#112: Digital Nomad, Community Building and 1729 Discord Community with Chance Taken
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Kia ora, ni hao and hello. Welcome to the Chiwi Journal podcast. I'm your host, Camelia Yang. On the show, I interview global citizens who follow a unique path to build a better future and share stories and tips they learned along the way. Our conversations are focused on cultural observations, technology trends, career development and philosophy.

My guest today is Chance Taken. Chance is currently remote working at Undack and he is also co-founder at Chengu. We discussed his digital nomad lifestyle, 1729 Discord community, pseudonym economy, community management tips and more. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Welcome to the show, Chance. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? Good. Where are you based at the moment? I'm in Beijing.

I'm currently in Istanbul, Turkey, although I'll be going somewhere next week. Oh wow. When we met each other online, I'm very interested in your experience. What motivates you to be a digital nomad? That's a great question. I think I've just been doing this for a long time now and enjoy it. I really enjoy visiting a different country and kind of soaking up the different culture and the way of life. Ever since I first experienced that, it's kind of, it's almost like a drug of sorts. It's very exciting.

I would say that's why I still do it. It's actually habit now. It's routine. Like it's actually harder for me to

to go home and settle down in Canada, for example. Whenever I go back, it feels almost the opposite of normal. So where have you been in the past years? So I've been mainly around Asia and Europe would be the main areas. So I started off in Seoul and then popped around to a lot of the normal nomadic spots in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City.

Where else in Asia? I did Bali for one month once. And then in Europe, Romania, a couple different cities. And Prague was my home base for a long time. So what I would do is I would stay in Prague for a few months and then I would go elsewhere, either to Asia for a few months or back to Canada for a few months, that sort of thing. And then right before COVID, I went to Tbilisi, Georgia. And

And that ended up being my home base kind of around COVID and then up until going to Turkey a few weeks ago.

That's where I was. So how do you cope with, I'll say like loneliness? Because, you know, when I first moved to England, I know nobody and the COVID just hit. There's no chance for me to meet new friends. It's probably not good for my mental health if I don't know anyone to talk to. So how do you cope with that since you move around quite often? Yeah, no, it's a great question. It is a difficult thing. I think it's kind of an open problem right now.

It helps in that I'm both extroverted and really enjoy – I'm very independent as well. I kind of like an odd combination of those two things.

And but I have sort of because I've been doing it for so long, I say before COVID, after COVID, it's a little bit up in the air of how this would work. But before COVID, I could land into a city, get set up within maybe two, three weeks. And as I mean, set up, I mean, kind of like my routines, gym, apartment, a group of friends to hang out with different social groups, that sort of thing. And there's various ways you could do that, like

Each city is different, but meetup.com is good in a lot of cities where you can essentially just choose different events that are going on weekly. And they're almost like little mini communities that you can kind of tap into. And they're usually like activity-based or interest-based like a book club or hiking. My favorite ones are running ones because I love running. And so whenever I meet like other runners...

I can kind of tap into that world. And then sometimes they don't have meetups. Sometimes it's in Facebook groups. You can kind of, each city will have like an expats in blank or nomads in blank. And that is usually a good place for, that's more so less social. It's more so for just,

all of the little things that you need to know going to a new city. Like, how do I find an apartment here? Or I need a PCR test. Where do I go? Do you have any resources you normally use? Airbnb would be a huge one. That's mainly where I stay. I always stay in Airbnbs. Airbnb is expensive.

It covers, you know, there's a lot of high friction around, a lot of friction around like an apartment. Like how do I get an apartment? It's kind of, you know, and Airbnb kind of covers that. They basically sell trust is essentially what they're selling, right? I can trust an Airbnb in the same way Uber. You go to the, especially at airports, you go to the airport and that's like notoriously where you get scammed in taxis. But if you can get an Uber or it's usually different. I think it's Bolt in Georgia. I forget what it is.

Every country basically has their own version of it now. That just covers, you know, I don't worry about getting scammed if I have that. I don't worry about scammed if I have Airbnb. And so those are two main things. So I would say those are two main tools. And then, as I said, like meetup.com or Facebook groups. But also I don't tend to, I tend to go to these places I've already been. And then I'll, I don't venture, like I'll venture one or two places. So it's kind of a weird thing.

