After about four days of “decompressing”, I am now able to offer my impressions of the overall experience.
It was mind-blowing.There. I’ve said it.
The World Domination Summit, organized by the travel-hacking non-conformist Chris Guillebeau and his amazing crew of ambassadors and volunteers was simply the best “conference-type thing” I have ever attended. Period.
First off, the city it was held in (Portland, Oregon) can lay claim to being my favourite American city. It has such a similar vibe as my own city, the warmth and friendliness of its residents and the vast number of amenities that I am right into are huge factors in my wife and I planning a trip there later this summer just so we can soak it all in. The transit is stellar, the cost of actually doing cool stuff is reasonable1 and said cool stuff is plentiful.
Secondly, I finally got to meet many of those who I had only met virtually before. Folks like Brett Kelly, Glen Stansberry, Leo Babauta, Scott Dinsmore, Thursday Bram and more were all in attendance, and to be able to meet them in “real life” in one location added to the value of the summit. Plus, I made a whole ton of new friends while I was there, including a new drinking buddy and a fellow stay-at-home father/writer from the opposite end of Canada.2
Finally, the sessions spoke to me in a big way. Michael Bungay Stanier delivered a session on “Courage and Time” which gave me a ton of insight into what I’m doing and what I plan to do next in terms of “great work” 3 and Jonathan Fields’s talk to close the event struck a chord with me in terms of workflow practices and what I’m doing right, wrong and perhaps not at all.4
I can’t stress enough how much this summit “worked” for me. I’ve got two other conference/convocation/summits to attend this month (including MaxFunCon, which I’m on my way to as I write this), and they are going to have to really impress me to trump what #WDS did for me.
Now, time for me to plot out what I’m going to for #WDS next year. And what actions I’m going to take to keep dominating in the interim.
1 No sales tax in Oregon, people.
2 Jason Moore and Jeff Parker of ExPat Yourself, respectively.
3 And I simply need to pay much closer attention to Danielle LaPorte from now on, that’s for sure. Don’t know why I wasn’t beforehand, really.
4 More on that in a future post.
