A year of traveling around the world as a community facilitator
I completely disoriented myself just to find my balance
Hard to believe leaving Medellin was already two months ago. Where all this time has gone in silence and alone? A part of me is still there, wandering around the river sometimes. Speaking Spanish: no pasa nada, estoy Colombiana pro ahora. This part of travel sucks, you leave behind a part of you in every place and every people you love. It hurts, it really does. But in exchange, you take a piece from everywhere that changes you. And another language that you never really learn yet always forget. Here is a story of saying bye to people every other week and saying by to places every 4–8 week for a year.
This last year. I’m looking for the words to write something grateful, joyful, insightful about it. Probably the best way to describe it: Broadening perspective in every possible meaning while finding my balance in chaos.
I needed to evacuate myself from Sri Lanka during curfew to start working as a community facilitator for Hacker Paradise and I needed to evacuate a group and myself from Colombia during curfew to finish it. Framed with curfews it was also a year without freedom but with so much growth. I lived in Seoul, in Palermo, been a traveler in my own city, Budapest, then hosted a team building retreat in Belgrade, went to Lisbon, Marrakesh, Cape Town and Medellin. Checked in on 4 continents in less than a year, stepped in all the oceans, meditated with the full moon from every angle.
I’ve met about 200 people this way. We lived together, we ate together, we worked together, we had fun and adventure together. They shared about their goals and their challenges, their successes. We all went through transformational times individually and together. They’ve been from everywhere and we all lived abroad together. In fact, we lived our best lives in the most central area of awesome cities, working from beautiful coworking spaces, eating sushi, and drinking nice wine. I really believe digital nomads are the most privileged people.
But there was no freedom for me as I wasn’t a digital nomad anymore. I was a facilitator for digital nomads. I had a set schedule. Just so you can imagine how my weeks looked like as a trip facilitator for Hacker Paradise.
Every other weekend: It’s welcomes and goodbyes. Check-in, check-out. Emotionally the most challenging work. It’s not that you work a lot in hours, it just makes you really tired. It takes effort to be ready to welcome people with an open heart and then say goodbye with genuine hugs, hoping that we see each other around the world. Hellos and byes, about 200 times. And between destinations checking myself in and out in on the same weekend, while supporting the leave and arrival of others. Figuring out what is where getting through jetlag while serving others who do the same.
Every Monday: Organise lunch for the group, orientation of people
Every Tuesday: Goalsetting, potluck
Every Wednesday and Thursday: skillshare.
For 46 weeks I held space non-stop for 15–30 people around me.
I hosted about 20 TedCircles where we watched a TEDTalk and discussed it with whoever shoed up. Locals, people from the coworking, friends, friends of friends. We crossed path and did something together with Remote Year in Lisbon, Cape Town, and Medellin.
I logged about 500 hours of slack on my screentime. I’ve hosted 46 hours of goal setting sessions, and 92 hours of skillshare. We shared, we listened, we learned, we cheered, we celebrated. I’m full of gratitude for the trust the community gave me and Sara Magnabosco who was my partner in crime on the field most of these weeks. Without her, I wouldn’t have survived this. She was my manager, my friend, and my supporter when it was difficult. We called it marriage because in a way it really was: together in the good and the bad, the challenges and the successes, raising the Hacker Paradise family together. We celebrated birthdays together, we loved and sometimes hated each other. But we were there for each other every day.
We organized events everywhere we went to meet the local ecosystem and share knowledge about the remote-work movement. I had an event in Siciliy where exactly zero people showed up, and another in Budapest with about 70 people. We dived into the local ecosystems as much as we could, we visited Creative Mornings and Sofar Sounds, attended on meetups and startup events, tried to make sense of everything that’s out there in the world that’s full of surprises and amazing human beings.
I try to collect here the most remarkable moments of the journey, destination by destination.
Seoul, South Korea.
The first trip. Training trip with 4 facilitators. Two experienced and two newbies. My first group.
I hosted a TEDxDanubiaConversation where the question was:
What can we learn from kids and teach to parents? How does cross-generational learning work? I learned that in Korea, even asking the questions is insane. There is a strict age-based hierarchy even within the youth. The older eats or drinks first in a club. Your boss can’t be younger than you, and you learn from your parents and teach kids, not the other way around.
We’ve seen the fake city on the other side of the border and met a North Korean refugee. This was the first (and only) American military base I’ve ever seen. It’s called Demilitarized Zone but actually is full of soldiers. I’ve always found fascinating that we call peacekeepers those who protect borders with weapons but those who manage to cross borders are offenders. Building peace won’t work without building bridges within enemies and for that, they need to meet.
