Blog #1

Yesterday I finally launched the website for Plug Me In. For me this was an important milestone. I’ve been working on this project for over a year now and was nervous how it would be received but the reactions I got so far are better then expected!

In my head the idea for this journey started already 6 years ago. In 2009 I travelled a whole year through Australia & Asia. There I got the wanderlust virus. Meeting new people, experiencing new cultures, exploring unknown cities. I could do this forever. And maybe i’m going too. I read many stories about backpackers who travelled around the world without money. All very inspirational projects. Then I decided that once in my life I want to do something similar.
When I got back in Holland in started studying Event Management at the Utrecht University of Arts. A management study but with a more creative approach. I learned a lot about storytelling, marketing, creating experiences and how to organize an event. In the last year I got the opportunity to finish my study in the ‘entrepeneurslab’. In this lab you start your own company or project and write a thesis about this. I said to my teacher: “I want to go travel, without money and by using social media in a special way”. My teacher thought it was cool and told me that I could go work something out. I combined everything that I learned at school with my personal interests like travelling and sustainability and this became Plug Me In.

Last August I completed my study with an 8.5 on average. I think its pretty cool that you can finish your study organizing a journey. After I received my degree I started organizing this project. Doing research and contacting companies who could offer me needs for my journey. Like clothing, camera’s, video-editing tools, food supplements etc. To get these things was not a big hassle, mostly companies responded very quickly and enthusiastic. Getting these great response was great and gave me even more motivation to continue what I was doing.

Ofcourse the most important item of this project is to get an electric car sponsored. At that time I didn’t have any contacts in this industry so I just called the costumer service, explained what I was doing and most of the times they would put me through to the marketing department. But without any succes. They all said “Yeah cool project but we have no money for this”. I believed in this project and started visiting networking events and just walking in to car dealers and see what’s possible. After a few weeks I gathered some contact details from people in higher levels of the car companies. Most of them where pretty excited about my plans and invited me too talk about it. I presented my plans, told them what i’ve achieved so far and what I will do next. Still they where enthusiastic about the project but needed time to think and arrange stuff.
Days, weeks and even months passed by and in the end it all went down to “sorry, can’t help, it’s too risky” or “great idea but too expensive” and even “our car won’t make it to Australia”. For me a big let down of course.

Having worked for more then a year on this project, I didn’t want to give up and decided to launch the website and social media channels. This way I hope that there might be someone who is just as enthusiastic about this idea as I am and might want to offer me a car. If not I will start a crowdfunding campaign so I can buy a 2nd hand car. There still are enough possibilities.

So that day was yesterday. I posted a statusupdate on my personal Facebook profile and sat back and relaxed. In just 24 hours I got more then 200 followers on my Facebook page, and about 1/3 of them are people that I don’t know. I thought it the first week it would be mainly my own friends and to see it spread beyond my friends was the perfect start.

I will keep you updated about the progress of this project. Please make sure to follow my social channels!

Wiebe