as a personal interest, i wanted to share a beta site that i have had the pleasure of reviewing for the past few months. it’s called iwannagothere.net (they’re currently picking up the shorter iwgt.com for official release). i find it an interesting experience with lots of promise. as a ‘travel guide created by you’ it looks to have the fundamentals in place to become a more current, vibrant travel community than many of the others i’ve seen. interested in any comments here if you happen to sign up for it and try it out.

in additional to personal travel interests, i’m also working with the creators of the site and two sister agencies–the cocktail in madrid and inuse in malmo, sweden. as like-minded, user-centered design companies of about the same size, we are finding our way through collaboration that will benefit us all in the long run. large agency networks claim to do international work, but often throw acquired agencies into an unfamiliar mix in order to achieve international results. in the same way we’ve grown our agencies independently and carefully to this point, we have agreed to grow carefully into an international collaborative, rallying around a shared interest first: iwanna. once we get some steam going, who knows? maybe we’ll begin offering this capability to shared clients. how’s that for transparent integrity? figuring something out before you go selling it. what a concept!

btw, i highly recommend following the iwanna’s on flickr. the photography is beautiful…