As Focal Length Designs gained momentum a few years ago, I wanted to start tracking the locations of my bracelet sales. I received a nice world map as a gift, then had it mounted on half-inch thick foam-core board, hung it on the wall above my desk and started sticking pins into it. I jokingly dubbed it my World Domination Map.
Bracelet sales continued to take off, and it was always exciting to add another pin to a new world location. My favorite was the trifecta of Sevilla, Barcelona, and Milan—not because of any cultural significance, but because they created an Orion's belt of pins across Western Europe. I now have pins crowded into the Northeast U.S., three pins ringing Southern Australia, and little clusters all down the Mississippi. Then there are the loners in Tokyo, Singapore, and Finland. South America, Africa, and Asia are otherwise wholly untouched, but I am still young, right?
Knowing that I have a microscopic bit of influence in all these places around the world is strangely exciting. Call it ego, call it vanity, call it what you will. But now that Focal Length Designs has seen its end, I feel the continued desire to influence the world in other ways. The next items on my office supply shopping list are different colored pins so I can start marking my travels and other ways that I influence—in my own little way—other parts of the world.
Summit Up
Enter Chris Guillebeau's World Domination Summit. I nabbed a ticket for this year's conference with the last round of sales on Tuesday morning—the remaining 400 tickets sold out in a lightning round of nine minutes. After reading his book, The Art of Non-Conformity, and hearing wondrous tales about the inaugural summit last summer, it's really kind of a no-brainer that I should be there this time around.
I do believe that I lead an unconventional life. I have my own little plan for world domination, and that's turning now toward my work around the Ambidextrous Brain, and I believe that joining forces with other unconventional and remarkable people will bring about some remarkable change on a local and global level.
Of course, I'm already excited to be joined by some of the remarkable people I already know—Megan Auman, Tara Gentile, Jen Neitzel, Tsilli Pines, and Rosalee Rester, to name a few—but I am more excited for the opportunity to meet the 995 other remarkable people that will be there.
So bring it on, Chris. Let's dominate the world and change it for the better. Together.