It's a weird, I think the people who are nomad for a long time, they find like home bases. And then you, so I, when I go back to Georgia, which I think I'll go next week, I'm pretty sure, either there or Izmir, I'm not sure. But if I go back to Georgia, like I have a group of friends there. I know everything there. It's like, I just jumped back into a community that I'm already a part of. I see. That's great. So how do you make a living while doing digital nomad life? So I work remotely for a company called OnDeck.

And that would be, although I've had different jobs over the years, I have worked on a project-based ed tech company called Chingu, which still runs, um,

And I also have done teaching. That's originally what I did. I was a teacher, ESL teacher. And so I did that for a few years, part-time as well as running things. Do you find it easy to find a remote job recently, especially after the COVID? I think it's probably easier than it ever has been. Before COVID, it was...

I think it was still very much up and coming, but definitely now after COVID, it's completely... We'll have to see what happens whenever normal, if we ever get to normal, whatever normal is considered. But I'm very curious to see because a big issue before was you could have a lot of jobs where they could be remote before, but...

Just sort of the paradigm was being used to the office and COVID was a forcing function to make people not be in the office. It's now people know, like both companies and employees, especially employees know like, oh, I don't actually have to be in the office. Like I don't have to commute.

an hour every day or in Canada, two hours potentially. And so I'm curious to see what happens. I think employers will want people to come back for the most part, but we're seeing it right now, at least I'm involved in a lot of kind of keep an eye on the software developer world. And that's a big, that's a big kind of debate and fight going on right now, actually even playing out places like Apple and Facebook even.

You are the co-founder of Chengu, which is a collaboration online platform for web developers. Yeah, and specifically for learning or job prep. There's a weird thing going on now where companies... I didn't say weird, but it's fairly normal for companies to want to hire entry-level developers who have experience, though. So it's kind of a...

a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Like how do I get experience if I can't get an entry-level job? But how can I get an entry-level job if they want people with experience? So Cingu kind of fits that kind of space. What's your users, what's the demographic look like? It depends when, so Cingu started in 2016 and for about three years it was run basically free. We did remote cohorts and I just sort of was, it was like a passion project for a long time.

But then it was big enough that we decided, okay, let's turn into something, a startup. And so two people who were members became co-founders with me. So before then, we had 140 different countries had come in. So in the three years previous, the majority of the world's countries had joined. So that was a very broad demographic country-wise. But then once we went to paid, it was very much America, Canada, U.K.,

Japan, Germany, countries that you could have met, like you would expect. But we've actually just recently transitioned back to free and I'm not really sure what we'll do with it. I think we're just sort of open to see what happens. I'm much happier to have it much open, enjoy the actual Chinko as a startup, but I'm much more interested in what it can achieve as far as like helping people around the world. And so yeah,

I was much less interested when we went to paid, to be honest. It was less exciting for me, harder for me to be engaged. So what's the ultimate problem you are going to solve with Changgu? From those two sides. For the developer side, it's just they need to experience A, and also there's a thing called tutorial purgatory, which is a phenomenon for people learning, self-directed learners. I think it applies probably to any discipline, but definitely it applies to software developers, is you can find content, tutorials, all this is online.

basically everywhere in either free or cheap. Udemy courses are the big one for software developers. It's like $10 for a course. Self-directed learners in this space, they'll have like five, 10 Udemy courses they don't touch. Maybe they do 5% of it and then they just never touch it. So a big issue there is that people don't,

They just don't do the work. It's hard to procrastinating, watching tutorials and you feel like you're learning and then you go to build something and you have no idea. So from the developer side, that's what we're helping with. And then the other side of the employer side, like right now in startup worlds, and it's just a huge pipeline issue for experienced developers. Even at, I work it on deck. It's very founder centric and about like really focused around startups. And I see it all the time in Slack at work and in the fellowships.

people are like where is it we need technical people like we need engineers and there's a huge shortage so we're trying to solve that as well so tell me about some details about Undeck what is that and what's your role there Undeck is an awesome fairly new startup that kind of came to life during COVID or around that it existed prior and at COVID it just shot to space basically it's

a cohort model, a remote cohort model for learning. And it basically has a cohort for different topics and ranges. So they've had everything from writers, design fellowship. Their flagship one is the founder fellowship, which

So anyone who wants to build something or they are building something, they come together and it's like really, really high quality, a batch of people. It's pretty shocking actually when you go in there and see, it's like, oh, I used to work with Google and now I'm building this or I was at Facebook and that's like a normal person. Like that's kind of, it's very normal. Like, oh, is that it? You just worked at Google? Like nothing more than that. And then there's health tech, climate tech,

