Let me be the tourist of your travel memories
I've started a campaign on Indiegogo where you can tell me what location you have a fond personal memory of, and I will visit it.
That one corner shop with fantastic noodles? I'll check if it's still there. That superb coffee in that one backstreet? I'll try the coffee to confirm it's still as good. That place where you had that fantastic night out? I'll be there.
In April/May/June, I'm (currently) set to travel from Kampala to Mumbai to Chennai to Guanghzou to Beijing to Shanghai to Hong Kong to Singapore to Chennai to Mumbai and back to Kampala. The reason for this trip is my attending a wedding close to Shanghai on April 29.
Funding this campaign means telling me where to go on the route I'm already travelling, or providing the cost for veering off course to visit that place that has or once had a special meaning to you.
The trip will be documented in writing, with photos and, whenever possible, by checkins and reviews. Note that, though I might visit typical tourist attractions because of my own interests, in principle this campaign's intention is to visit spots that have a personal meaning to you.
If you choose to support this campaign, depending on the height of your support, the spot you want me to visit has to either be on my route, or the cost of visiting (bus? train? plane?) has to be reasonably covered by the height of your donation.
When traveling, or going on holiday, it's hard not to visit the typical tourist sites, be they the pyramids of Gizeh, the Great Wall of China, or the St. Peter in Rome. However, more and more, visiting these sites, fantastic as they are, is becoming less and less unique. Not only are more and more people able to travel more and more, everyone is also documenting and sharing their experiences more comprehensively than ever before.
The result is that memorable, unique, experiences less often happen at the typical tourist hotspots, but in places that, by themselves, appear to have little to offer. That little cafe tucked away on that backstreet, that strange little shop two blocks over or that unexpected bit of architecture off the beaten track. With this campaign I want to make those little experiences, those events that made your journey stand out, into my tourist attractions, documenting my experiences along the way.
Visit, and support, this campaign at Indiegogo.
Virtual bottle post
In 2008, I conceptualized a virtual bottle post network. Participants would leave a note and throw it inside a web-based applet. Then, some other, physically nearby, instance of the applet would pick up the message and offer it to its visitors, who could read the message and then put it back in the applet, or not.
An very close approximation of this concept has been actualised with the app airendipity. The only real difference is that it's a mobile-phone based app, not a web-based applet that runs inside websites.