Steve Zissous - Life Aquatic by Hejorama

One more year is gone and this is now 2012. That came fast but we can’t say we are unhappy to say goodbye to 2011. It has been a long year of hard work and a roller coaster of emotions. It left us frustrated because of our passionate temper but optimistic for the future. Here’s what we are planning for 2012.

  • Story Alex
  • Soundtrack of the report
  • Congratulations (A Happy New Year Song)
  • Pink Martini

Exactly a year ago we published our plans for 2011. Reading it a year later leaves me pretty happy with the realization of most of our objectives. But in no way, I would have expected the fantastic positive response that we got from our readers on Twitter, Facebook, emails and from the awesome people we met in real life.

I won’t indulge myself into an ego tripping compilation of the kind words we received but when someone as inspiring as Chris Guillebeau writes you “I'm honored to be on your great site.”, you start to believe that you are doing things right somehow.

But then, I look back and I know that we can do a lot better. We are aiming at building a major travel website, a project that makes sense in this world, interesting and fun but that can be a real factor of positive change. That’s why we have to set higher expectations for 2012.

Videos

As we said last year, we always wanted to produce more videos. Our Vimeo account has currently 27 videos, all of which were made in 2011. Averaging 2 videos per month is very satisfying but as always in our mind we wanted to have something bigger and better. In 2012, we will be working on upgrading the quality of our video content. No more crappy sound, weirdly encoded videos and shacking pictures. Instead you will get more interesting interviews, better travel videos, unexpected Bag Raiders episodes, world trip bike tours and more regular slang classes.

Columns

We have started about ten columns in 2011 which all be more regularly featured on the magazine. The Monday map has become a classic and will stay the only weekly column but we are working on more monthly column. For instance there will be now a city guide published every month. Read the first “City Affair” as we call them: Riga with Roy. Expect also more “Eating like the locals”, photo essays (Cuba next week), Hejorama Heroes, interviews, travel notebooks, etc…

New contributors

This year will also see a new page appear in the website main menu, called “contribute” which we will use to find new contributors. It will feature our guidelines and instructions for people to pitch us articles and work with us. We know there’s a lot of interesting people who share our philosophy and way of seeing life out there. We need to find them, learn from them and help spread the good content!

Goodies

Yes, we are starting a mini-shop this year. Don’t worry we are not turning into Amazon any time soon but we have started producing little things that we figured you might want to buy. In February we are launching our first series of t-shirts called “J’ai 2 amours _ et Paris”: an ode to our beloved hometown and the rest of the world. See the 3 first models in the GIF below.


Rubsy wearing our S-size samples. A bit tight... All sizes will be available of course!

And don’t forget to enter our Loopcam x Hejorama contest to get a chance to win one and be one of the first to wear it!

Save the world

No, I’m not referring to the Mayan Prophecy or the Alien invasion from X-Files. But in 2012, we definitely want to get more involved in humanitarian causes and start working with NGOs like the Preemptive Love Coalition. We will also support more individual projects like Fab&Vivien and other courageous people who decided to change the world. We can only make a difference if we all work together and are ready to do our share.

Happy new year everyone, best wishes for 2012 and thank you so much for being here. We will do our best to make Hejorama even more awesome in 2012!

Team Hejorama