I think they even just launched a longevity one, which is super exciting. And they also are experimenting with drops in physical location. So they had a Miami one, which was really interesting. And then they're doing a New York one as we speak. So my role, I started as an experience associate there. And so kind of like a data analysis, somewhat design, supporting the fellowships and the program directors. But I've since switched to, I think my official title is matchmaking lead for

That's a good title. Yeah, it's an odd title. When I tell people that, they're like, do you work for a dating company? Yeah, it sounds like that. Yeah, especially if you think like the India context. India, there's like in that they have a matchmaker is like an important role in their society, like matching. Yeah, same in China. There's a proper professional matchmaker. I might need to change that.

But it's essentially like one of the things that really excited me about on deck. And one of the reasons why I was drawn to it was it's just this amazing network of all these different ambitious, successful, talented people in all these different disciplines. And so thinking like, how can we best connect them, um,

And I should just give a little more context with Cingu. It's basically the same thing, was connecting learners. That's kind of the thesis of Cingu, is that if we bring people together and optimally connect them or advantageously connect them into teams, pair programming, or even cohorts itself, you can create this value that just didn't exist prior to that.

And so super exciting there. How can you connect to these people? So when you connect people from different cultures and backgrounds, have you noticed any problems or challenges? Take me as an example. When I live in New Zealand,

I'm a Chinese and I do encounter some cultural differences and similarities and some stereotypes. So I'm very curious, based on your experience, have you noticed anything interesting you'd like to share? Oh, that's a really great question.

Yeah, so in Cingu, as I said, I think it was 140 people that have been through. So you can imagine, I think that's like 71 or something like that percent of the world's countries. So we definitely have had this as something we have to be aware of. And I've put a lot of thought and design work around how can you create an environment that all of these people can come into and feel super welcome and to be able to collaborate together.

Because, yeah, you'll be putting someone from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, UK, and the Netherlands all in one team together to say, like, go. And it is really interesting. I think it's a really unique experience for people. And it's a good learning experience just from that for people to do it and to kind of learn as they go. There have been lots of, I guess, funny situations, maybe some odd ones too, some challenges. Like I...

That would be one example that would be safe to talk about. A lot of countries, even with matching, countries have deep histories

histories, right? So especially, you know, you know, this in China, one of the longest histories of human civilization. You know, I don't think this is much of an issue. I've never had to think about this, but like China and Japan would be an example. Like that's no, there's no issues there matching, but like for example, India, Pakistan, could that be potentially be an issue, you know, or in the Middle East, there are things that have to be aware of usually not an issue, but like I have had to ban people, you know,

because they dm someone basically and said like you're from this country so i hate you oh i see and had to just be like sorry we can't you know like i understand there's a lot of uh different you know deep histories and rivalries and all this stuff that i can't understand but we just can't have that here but for the most part it's been complete there's never been a huge blow up around that stuff it's been it's been fine uh but it has been super interesting and

I think it's part of like the charm of Jingu and why I'm super happy to go back to what we started from is that when we launched a, we call them voyages, essentially a cohort, um, there'd be like a group of people coming together and then we group people into teams, software teams, um, for the most part. Um,

or different challenges. You'd set up these teams and be like, okay, what are our stats for this fellowship? And so we'd tell, you know, part of the design is like really celebrating that diversity. And it was just such an interesting and exciting experience to be able to see like,

We've got people from 43 different countries in this exact cohort with 200 people in this number of teams and just like celebrating that. It was super, super fun. So let's talk about 1729. That's where we met each other. I think it's under a Startup City post. I leave some comments, then you reply back, then you create a Discord community. So

So what motivates you to create the Discord community and gather people together? I'm a community builder at heart. That's just who I am. Even when I was a kid, my friends, I like to bring people together, and especially people who don't normally would fit together. I like to try to find ways that they can relate to each other. So it's like a personal thing, just from, I guess, who I am as a person.

But I think also with my experience with Chingu, a lot of this stuff is a lot easier for me because I've just been doing it. Chingu is, I forget how many, but it's around 70 different cohorts. So you can think of each cohort as like a mini little community and all remote. So Slack, Discord, all these different tools, I'm experienced with them. So when I was first starting,

I think I listened to the Tim Ferriss podcast with Bology and just got really excited about when he talked about digital native first education. That's kind of the thesis or the theme. I'm very excited and interested in helping improve things around the future of education. And so...

