A few years back, my friend Akemi introduced me to Chris Guillebeau via his blog, The Art of Non Conformity. I’ve mentioned him in a few previous posts as his writings on travel and living an unconventional life have inspired me. Last year Chris announced that he’d be putting together a giant Meet Up event of interested followers of his blog. The location: Portland, Oregon – his home town. At first glance, the event sounded like it could be a good time, but I quickly put it out of my head because that’s just not the kind of thing I do. I rarely, if ever, have gone to a conference unless it was required by work. And i had my doubts about Portland (won’t it just rain the whole time?) plus I wouldn’t know anybody there, a situation which I find more stressful than inspiring. But after attending Chris’ book tour meet up in LA in December 2010 and thinking about what I needed to do to get the rest of my life on a better track, I realized the idea of “that’s just not the kind of thing I do” was exactly the reason why I should go. So in January2011, I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for the First ever World Domination Summit (truth be told, the chance to be at the “First” of some event also helped to sway me). I signed up in January which was the same month that the conference sold out 5 months in advance with 500 attendees. I like to think that fate stepped in and that I was #500 – the last person to get a “golden ticket” to the event. I’m happy to say that I made the right decision – the event was amazing.

For this World Domination Summit, 500 people came in from all over the world – from as far away as Malaysia, Japan, South Africa and New Zealand. I met entrepreneurs, bloggers, artists, career coaches, travelers and some people who magically fit into all of those categories at once. One thing I quickly realized I am grossly uneducated about the blogging community. There were bloggers there who had celebrity status like movie stars in LA. People would point across the crowd and say “There’s ‘So and so’ and I’d have no idea who they were talking about. Aside from Chris, I really do not follow anyone’s blog…well, I should say I didn’t follow anyone else’s blog until now. During the weekend I collected a list of fascinating sites and blogs that I plan to keep tabs on throughout the year. I also re-discovered the influence of twitter and I’m trying to keep up a bit more with that mode of communication as well. Where before I saw Twiter as a glorified Facebook status update, I now understand how it can be an effective way to share news, ideas and interests with whatever sized audience you feel comfortable engaging.

The weekend was filled with workshops, guest speakers, networking and plenty of fun & frivolity (Bollywood dancing, beer tasting and hammock swinging, anyone?). When I headed to the airport on Sunday my mind was buzzing with the possibilites of “what’s next” and I felt thankful for all of the new World Dominators I’d met and very much hope to stay in touch with. I didn’t leave with an exact plan of where I want to be in the next year and exactly how I plan to get there. That would have been quite a bit to map out in two days, but I at least feel like I have better tools to get me to the path – and a group of folks who can help me along the way. I will be back next year – i already signed up and paid…fate saved me the last time and allowed me to get one of the last spots but i don’t want to test my luck again. I plan to arrive in Portland next June with a new plan, a new job, more travel stories and what I discovered (during one of the workshops) will be my next tattoo.