About Us
Traveling Geeks is a consortium of entrepreneurs, thought leaders, authors, journalists, bloggers, technology innovators and influencers who travel to countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public to educate, share, evaluate, and promote new, innovative technologies. The initiative was founded by Renee Blodgett and Jeff Saperstein in 2008.
Trips are funded by sponsorships from corporations, organizations and governments. The first tour was sponsored by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a trip that successfully marked the proof of concept that could expand to other countries around the world.
Read MoreSmartmobbing the Traveling Geeks
I learned from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle that “unexpected travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” This explains why I knew I could not turn down the opportunity to spend an intensive week in London and Cambridge with the Traveling Geeks. I already knew Renee Blodgett, JD Lasica, Craig Newmark, and Sky Schuyler, but I won’t meet Meghan Asha, Sarah Austin, Susan Bratton, Tom Foremski, Jeff Saperstein, Robert Scoble until July 5 in London, at which point we’re scheduled to swarm over London, meeting various geeks, enterprises, institutions. Here are the geek bios. How could I not want to ride along with a crew like that? I’m not much of an industry observer, more of the 30,000 foot level observer, but I do follow the fellow geeks’ reports. I like that the geeks represent a range of media and beats. I like we’re not just old guys. The agenda sounds juicy and tiring. We’re supposed to be equipped with the latest from Nokia, so we’ll all be streaming video at one time or another – or simultaneously. I’m supposed to speak at two events while I’m there: Reboot Britain and Civil Service Live. Stay tuned.
Traveling Geeks Agenda – London and Cambridge July 5-11th #TravelingGeeks
If you are going to be in London or Cambridge from July 5-11th, here’s our Traveling Geeks agenda.
Perhaps you can join us for the TweetUp, the Guardian Round Table, Reboot Britian, the Europa awards from TechCrunch or the Round Table Discussion on Social Media in Cambridge.
https://tg.planetlink.com/agenda
Let me know if you can attend any of these fun events. I’d love to see you there.
Backstage Pass- JD Lasica
JD Lasica must have superpowers to do, and see, and interview all of the people that he does in any given month! Interested in all aspects of online social media, his new site socialbrite.org is tag-lined Social Tools for Social Change. If the word tools brings up an image of shovels or software for you, forget it! This site really has quite a range. It’s way more than just profiling online tools and sites.
SocialBrite also focuses on people to organizations, showing you how to apply those online tools to support the social activities that’ll help you build your organization for social good. JD has assembled a team of a half dozen experts who will help grow this site. Hey geeks, add SocialBrite to your RSS feed reader now!
Also see:
[1] Socialbrite.org
[2] Netsquared.org
[3] JD Lasica also on socialmedia.biz
Tweet up for “Traveling Geeks” in London
Last year, I was part of a group of Traveling Geeks visiting Israel, and this year, the UK.
The Geeks will be attending a TweetUp on Sunday, July 5th at London’s JuJu on King’s Road. Half priced tickets end on June 26th, so if you’re in London or know someone who is, please let them know. You can register early here. Sponsors include The Conversation Group and NESTA.org.
(Words mostly stolen from Renee Blodgett)
Digitrad Simplifies the Way People Communicate
Digitrad is a sponsor of the upcoming Traveling Geeks trip to London. The concept is easy. They simplify the way people communicate by using their name as a single point of contact. All you need to do is to type a name within your web browser.
No matter how many different digital IDs you have.
No matter how many different social networks you use.
No matter if you change address, country, phone number or job.
Digitrad’s goal is to help people to find the best way to reach you. Their new service, Yes.tel, provides you with a unique .tel name, a first top level domain name dedicated to communications. I plan to play with it over the next few weeks.
Join us July 5th, in London, for a tweetup
For my friends in the UK, if you life or work in London you might like to join the 12 Traveling Geeks (includes me) who will be at a tweet-up at Juju in London on Sunday evening July 5th (2009).
A tweetup (like “meetup”) is a face-to-face meeting of people who previously only knew each other through Twitter. For some of the well-known geeks, like Robert Scoble, who has over 95,000 followers on Twitter, this could be a big thing – Robert might be able to fill the room just with his own followers who happen to be in London that night.
Where I stand right now, at 165 followers, maybe a couple of you will know someone who’d like to meet the geeks – reserve a place in advance online.
TweetUp on July 5 at London’s JuJu
I’ll be in London in early July for our second TravelingGeeks trip. We’ll be attending a TweetUp on Sunday, July 5th at London’s JuJu on King’s Road.
Half priced tickets end on June 26th, so if you’re in London or know someone who is, please let them know so they can register early. Sponsors include The Conversation Group and NESTA.org.
Join us – TweetUp at London’s JuJu on July 5
The Geeks will be attending a TweetUp on Sunday, July 5th at London’s JuJu on King’s Road. Half priced tickets end on June 26th, so if you’re in London or know someone who is, please let them know. You can register early here. Sponsors include The Conversation Group and NESTA.org.
We’d Love to Hear from UK Bloggers
As we get closer to heading off to London, we’d love to hear from bloggers in the UK. If you’re interested in contributing to the site, please let us know.
Nokia’s Ovi Maps for Mobile and Web
As part of our prep for London, we met with the Nokia Ovi Maps team late last month to learn a bit more about their mobile and web apps. Ovi maps allow you to see the world in new ways with 3D, satellite and terrain views, weather, information and more.
Features include collections, which allow you to collect and store your favorite routes or destinations for quick and easy access. You can also search for new places from restaurants to remote towns and the service helps you with routing prior to your trip as well as navigation on-the-ground.
You can do all your pre-planning on the desktop if you’d like, save your favorites into collections, and then sync up with your mobile device so you can later navigate using the same information when you arrive at your final destination.
They currently have 216 cities worldwide and 30 landmarks per city. “If you do a really deep dive into the maps, you may not really want to see labels, but its something you can turn on and off easily depending on your preference,” said Berlin-based Jörg Malang, head of Ovi Maps for Nokia.
There’s also a very cool terrain view which gives you views of mountains and landscape.
Maps 3.0, the latest version, which came out in the first quarter of this year, includes hi-resolution satellite and terrain maps in 2D and 3D views and you can walk with enhanced pedestrian routing and features.
You can download updated maps for free anytime from over the 200 countries and of those 200, roughly 74 are navigable today (meaning you can do real-time pedestrian and car navigation in those countries).
You can also share locations with your friends but you can’t yet export or have multiple profiles, that is if you don’t want those two profiles to be synced with each other. Sharing features are coming in the not too distant future however.
