Hejorama the 3rd

SoundTrack for this post (yes, you’ll need at least 15min to read all this)

Previously, on Hejorama

Hejorama the 1st
We first began (with not much hair on the chest) by creating a social plateform for people to share their travel stories and addresses.
We started (believe it or not) in 2006, 3 crazy mates, with a huge passion for travel, knowing nothing about this kind of huge website.
It was our very first big project and we made it with our own 6 hands and put lots of love and hope in it, as always.

Hejorama II
Then we thought, if we want to have great content on our plateform, we should talk about the kind of travel we believe in.
That’s why we created the webzine in 2010. Again, we didn’t know much about publishing, so it turned out to be an amazing field for experimentation, which is always our goal. Explore.
At that point the family grew up and we welcomed lots of new talented friends, who created amazing content and helped us make Hejorama what it is now.

Aside from posting, we also made more and more collaborative projects with fellow travelers, readers, friends.
We made social games, legendary parties, awesome tourist t-shirts, gave away our Instagram to travelers, sent plenty of disposable cameras around the world, began a database of in-flight meals, created a map to follow interesting travelers, …
Slowly, our collaborative projects and content were more efficient at creating a community of interest, than the social plateform was.

But then came the time when we ran out of time and money.
We decided to make a little break, the time to figure out what was Hejorama and what we wanted to do with it.
Like a inside-of-each-of-us trip to find out WTF we were doing.

Hejorama the 3rd

And here we are now, back in the game.
We cleaned out our mind and figured out that Hejorama will never be just a website, a magazine or a social plateform.
It’s just a “project”, a common diary for our explorations and mutli-dimension-and-space trips, a place and an excuse to meet new people.
Hejorama will stay Hejorama if we go on planning nothing particular, like a trip without fixed destination. Just a direction (like Rahan looking for sun’s den, as a pretext to meet people and help them, and making himself better on the way (if you don’t know Rahan, wait for it, we’ll show you)).

A project for those who live or want to live as travelers everyday, because they found out at some point that it makes you more complete, more in touch, more curious, show yourself and the world from another and richer point of you, make you go beyond your own boundaries.

And above all, that travel is not just the activity of taking a plane or a train to somewhere and accumulate miles. It’s not just a thing you do away from home.
Travel has to be a mentality more than a activity (as we repeat all the time), that you have to use everyday, everywhere. Being curious, learn to avoid fear, explore places and people, taste new things, learn forever, … and so on.

And the way we want to demonstrate and live that way, is by showing those everyday travelers and their positive effects, sharing the 1 001 ways to travel so that you have no more excuse not do it.

We want to share more content, publish more thoughts about all this way of thinking, organize more collaborative projects to try some new ways of traveling or living and gather people, and talk about the world and its wonders and weirdnesses from another point of view, to fight against common holiday tourism (this point will be discussed later; we’re not against tourism itself, we’re against people going abroad without individual goals, and enjoying nothing else but the sun and cheap prices, don’t get in touch with locals, and not bringing anything back home but comparaisons with their hometown and suntans. It could be cool to launch a tourism revolution).

New Manifesto, or the 9 Commandments
The manifesto is our daily way of thinking. We live, talk, experience everything as if we were traveling, even and especially at home.
The first manifesto is still relevant… but a little bit too long, and doesn’t let enough space for discussion and exchange.
What you can see right now is a more efficient and punchy summarized version of our philosophy.
Instead of telling everything in it, we just want to set some simple rules, that can be discussed, be interpreted, evolve, etc…
As soon as possible (anytime one of you readers is ready actually) we’ll launch a column about the manifesto, about what each of this rules appeals to you, either you agree or not, if it reminds you of an experience, …

We really want to discuss this new version, and see if it works. What do you think?

New sections
So obviously, you can check out by yourselves.
But quickly, we defined new sections to separate the different types of content and activities.

Columns for the editorial content, wrote by us, our friends, guests and things we scout out there and find interesting to share.
Columns, because instead of having freestyle posts, we want to focus on specific concepts and approaches, to have several people “working” on the same question, so that we can have several points of view, compare, etc..
Projects for collaborative or special projects we make with you.
C.T. Guides for destinations relative content, localized content if you prefer. We’re not quite ready yet on this, but you can already find content there, and we gonna begin with focusing on Paris and Berlin. You’ll see.
The Shop for items to sell, definitely not ready on this point, but we want to distribute things created and crafted during collaborative projects (like t-shirts, books, posters, …).

“New” Topics
Less topics, new topics, combined topics. Yes we cheated… but each of those combinations is a statement.

Life&People > All about people and ways of life around the world and in the universe
Art&Culture > All about creation, music, artists, books, cinema but also traditions of each country, region or part of the world we want to talk about
Food&Drinks > All about the most enjoyable thing in life. Eat and drink, discover new tastes, cooking, …
Love&Sex > All about laws of attraction, hazes of love, and so on.
Ca$h&Items > All about value, economy and valuable objects, items, gears, artefacts, …

New Look
About the design, well, it speaks for itself for those who knew the previous version… It’s brighter, simpler, faster, less bullshit, more room for content. We go on exploring all the media and this new handsome tool will help.

So, Bon voyage!

Nota Bene
1. (re)Discover old content (even if it’s not displayed perfectly yet. It’s gonna take some time to sort everything as we couldn’t wait to launch the new version…)

2. About the language. As some of you may know, the co-founders are French and though we love Shakespeare, we decided to assume our French accent, even in our content.
So the site will be mainly in English, but don’t be surprised to see French words or expressions from time to time.
The French touch in a way, kind of frenglish. Or froglish.

3. And yeah, we’re gonna stand for our passion for animated GIFs.

4. Check this out, it’s funny to see the evolution since 2006 on Internet Archive :) this trip began a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….