Site Update – June 2008

Live from Amsterdam

Greetings from Amsterdam’s nice Schiphol airport, where I’m spending the day in transit after arriving early this morning from Minneapolis. Schiphol is one of Europe’s nicest airports, so if you’re going to spend 8 hours waiting for a late-night connection like I’m doing now, this is a good place to do it. It’s also super-easy to head into the city from here, and I’ll probably do that after posting this up.

For the next two weeks I’ll be traveling in the Baltics and Eastern Europe before going home via Asia. Expect an on-location trip report at some point, and some other essays in the meantime.

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Each month I look back at what’s happened with ChrisGuillebeau.com in the previous month. If you’ve missed some articles, you can catch up here.

Manifesto

On Tuesday, June 24, I released a free PDF report called A Brief Guide to World Domination. The download for that report and an ongoing conversation is available here.

Since the launch one week ago, a lot of crazy things have been happening. More than 40 bloggers have posted reviews so far, there are hundreds of mentions on Google, and several readers have offered to create free translations in different languages. I am in the process of creating a Manifesto Resource Page that will post some of the reviews along with other updates.

One of the more interesting things I’ve learned is that the manifesto is now banned from download in China. Perhaps it’s the “world domination” theme, but someone in the government over there actually took the time to put me on the Beijing firewall. Yes, I am honored. It makes for good press coverage elsewhere. If anyone else is in China and wants to read it, feel free to email me and I’ll send you the PDF directly.

Everyone else, please continue posting your feedback over here.

Writing

In addition to the manifesto, I published the following essays:

LIFE – I wrote about The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth, How to Run 26.2 Miles on the Open Sea, You Are Incredibly Rich, and Giving Up the Lottery Fantasy.

WORK – I wrote about The Artist in Each of Us and Lessons Learned in My First 90 Days of Writing.

TRAVEL – I wrote about The United States of Arabia, The Road to Jerusalem and Amman, and Zimbabwe: Great Place, Bad Government.

GUEST WRITING – I wrote The Nonconformists’ Guide to Personal Finance (part one of a two-part series) for Get Rich Slowly, and Three Truths to Creating a Life of Gratitude for Zen Habits.

VIDEO UPDATE – Thanks to some great help from a videographer friend, I published the first AONC video update. I’ll try to do another one after I get back from the trip.

Travel

I took a very quick trip to Vancouver to pick up a Round-the-World plane ticket, and then a mini-break with Jolie to Portland, where we met the great J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly. He is a great guy and even bought us lunch!

(We said later that he will probably not get rich slowly if he keeps buying lunch for people, but we appreciated it nonetheless.)

The week after Portland, I went to Alaska with my parents and sister for a family vacation we have been planning since last summer. Otherwise, I did not plan any trips because I was knew I’d be traveling a lot in July, and I was also focused on the manifesto release.

What’s Coming Next

Travel – This month I will be in a lot of places, from Moldova to Mongolia. I’ll be starting off in the Baltics about five hours from now, where I fly into Riga, Latvia. From there I’ll be going overland to St. Petersburg, Russia via Estonia and Finland.

The first part of the trip should involve an overnight bus, a ferry, a tram, and a long-distance train between Helsinki and St. Petersburg. It goes on from there, but that information is probably tiring enough, so we’ll take it one step at a time.

FAQ – I’ll be creating a Frequently Asked Questions page soon, because I seem to hear the same questions a lot. If there’s something you’d like to know, just send me a note and I’ll add it to the list.

AONC Redesign – Reese the Amazing Designer, who works on location from Michigan and Malaysia, is planning a redesign for the site. In short, we love some things about the current design but want to change a few other things to better reflect the writing style. Stay tuned for updates and a preview where you can share your thoughts about the redesign.

Essays – The thrice-weekly essays will continue to be posted each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I have made a slight adjustment to the publication schedule—I still post three times a week on Life, Work, and Travel, but I don’t always post one essay on each topic each week. This allows for some more flexibility when things come up, like the manifesto launch, the situation in Zimbabwe, etc.

This month I’ll write about the following topics, among others:

• Patriotism 2.0
• Your One Place
• Insane Ways to Transform Your Business
• How to Launch Your Own Social Movement

I hope you enjoy my writing, and I always welcome your feedback.

Audience Participation

You can participate in the development of this project in several ways:

Leave a comment at the bottom of any essay. We have recently upgraded our comments engine to where it can be accessed more easily. Feel free to share your comments and include a link back to your own site if you have one.

Join my newsletter announcement list or add me to your RSS reader.

Follow my real-time updates on Twitter.

Send other feedback. Use my contact form here to tell me what you think so far.

Tell your friends, or tell the world by submitting my essays to StumbleUpon, Digg, or other social networking sites.

I appreciate the time you spend here. Don’t forget to change the world the way you think it needs to be changed.

-CG

Catch up on Previous Updates Here:

May 2008 (Vancouver)
April 2008 (Syria)
March 2008 (Los Angeles)
February 2008 (Seattle)

Image by Marie-ll