I have a passion for the coliving movement because I believe communities are the core of our society and coliving spaces are welcoming, inspiring communities that live and create together. It was a pleasure to organize a barbeque together with Hive Arena, one of the friendliest coliving I’ve ever seen in a not so friendly city. Shoutout to Jongjin for the warm welcome!
Palermo, Sicily
Great learning that it’s very difficult to take over a group as a facilitator. I arrived at Palermo when the group was already there for a month. I came on board like Hey, you have much more clue on what’s going on here than I do, but from now on I’m in charge I guess. I had to integrate into an already set culture yet lead the group after the previous facilitator was gone. I’m not saying it was an easy experience. This was the most American group I had. I learned a lot about the American view of PC and feminism, dip a toe into the California culture while drinking Aperol in Italy. I felt the sheer jo yevery time I went to the supermarket, after 6 months in Asia (Sri Lanka, India, South Korea). All the cheese and the wine, and couldn’t get enough pasta and gelato. I realized that comfort food is Italian food for me and nothing else.
The Palermo pride is surely the highlight of this trip.
Budapest, Hungary
Hosting people at my home country surprisingly turned out to be more challenging than anywhere else. Being at home with a group of foreigners is a constant tension. Anywhere else, I’m a correspondent of my group, at home I on both sides and it’s much easier to take any little conflict personally. We went sailing on a day when it turned to be rainy and I felt I’m expected to stop the rain.
Shoutout to HubHub Budapest and Global Startup Awards and Arborvi! The bright side of being at home is having good connections to make great things happen! We created a fishbowl style conversation about creating a community outside your comfort zone.
Belgrade, Serbia
We organized an experimental hybrid event:
- It was a strategic meeting for the company involving the most engaged members of the company’s community. Imagine brainstorming with your team and validate your findings with your customers right after
- It was a company retreat where half of the team were together on spot, and some of them spread around in different timezones, joining online.
I’m very proud of leading the design and hosting process for this event, especially that I was prepared for creating and holding tension and discomfort in it. I’m certain that practicing emergent design and structured chaos gave skills to the team to navigate better through the current crisis.
Hacker Paradise as an organization has crisis as a core in its operations. Two parallel groups of 15–30 people hustling around the world and a fully distributed remote team most of which never met in person. And a bunch of people from different cultures living in yet another culture together. The operation of the company is constant change with all sorts of emergencies from wi-fi issues to unrests and teargas and water problems and health issues and all sorts of personal emergencies. This organization has to be designed around emergence. This was surely my most challenging professional experience.
Lisbon, Portugal
My biggest group ever, and also perhaps the most fun! Lisbon is clearly my second favorite city with its diverse people, foreigner-friendly culture and for me personally, the bittersweet vibes of Portuguese people. The dolce vita and Spanish happiness are both too much for me as a Hungarian.
We were people of all ages, all professions, all countries really, 28 of us with awesome group dynamics, lot’s of great skillshares and a minor problem: the coworking didn’t have a conference room for us, so most of the group events I hosted in my apartment. Saahil, the best roomie ever fully supported me. Not only in this, but also this group for me started with 2 weeks of sickness.
I felt overwhelmed, extremely tired, trapped, and that lead to the second anxiety attack in my life. That’s when I asked for help and started hypnotherapy, online. I learned that I really must take care of myself, hold onto my balance harder, otherwise I can’t handle the lifestyle that I want to live. This was surely one of my down moments from which things started to become a bit more difficult for the rest of the time.
Despite all the personal challenges, I think this was one of my favorite trip, but surely one of my favorite groups!
I also had the best party ever there! Do you know Cumbia? Do you know Balkan’s music? Would you ever mix them together? Well, these damn crazy Portuguese did, and it’s one of the most energetic instrumental music you find on earth.
Marrakech, Morocco
When my parents visited me and my privilege slapped me in the face again. Trough two different stories.
The first was when we hosted an event together with a local language and technology school. I thought we go there to inspire them. Turned out that they do not lack inspiration at all, what they lack are opportunities.
Some of these kids spoke 3 languages and coded in 2 and wasn’t yet 18. They are open-minded, curious, and ambitious, it’s their passport that doesn’t worth as much as ours, not their skills and abilities. In fact, I went there to inspire and I got inspired instead. I wish we build a world where they can get Bay Area salaries and can travel with us.
And if meeting with these amazing people wasn’t enough, on this very same event I met Chloé, a wannabe redhead who is one of the gifts from last year that I really want to keep :) A badass burner-sister, a self-love trainer, a witch, a shaman, a truly wild woman, a chick from the trancefloor. So we joint forces with her and another amazing woman from the tribe who is a Moroccan expat and went to psytrance party outside Marrakesh. Long story short, the event got raided and Moroccan cops surrounded the building keeping everyone inside. Of course in the end, white people could leave without any problem. Walking out with all our stuff someone asked us: Are we allowed to leave? We said just us. Oh, I forgot I’m just a Moroccan in Morocco.
