So, I’m going to be hitting the road with my family this summer and basing out of Bali for July and maybe August, too.
I’m also starting on book number two (which was just sold, formal announcement to come soon) and is on a totally different topic than Career Renegade. I’m really psyched to dive into this one, it’s going to go a lot deeper into some pretty powerful lifestyle and business phenomena. And, it’ll be kinda interesting to see how Bali effects how and what I write.
Why Bali, btw? How can we pull it off? What will else will I be doing while I’m there?
I’ll answer these questions and a whole lot more once I’m there and I can show you, rather than tell you (but, let it be known, it had nothing to do with Eat, Pray Love. LOL)!
While I’m gone, I’m also going to experiment with some pretty “renegadey†changes to my writing and online work-flow in an effort to create the most compelling content possible, while also dramatically streamlining my processes. That’ll free me up to write the book, take skype calls with my consulting clients and spend a whole lot of time playing with my family and exploring the nooks and crannies of this stunning island.
As part of this work-flow evolution, I’ll be doing a lot more video blogging. For two reasons. One, so I can take you along on my Balinese Renegade Adventure and share my experiences with you guys as vividly as possible. And, two, because it takes me a lot less time to create compelling video, from shoot to publication, than it does to write. Especially the way I’m about to do it.
For those interested, my process for video content creation will be:
Film video segments in HD with either my Flip Ultra HD, Canon Vixia HFS100 or iPhone 4 (if the Gods favor me with one before I leave), Upload them to my Dropbox account at night (when I’ll have wi-fi access and less competition for Balinese bandwidth), Ask my virtual assistant (VA) to drop the footage into iMovie on her computer, add in my standard intro and outro and upload the final segments to YouTube then embed them in a video post, set as draft for me to add a few sentences to provide context and post the next morning.
I’ll also be experimenting with a move to audio as source for both podcasts and text posts.
Here’s my planned work-flow for audio and text:
Hike or ride my bike to some place that inspires me (or, lie in a hammock on the porch),Speak my posts into either an Olympus LS-10 recorder or iPhone voice recorder app and record direct to mp3 format, Dropbox the mp3s to my VA, where she’ll download it, edit in standard audio lead-ins and wrap-ups, publish the finished audio as podcasts to my media-hosting site, which then gets picked up by iTunes, Then She’ll: (1) Transcribe the audio, copy-edit the text and drop it into WordPress as a text post for this blog, (2) Source a relevant Creative Commons image from Flickr for the post, then (3) Crop and insert the image into the post, awaiting approval for final editing and publication.
And, the last big change, I’ll be folding in a new weekly featured guest post, which is something I almost never do on the blog, but the few times I have done it, it’s been really well recieved. So, for at least the time I’m in Bali, I’ll be featuring some amazing bloggers and their mouthwateringly good content.
Contributors will include Danielle LaPorte, Chris Guillebeau, Alexis Martin Neely, Leo Babauta, J.D. Roth, Glen Stansberry and a handful of other amazing thinkers and writers.
It’s going to be a fascinating experiment for me. I’m sure there’ll be bumps along the road. Both technological and human. For example, it’ll be interesting to see how I do with being able to speak posts that are articulate enough to edit into really solid text posts. And, I have no idea how easy it’ll be to upload HD video almost daily on a connection that’s not known for it’s consistency.
But, the cool thing is, once the kinks are worked out (if it all works, lol), the net savings to me in time, effort and mental space will be huge. And, I’ll very likely keep these processes in place upon my return.
So…more to come as the journey unfolds. We’re all going to Bali this summer!
Just wanted to bring you into the Great Summer 2010 Balinese Blogging Adventure and Renegade Work-flow Project that’s about to come to life.
And, as I mentioned, I’ll share a bunch more about why we chose Bali and what I’m really doing there…once I’m settled…and wearing my sarong (so sorry for the mental image)!
View the Original article