DaedTech Digest: A Business Trip and Detour to the Research Triangle

A week ago, I was watching the sunset over the Florida Keys.  As I did that, I wrote a post summarizing my take on the area, in detail.  What I didn’t mention is where we were headed next.

It was Raleigh, North Carolina.  And I’ll talk about that, briefly.

A few weeks ago, Amanda and I faced a logistical problem.  The drive from Rarmod Key to our house in Michigan takes something like 24 hours, which, given our cat situation, does not lend itself to a single trip.

So our logistical issue was, “three legs of 8-ish hours or 2 legs of 12-ish hours” and, in either case, where might we enjoy stopping for a few days.  We thought about places like Jacksonville, Savannah, Charlotte, and… wait a minute.  Charlotte is fairly close to Raleigh… and we have a client/partner in Raleigh!

On kind of a whim, I reached out to see about a visit.  And, before I knew it, we’d not only decided to do it, but scheduled some useful sessions to lay out some new mutual opportunities.

With that scheduled, we decided to make a week or so of it.  We arrived last Saturday night (Sunday morning) and have been enjoying local sites, warm weather, delicious barbecue, and walks through the piney woods near our hotel.  Oh, and Amanda and I each had to shop for some business casual clothes because our vagabonding life is pretty much shorts, flip-flops and T-shirts.

So we’re here enjoying the area for a few more days before completing the journey back to Michigan.  And, that’s the story of how a couple of slow travelers turned a random stop-over into a fun business trip.

Picks

• I recently discovered that Gatorade makes a zero calorie drink, and I like it a lot more than I would have thought.  I historically liked to drink the zero calorie Sobes and Bais, so if either of those is up your alley, give Gatorde Zero a try.
• I’m going to throw a pick to the idea of taking some time each morning to have coffee and let my attention wander.  Instead of immediately trying to be productive, I’ve started to allow 30-60 minutes to socialize on Slack, read random articles from my feed, and generally just poke around the internet.  Rather than being wasteful, this has actually really help me get all distractions out of my system and focus for the rest of the day.

The Digest

• On the Freelancers Show, several of us discussed the subject of using a CRM for your freelance practice.  You should give it some consideration, even if you think it might be overkill.
• In this video, I talked about why we started a remote-only company and why slow traveling is important to us.  I was taking time off when we recorded this one and had just gotten done swimming, so I was a little looking a little rough.
• And, in another Facebook Live, we talked about the site we own, makemeaprogrammer.com.  This includes why we built it, what we hope to do with it, and what this has to do with content marketing.