I'm interested in a lot of the ideas he was talking about, but that one specifically inspired me. And so after that, I just sent him a DM like right away. It's been like, Hey, this is my experience. I've, I've, uh, if you're ever interested in doing like community-based learning, peer-based learning, I'd love to help advise in whatever way. Uh, I just keep doing what you're doing. This is awesome. And I was shocked that you just, you reply and say like,

or whatever. And he's like, cool. Wow. I never, I also, I just say I'm pretty naive with Twitter. I don't, I just recently got into it. Maybe basically when I started on deck. And so I was like, wow, you could just message people and they'll apply. That's so crazy. And fast forward a couple of weeks, I was hanging around the 1729 website. Cause I'm just really interested in these ideas. I could sense people wanting to connect and wanting to have a space. And I think a few people even mentioned and,

very directly. And so maybe the first time I was like, okay, I'll see, I'll wait and see what happens. And the second time, maybe the third time or something, I was like, okay, I have to do this. So I just threw up a Discord, kind of did a quick design of channel structure, some basic comms, maybe a GIF

or two and then just threw it up. And I really honestly had no idea what would happen. I didn't even know if they would even allow it. I think I wrote in my message like, mods, if this is okay, feel free to remove it if it's not okay. But they let it stay and quite a few people came and such an amazing group. I was shocked. Yeah. It's also an experiment for the decentralized community. In 1729, they started the initiative then

We as a member, we just do our own stuff, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's cool. They allowed it as well. And for the DM thing, I find it super useful because before I was very intimidated by those verified accounts.

I never DM them. But yeah, as you mentioned, I also DM Balaji because I translate his Tim Ferriss podcast with him. What? Yeah. Oh, it's not like a one-by-one translation. It's like a summary. Because I do love his idea and his deep knowledge on so many different topics.

Yeah, crypto, the China-US relation, Indian. Yeah. So, yeah, I just share with him. Then he said, yeah, good word. Yeah, it's pretty good. What's the goal for the Discord community? What would you like to achieve? I would like to bring energy to these topics, kind of maybe fresh energy. I come from a different background.

I don't come from this world, I have to say. I come from more of like the education world, the developer world, and yeah, that sort of thing. And I would just like to bring energy to these spaces, like startup cities. Like this is a really exciting, interesting topic with tons of potential. And I think we're also in a place in the world right now where I think throughout history we have these periods of time where

ideas are just more open or people as societies are more open to new things, open to change. And I think certain things happen that bring that to life. I think with COVID going on and seeing how all of these institutions have just maybe not held up as well as we thought they would around the world. I think there's an opportunity for people are really starting to think in ways that

are a lot more open-minded about ideas. So there's a certain energy that really excites me and I just want to sort of help around that and help these topics with whatever skills I have. So sort of community building would be one, maybe cohort-based learning would be another, or remote courts in general, that sort of thing. Can you give me some examples of the interesting people you met on the Discord community? Oh, examples, there's a lot of...

50 plus at least. One of the amazing things about community building is you, part of the job is basically getting to know people and finding out what they're interested in and then trying to help route them into relevant conversations. I think probably meeting, just the whole, like interacting with people who have the pseudonyms have just been super interesting to me. Like talking to people who, the thing I love about it is that

you can't judge them on anything else. So like, for example, in the discord community, there are people who are, let's say like an investor or something. Um, and they write that somewhere. Like I said, okay, you're an investor. That's cool. You've invested in all these different things. That's cool. But I don't really know if that's real. I can only sort of, um,

you based on our conversations. Yeah. You know, because you have the pseudonym, don't know who you are. It's something like really freeing and refreshing about that. In the same way, I think doing, starting a community with people who don't know you is also really interesting, exciting for the same reason because like, yeah,

let's say if I'm in Cingu people know who I am generally and it changes how they react to you like it yeah whereas in the start of this one like I'm a nobody to all these people they don't know who I am and so yeah

Everything has to be earned. You have to earn respect from other people and just through action and conversations. So I wouldn't say like any one person, although I could say probably a couple dozen people, but I would say that would be the main thing. It's like just interacting with pseudonyms is such an interesting term.

