About Guidism
My Next Itch
Since I left paidContent a few months ago, I have been on a sabbatical, as I said I would, traveling extensively around the world. Oman (the March trip that sparked the wanderlust), and then from May, Iceland, Outer Hebrides/Scotland, Mongolia and Comoros Islands so far, and on and off travels for the rest of the year. The unifying theme here, as you may have guessed, isn’t much else expect isolation. As a first time independent traveler, it has been a great head-clearing trip of a lifetime. And of course gave me a lot of time to think about what I would like to do next, professionally.
During this time, I have learned a lot as a modern and digital traveler, and at the same time balancing the need to take many steps back and disconnect. Among other things, I have finished 32 books in the last 3 months of my sabbatical, majority of them on travel, and related philosophy. From all this came my increasing curiosity about the travels guides market, first with the books (I am a Lonely Planet lifer), then online (starting with Google and TripAdvisor, where else) and now increasingly mobile apps and services.
Guidism is my public R&D testbed about the travel guides market, including traditional books, online and mobile. Since I am very new to this sector, this is my public learning of it, through links, stories, research, video etc. While going public about my top level interest in the sector is a slightly risky move, from a competitive perspective, I have always worked best in public, so to speak. I have always believed in incremental learning that comes from sharing the knowledge, however hokey that sounds. And who knows, it may bring more opportunities over the transom that I can muster myself.
Now on the sector: Mobile clearly is the biggest play in the travel guides sector, that much is obvious. If anything says mobile, travel guides say mobile. Building services around mobile and combining them with online and even print, seem to where the future’s going. At the end, these will have to be scaled and branded plays, not just a selective apps company. What that turns into for myself, I don’t know yet.
What this site isn’t: this isn’t an attempt by me to develop a trade publication about the travel guide market. Yes, I have done B2B all my life, but this is too narrow, plus my next itch is consumer.
