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Wave Vidmar may be the coolest guy ever.  A couple of his latest accomplishments: riding a bike across the entire United States (by himself), and walking to the North Pole (again, by himself – and a 275 lb. sled of equipment).  He calls himself a professional explorer and he needs my help.

I had seen Wave’s workshop for months through my office window, but had never gotten a chance to meet him.  I had seen the posters claiming, “I am going to solo row across the Atlantic” and marveled at the idea.  Being a fairly docile creature myself, I was impressed with the brightly colored concept art of the boat and the guts it would require to undertake such a venture.

Wave showed up one afternoon, after hearing what I did for a living (if you call it that) and asked if I would be interested in helping him coordinate some social media efforts.  We had a second meeting and I was hooked – hooked on the concept of helping a guy chronicle his journey across the ocean using Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, brand-new satellite technology and American ingenuity.

This will be the first post in a series detailing my journey as I determine the social media efforts and marketing for Wave.  From mind-mapping the concepts and goals, to implementing the satellite-to-Twitter technology, I am excited to join Wave on his quest to establish himself as the world’s premier professional explorer.

In this venture I feel much more like Indiana Jones’ inept colleague Marcus Brody, or even the goofy sidekick from National Treasure.

Phase One – Planning

I was introduced to the concept of Mind-Mapping a couple of weeks ago and am intrigued on how you can trace a mental concept on paper.  Wikipedia defines a mind-map as:

A diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

Ok.  How do you do it? Well, not wanting to invest too much in this area, I downloaded a free app called, “Freemind“.  I have opened the app and am clueless.  So today I will begin the process of learning how to think – or at least think on the computer, using something other than my brain.  This whole concept sounds strange, but other (very intelligent) people swear by mind-mapping and so I am going to give it a shot.

My idea is to mind-map the whole concept of what Wave needs for his marketing plan, social media implementation, website design and promotional efforts.  Once I get all of the ideas down, it should be simple to translate them to a project management application and begin implementing.

So, as Wave builds his row boat, I will be mind-mapping a journey about a journey.  Ok, this is just weird.  I hope you will join me on my quest.

Jeremy Mace