Yeah, true. I noticed that you changed your name to a pseudo name, Chance Taken. Yeah, so it's kind of a silly story. I did that 10 years ago, no, maybe 15 years ago on Facebook. Oh, okay. I just was like, I don't trust Facebook. So I put Taken as my last name. Okay. And so my Twitter actually was that for a long time. Everything kind of was that for a long time.

I don't know why. I just got used to doing it. And then Facebook last summer disabled my account because of it, just randomly. Like after 15 years, they're just like, oh, you have a fake name. You know, I get that just as a chance anyways, half the time. But it was such a crazy experience. Like I lost, like it's crazy.

little we think about these online tools and like you know I had conversations with family friends people have died photographs everything on there like it's like a part of my identity was on this and they just like just like that they just disabled it and they don't have a helpline there's no way to get it back so that kind of like

freaked me out and so I started using my real name again for a few months but then I was like nah I'd like to go back collect my yeah

That's a problem with institutional media. They can just shut your account without any reason. Yeah, exactly. That's why I'm very fascinated with Apology's decentralized media concept. That's why I delete my Instagram and Facebook and start to focus more on my own website. Oh, nice. That's something I can control. Yeah, that's actually, I really love that idea of the

I forget he wrote somewhere, he viewed 1729 as a bootloader for websites, for personal websites or something. Because a lot of the tasks are asking you to create something, it's always suggesting use your own website somewhere or something. Yeah, true. I think it's a great idea. People should do more.

When you start your career, what were you doing? Were you an English teacher? So originally, I went to school for philosophy and I wanted to become a teacher. Like from high school, that's where I... Like when I left my high school, while I was leaving, the English department brought me in and they're like, hey, we'll see you when you're back. And they put like a kind of a joke, like my name tag on a desk because they're like, you're going to come back here and work probably. They're basically saying you're going to be a teacher. Okay.

And so that was kind of what I wanted to do. Then when I got to university, I was kind of like, wow, this place is terrible. I shouldn't say terrible, but it was just like a shock to me as being the first person in my family to go to university. I had all these ideas of what university would be, and it was like a big disappointment. Some of the professors and just, yeah, I was just like, wow, this is what,

They're paying for this. So anyways, then I was like, okay, I can't. Very quickly I learned like I do not want to go to teacher's college. I don't want to go to school after school. And so I shifted into journalism. I got really into journalism. There's an editor at the newspaper at my university and that's kind of was my plan. But then the other time it was still like every city had a couple of different newspapers and they were like,

They were very dominant and arrogant. So to get a newspaper job like the Trump star then was this crazy experience. So then I shifted back to education, but I was like, I don't want to go to teacher's college unless I know...

this is like absolutely what I want to do. And so I'd always wanted to travel. I grew up in the countryside and going to, I actually chose the university of Toronto partly because the majority of people in Toronto were minorities like born outside of Canada. So I've always been just excited about that, uh, different cultures and that sort of thing. So I decided to go overseas and teach in Korea and Seoul, um,

So I started doing that as an ESL teacher. So why Korea? Do you have any other options or that's the only country you want to go? That's probably a silly reason. I think my girlfriend in high school and university, her sister was a teacher in Seoul. And so I got like secondhand information about that. And also one of my best friends in university is Korean Ethnicity.

Born in Seoul, but that he grew up in Canada. And so just these hearing about Korea and all this was like wow I want to go there. It seems awesome Can you like adapt to yourself in Korea because it's a total different country from where you're born? Yeah, it was I mean I also I just I was really interested in Asian culture in general I can I took like

like a Chinese philosophy course and this sort of thing. So I had like some background around cultural stuff, like sort of the Confucius mindset, that sort of thing, but nothing to prepare me for. I think anyone who goes to a different city or a different country that's drastically different from your culture, you're going to have this sort of culture shock. But from just the way I am, I'm just like, this is amazing. I love this. I'm just sort of like hanging on every little difference, you know,

And it was just such a life-changing experience. Just the idea of – I love having these conversations with people about their first maybe couple months in a different country in their life because when they move somewhere new, because you notice in yourself – you just start – I don't know how to explain it really, but you just notice all of these –

things that are different from your culture, but they're still okay. And it's like, wow. It's just an amazing experience. Yeah, when I first moved to New Zealand, I hardly understand what they are talking about because they speak English, but a different accent. Yeah. So I was like, oh, wow. I was doing great, adapting myself pretty quickly. It's very fascinating how quick you can adapt. It's like...

