them 'happy').

Consider whether or not the customer is worth to you whatever the wholesale cost of your product is. Happy people spend money. So make them happy.

5.) Ask for their advice, and then do what they say

With all customer service, but particularly those customer who have had a particularly tough time, ask them for their feedback and then do what they say. Once again this comes down to humility. Customers like hearing that you consider their opinion to be worthwhile, they like being made to feel important, and they like it when you go out of your way to improve your company based on a problem which they experienced.

Keep in mind that this method is largely pointless (and potentially even damaging) if you make a whole load of empty promises or simply ignore the customer's suggestions. Your most vocal critics can quickly become your most vocal evangelists if you make them feel like they matter and that you really care.

In Closing

This post is dedicated to @VodafoneUK - who really suck at customer service. If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more stuff like this, I've just written a book on the subject. More details coming very soon - subscribe to my blog or Twitter or Facebook in the mean time!

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BioThemes is a premium WordPress themes company with a twist. We  aren't making blog templates like lots of other theme companies already do, instead we're building mini web applications on top of WordPress. Our first release is a theme called ShowOff, it's a theme built for creatives: illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, people who want to get their portfolio online quickly and easily. It isn't just a portfolio theme, it customises and builds on WordPress functionality to turn your site into a dedicated portfolio platform. Think of it a bit like CarbonMade running on WordPress - but with more advanced functionality.

We've launched both the theme and the site itself in beta - so there's still a long way to go, but I'm really excited about where we're going.

"We" - for the record - is myself and Gilbert Pellegrom, who is my partner in crime and one of the most talented and dedicated developers who I've ever had the pleasure of working with. You might have seen some of his work before if you've ever used the (world famous!) Nivo Slider.

If you want to know more - check out the BioThemes release post on the company blog, and watch this space for a lot more exciting things coming soon. Oh, and if you want to be one of our first customers (highly recommended) then here's a discount code to make the decision an easy one: ONOBIO

I'm seriously excited about BioThemes, I've been working on it for such a long time and we've changed direction countless times. It feels good to have something out there in the open. Roll on the rest of 2011.

I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below!

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The Talk

As you might know, I work as a member of the Core WordPress UI Team - but what exactly does that mean? I for one, had no idea what I was letting myself in for and my mind was completely blown by all the intricacies involved. I put together this talk to try to explain some of those intricacies and show just what goes on behind the scenes of the world's favourite Open Source content management system.

The Slides

You can also download the full copy of these slides from the awesome @noteandpoint website here.

Related posts:

1. Joining The WordPress UI Team
2. Designing User Experience: Business Edition