Cape Town, South Africa
Most Europeans, the most non-tech people, the most french people, the most women in a group and the most scenic nature, the most amazing gastronomy. Also the most unequal place on Earth. The most beautiful coworking I’ve ever worked in. Cape Town is the most interesting place I’ve ever been to. The luxury of having private guides and beautiful views and extreme poverty in the slums. The crime level is so high, that you don’t walk after sunset. Even though the apartheid is legally over, economically it’s still very present. 73% of the land is still owner by white people who are only 29% of the population.
Cape Town was my first 8 weeks trips and that’s where I realizedI how much I need stability. Moving every 4 weeks was really taking. I loved living in a big house together with someone I knew for months as we traveled in Lisbon in Marrakesh together too. We hosted a thanksgiving at home for the group with local chefs cooking the 7 colors of South Africa.
South Africa is also where I learned that I can’t make everyone happy and some people smile in my face even when they don’t like me. It was painful learning that put a shade to the whole experience there.
I visited the Demo Day of the African Startup Accelerator as I have this habit of visiting startup events whenever I have a chance. I’m always impressed that teams all around the world are working on solving the same problems. Africa is way different! I thought I can offer mentorship and I realised I know nothing about the market here.
These days of isolation I often think of Nelson Mandela. He was isolated from his family and the entire world for 18 years and not only stayed sane but also peacefully solved one of the biggest conflicts. His life story is surely one of the most inspiring one.
Medellin, Colombia
Unlike Pablo Escobar, who went to isolation and kept being the most impactful narcissist psychopath in history. In Colombia, I learned about the real price of cocaine and prostitution.
This is also where salsa never stops and I decided to learn to be happy. Colombia is where I had the most amazing roommate. Mimo! Mimo inspired me to think about how I want to be when I’ll be a mature woman. Mimo learns Spanish, travels with digital nomads, works with Phd students, and does yoga everyday and she is about 70 years young. I was living with her when I sat down to do my yearly planning and I felt that it makes no sense, that I want long term intentions now because plans won't work. So I did the bentoism practice and decided that after HP, I need a more simple life closer to nature and land travel, small, local, rural communities. I started studying Spanish and I started visiting a shaman. I definitely have unfinished business in Latin America ad I need to continue this learning process.
I also learned about the importance of playfulness and games as the whole months of January was full of it because we had a game developer traveling with us.
Colombia is another place of inequalities. Maybe that’s why it’s a base for Nomads Giving Back an organization that helps us to support local communities was a big part of the reason I loved Colombia.
The crisis hit
And I learned to trust my intuition again. In a crisis the most important is to follow your inner compass. You might make bad decisions, but you won’t regret them. I knew very early that this will be bigger than we expect. Together with Lola and Marketa we smoothly evacuated the groups and ourselves from Colombia before the borders closed and the world stopped.
This speed was really not sustainable. I certainly had moments when I felt like those who dance at the Titanic even without a pandemic. I paid €450 to offset my flights yet didn’t offset it all. I wished we can do against over-tourism, we can do onland trips, we can take trains and go to more rural places where we support the local economy instead of international investors. I knew this cannot go like this. And now we are all sitting at home. Whatever found to call home. Some for 12 weeks, some more, some less. We explore what’s around us. Within us. Another universe.
It was 3 years ago when I gave up stability for adventure and lived all around the place with different communities. I had one very specific goal: I wanted to learn to handle change and crisis very well. I wanted to live decentralised and to be flexible, being able to pack up my backpack leave whenever I want, wherever I want.
Working as a community facilitator needed my attention 24/7 on slack and on spot and I had to show up and meet people every day. This way I found and started to embrace my introvert side. I really needed to be there for myself first as the lack of freedom or the opportunity to just disappear for a few days made me frustrated.
I thought I love traveling but I really don’t. I love the freedom it gives me. Even though I’m a community person, an extravert who just love each one of the humankind, my best moments are those on the road alone: there is no-one to ask and no-one to blame, I’m just free to do my own mistakes and the correct them. Practice surrender and humility, accepting situations I can’t solve, being vulnerable, and open to go with whatever flow emerges.
I got bored of balance before and I always wanted to be on a roller coaster. Now that I got a big enough rollercoaster to travel with, I learned that my balance is the most important asset that helps me to go through all the challenges I put in my way.
See you Hacker Paradise family somewhere around the world!