Last year, we were all in pandemic, but we all coped very well. Yeah, that's why we achieve what we have as humans. That's what we're good at. We're adapting. True, true. So when you go back to Canada, do you feel like you are not belong to there anymore? Do you still consider Canada as home? That's a good question. It definitely is. I think...

in my family is considered home wherever my family is I'll consider that home because I feel at home around them but definitely I think especially coming from East Asia so you would understand this for sure going from East Asia to

maybe Europe is a little bit better, like London, I think completely different, but probably New Zealand's closer to it. And just East Asia to something different. It's just crazy. Like, I mean, the infrastructure in East Asia, these major cities like Seoul, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, you know, all these Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, like just the infrastructure is on a different level because they have the density and they developed later. And so it's just, it's definitely reverse culture shock being like, wow, it's,

the subway is so terrible in Toronto it takes so long to get anywhere like everything is so slow yeah true and but the flip side is the Canada beautiful nature it's wow fresh air this is amazing um

But I definitely find it a little difficult. I think Europe I really like because it has the critical mass, has the history, the transportation is good generally, and it's just a good quality of life. It kind of forces a quality of life on you a little bit more than I think Asia and North America. Yeah, true. So every time I go back to China, I'm just shocked by the technology progress. Yeah, the facial recommendation. And every time I use cash, people will give me a look. Yeah.

Where are you from? Why do you use cash? Yeah. I look down almost like, what is that? Yeah. They look at me like an alien. It's so crazy too because...

People generally, I don't think enough people in the West understand this about East Asia or Asia in general. Like just like if you go to Seoul, if you go to Tokyo, if you go to Beijing or like Shanghai, probably more so, uh, Shenzhen, like you're basically in the future from in, like it feels like you're in the future, uh, compared to like Toronto, probably New York. Um,

like the Singapore is just like, it looks like the future as well there. Yeah, I don't think the, I'm always shocked whenever I hear, keep in mind too, from the countryside, so like relatives, they might have like,

it takes time for people to, for stereotypes to catch up. So like when I went to Korea, I'd get like jokes like, you go to North or South or, or, or people would even have like these, I don't say like more like grandparents style age. Like they would think Korea is just a super poor country, South Korea. It's like, you have no idea what's going on there. Like it's, it is crazy.

Yeah, true. Even for people when they think about China, they probably think 1970s China. Yeah, but it changes dramatically every year. Yeah, the speed is just amazing. Some of my favorite books have been this sort of, I don't know what the genre would be, but it's basically like

history for the last 10 or 20 years in ex-tiger nation like the tiger what are they called tiger nations or tiger cities or something i remember that asian four tigers yeah something like that yeah so much like just in china alone i think migration has been the the the largest migration in human history has happened in the last like 30 years in china people it's like something like i'll have to look up the number but it's

Hundreds of millions of people have gone from X place to cities within China alone. Like it's just...

Canada, I don't know what the population is. It's not even 100 million, right? It's like 30 or 40 or something like that. It's just crazy. Yeah, it is. Due to the pandemic, people probably think about not just staying in the tier one or two cities. They probably want to move to somewhere cheaper, but good life qualities. What's your advice for people if they want to experience digital nomad life?

Yes, this is something I'm really interested in. And biology talks about it a little bit, talking about this is like an obvious larger trend that seems like it's going to happen or it's a high probability that it will happen in that it's

if things go to normal or relatively normal and suddenly people have all these remote jobs, some percentage of those will go back to the office, but some percentage of them won't. So you'll have all these people who have remote jobs and they live in very expensive cities, uh, for the most part. Um, and wherever it be Western Europe, uh, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, wherever. And, um, so the question is like, how long will it take for them to, it also depends on like what, what routes you have, um,

but he talks about it as like, if he was someone, I think it was the question they asked him, like, if you were young in your career, what would you do? And he was like, I would get a remote job and I would go to one of these, uh, cheaper countries. Cause you're, you're saving crazy amounts. Like the amount you would pay in San Francisco, uh, that you just, how much do you have to pay to live the cost of living? You go somewhere like in Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia. I think it's like top 10 cheapest places in the world. Um,

But of those, it's probably the... It's super safe yet. Like, it's extremely safe and it's quite open to foreigners. Like, they have a digital nomad visa. They have a lot of incentives to sort of attract people before COVID, actually, they were doing this. They're kind of like Estonia. And so...

