The Excellent Adventure
It started off as one of those crackpot ideas you have when you’re away having a good time with friends. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could take a four-wheel drive and a boat, travel up the coast and work remotely for a month?” (In fact, to provide a bit of context, I think we were fairly tipsy on a houseboat in the Hawkesbury at the time.)
Initially we all agreed that it would in fact be great but, like many other grand plans, would be better left to “someday”. But there was something about this plan that made it stick… Over the next few weeks we kept coming back to it (mostly thanks to Cameron’s unrelenting insistence) and ended up deciding to approach our boss with the plan and see if he was interested in letting us attempt it.
Somehow, and I’m still not exactly sure how, we got Jack (our awesome boss) to agree to let us do it. The deal was that in exchange for us working over the usual holiday period we could work remotely for five weeks. But this also means that we’re not taking leave and getting paid to camp and work by the beach. I won’t lie, it’s a pretty good deal :)
So who are we and how exactly are we able to do this?
The four of us (Cameron, Gabe, Adam and me - Ganesh) make up the Tech Team of Tutoring Australasia. We also founded and run a tech startup company called Rocket26. We’re all from different backgrounds, engineering, IT, software development and industrial design. But we all love creating cool new things which is what brought us together in the first place. At the moment we develop web applications using Ruby on Rails and a bunch of other technologies.
So what’s the plan?
- Get a four-wheel drive and a boat
- Travel up the east coast of Australia from Sydney to Brisbane staying at various beachside campsites
- Do five weeks of distraction free, awesome hacking
- Be unbelievably productive while living the life and having heaps of fun
We’re staying at the following locations:
- Seal Rocks
- Port Macquarie (crashing in on Cameron’s family christmas)
- Hat Head national park (for NYE)
- Flat Rock (between Ballina / Byron Bay which is the region I went to high school in and I’m particularly excited to visit)
- Gold Coast (Including getting to the Gold Coast Big Day Out)
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been collecting all our gear. We’ve decided to camp in style as we actually intend on working so it makes sense to be comfortable. We’ve acquired have a ridiculously large tent (hereby known as The Palace), a rather large gazebo, a table and benches, and some awesomely comfortable “moonchairs”. When I start putting the pics up, you’ll understand.
Stay tuned for more updates on The Excellent Adventure…