But that doesn't really, I think people have a lot. It's like, how do you do that? I think, you know, certain personalities are more open to it. I would say find communities where this sort of thing is normalized and then you can kind of, people will help you through it. I don't really know if there's that many actually. I've kind of toyed around with creating one of these communities because I think it, it, it needs to exist, but I don't know if I have time for that, but someone should create that. Maybe I will if I can find time, but yeah,

In general, I'd say for a lot of things, if you can find communities, right now we're kind of in the beginning ages of just these really exciting age of communities where tooling is coming. Companies are getting like 20 million Series A funding around this.

like metrics for communities, like there's a lot of capital going to communities. And then just, you know, Discord alone is some ridiculous amount, like millions of communities on Discord alone. And there's just so much knowledge you can find from these. Yeah, I'm very interested, like, because I noticed that you're doing a lot of things. How do you manage your time and energy to do so many different projects?

I don't think I'm the right person to ask about this. What do I do? I would say I'm not very disciplined from my perspective, but I'm constantly trying to be and trying to get better at this. I think to give you an example,

For example, this last week I've been a lot better and I'd say when I'm doing well and sort of like task management's really clear. I have bundles of routines, like a morning routine. This is what I do. Um, you know, so like I say, meditation, journal, running, you know, those three things and brushing teeth, that sort of thing. Um,

But if I get those, if I'm knocking those off and getting good sleep and that sort of thing, everything else kind of just rolls faster. Like I have my on-deck work, which is a very...

Pretty strict timeline that I keep for that. I am doing that around that. And then sometimes based on the day, I'll adapt it. This is also one of the beautiful things about remote work is I can adapt my day to fit whatever comes up. Like let's say I have to have a meeting. It's just easier for my coworker to have a meeting at 9 a.m. I can switch to that and then work on something else at a different hour when I wouldn't normally be working it on deck. So you can adapt.

You can move things around, but I would just say to short answer routines being, you know, having routines, it just changes your life at that. Yeah.

Yeah, build the system to support you. Yeah, because I do a lot of different projects. I got asked this question quite often. Yeah. I feel like you're very good at this. I think, yeah, once you build the routine, you can't just go automatically. You don't need to think about what do I do next? You just do it.

Final question: What do you get most excited about the future? That's a great question. There's a lot of things. I think what we touched on before about this, I don't know what you call it, but it does feel like there's something going on where people are more open to different ideas and they're excited for that. I would say that as an umbrella,

just, I don't know what they would call that, but whatever that is, I find really exciting. Cause that's, I mean, I'm super open-minded. I think it's partly, it just comes with the habit of people who, who travel around that just happened there. Either it's a filter for people like that, but also it broadens your mind, just seeing all these different cultures. Um, and so it feels like the world is becoming more open, uh, maybe just more open to wild ideas. Like people are talking about crazy ideas and it's,

normal like that's uh you know like we're talking about cloud cities and you know how decentralization and just all these really interesting ideas people like making countries and stuff like some of it's kind of wild and we'll see what happens but uh i just love that this is there's this openness right now and excitement around the future um at least amongst certain communities

True. I do feel like when I'm online and chat with people from Twitter, I feel like I belong to here with all the crazy ideas and the future. But when I live in London, you know, it's an old city and a lot of people, they're not adapted that fast.

I feel like I live in different worlds. I feel like there are two chameleons living in this world. Yeah, it's a very interesting observation. I do feel the gap between the online and the physical world. I don't know if you noticed that at all.

Oh, for sure. I think that's like, I think this has basically been the main idea. That's why I've been so interested in cohorts, remote cohorts the past almost five years now is because it basically like in programming, it really was clear to me when I first started to do it. I forgot about that too. So when I left

I wanted to become a developer. That's what I was transitioning to. And that's kind of... On the way there, I created Chinku. But part of the reasons why I created Chinku was I was in rural Ontario. I'd gone back to Canada to do a coding boot camp. And then I pulled out of that. But I was learning...

In rural Ontario, it's like farmers and factory workers and that sort of thing around. No programmers in my family. I don't even have any friends that are programmers. And so I remember working on a challenge and just being like,

how do I do this? And like talking to friends or family and they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. No empathy there. Maybe they can't. Right. It was just, but then once you get into a cohort or a community of people who are, they understand, I get you. I understand like, Oh, here's what I did to help with this. And you're like, Oh, it just feels so nice to be on people who are excited about these. And so I guess, yeah, that'd be one thing super excited around communities and, and,

like optimally organizing people to really kind of, to allow them to reach their potential in these different things. Um, so I feel like when you group people together, you know, these ideas, like what you mentioned on Twitter, Twitter is basically this, and maybe a more broad topic. Like you get in tech Twitter versus, uh, I don't know, it's probably like a biology. Twitter is its own Twitter now at this point. Um, but you just around other people who get it and who are excited about this as well. And so it just like energizes you, whereas in, in,

real life it's just harder to find that you have to find those physical groups true or you build one yeah yeah but even then it still has if you have to have critical mass like in London it's easier to have meetups where you would have a meetup around these topics but then it's still like people have to go there you have to schedule time you know it's true a lot of trouble yeah so what's your

top three tips for community building. Because I'm running a writing community for my Chinese reader at the moment. I'd love to learn from you. Because I never organized or run community before, apart from my corporate jobs. But this is for my personal passion. Any tips? Okay, let me think on the fly. And I'll probably be sending you stuff after I'll think of something for sure. Sure.

I would say you'd want to, you want to A, create an environment that makes people feel really comfortable and excited. And so thinking around how do you do that? So an easy way would be, I didn't say easy, but a way would be,

create some sort of summary, like something that summarizes the community and kind of shows them what you see, because you're talking to everybody, you're seeing everything, whereas each person that might be busy, they might only see in engaging the community like a couple minutes a week or an hour a week or something.

This is why I do the Roundup. The Community Roundup is because it's a quick way where I can send to you and say, this is what's going on. It's almost like you can express how you see the community. You see it, but it's hard for other ones to see it. It's a way to show them

what is really going on and it's also a way to get people excited generally and so there's kind of an art and science to that so you'd want to experiment and play and it kind of depends on your personality as well as a community builder different people have different personalities they can bring you know interesting things to the table which is interesting in itself so that would be one or I guess that's two really that's like creating a friendly and

exciting environment would be one and there's various ways you can do that. It's a pretty general thing. But, and two is more technical is like have a community roundup that could be through an article that I've done it previously. Even today I was listening to the Bankless podcast. That's, they have a DAO, Bankless DAO, if you've heard of that. And they have a weekly rollup that's like around crypto stuff. It's just like all the news around crypto and that DAO and memes and it's in a podcast form. And then what would be another one?

I guess intros channels as a tactical one as well. Like have an intros channel, whether, I mean, depends what, like where your community is housed. Like if it's in a Slack or a discord, it's a lot easier. But it could be however way you do it. And you'd want to basically, the essential thing is you want to be able to know like who each person is and like specifically, it's kind of like designed to intro structure as well. It's probably sounds a little nerdy, but yeah,

it makes a big difference. And so that like it's optimized for ways that other people can connect with them. So if I, if I go into a community and I see like a big blob, like a big paragraph blog blob, it's hard to read. I don't know what they're going to write. Whereas if you see like a really well-structured intro, I know like, Oh, I connect them on this. It's like very easy to read and find and connect with them. And so that can help the community connect together if they know, you know, cause you'll have every community will have like the super connectors and

who will, you know, like Kriti in this one, she's absolutely that. Like she's probably talked to more people in the community than I have.

I say, yeah, yeah. I got a meeting with her next month. Yeah. She's great. So what's your next destination this year? So I'm thinking next week is my, I have a flight to Tbilisi, Georgia. I booked a round trip when I came and I'm debating where to go. I was thinking either Izmir in Turkey, another city, Montenegro, or,

back to Tbilisi. I think I'm going to go back to Georgia because I want to go to the other ones.

But I just have a lot on my plate right now, juggling different things. And so being able to focus and hunker down with the places I know, friends that I have, that seems a little more attractive. So I'm probably going to go to Georgia for a month or so and then back to Canada, hopefully, whenever they open up. Thank you so much for your time today. And thanks for sharing everything. Oh, this has been awesome. Thanks for having me. Ciao. Ciao.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Chewy Journal. Remember that you can join my monthly newsletter at comedayoung.com, where I spend 140 hours digging valuable insights from books, articles, and podcasts, and share them in a six-minute easy-to-read email. If you like the show, please rate or leave a review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover this podcast.

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