Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Jessica Mans on the Past, Present, and Future of iOverlander

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Jessica Mans on the Past, Present, and Future of iOverlander · The Overland Journal Podcast

0:07
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your
0:10
Speaker 1: host Ashley Jordano, and today I'm sitting down with Jessica Mons,
0:14
Speaker 1: co founder of Ioverlander and co author of several ebooks
0:18
Speaker 1: and the Life Remotely Blog. Jessica shares her experiences traveling
0:22
Speaker 1: the Pan American Highway with her husband and brother over
0:24
Speaker 1: a decade ago, how the trip sparked the beginnings of Ioverlander,
0:28
Speaker 1: and how the app has undergone big changes since its inception.
0:32
Speaker 1: Sit back, relax, and I hope you enjoy this episode
0:35
Speaker 1: of the Overland Journal podcast and a.
0:38
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Adrenaline Industries for their support of this
0:41
Speaker 2: week's podcast. Adrenaline is making some of the most exceptional
0:46
Speaker 2: expedition campers on the market, and they are made right
0:49
Speaker 2: here in the USA. Jud and his team of skilled
0:53
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0:57
Speaker 2: truck platforms, integrating portable composite living modules with high clearance
1:03
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1:07
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1:12
Speaker 2: For their expedition trucks, they're building on extreme duty Industrial
1:17
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1:21
Speaker 2: wheel drive, reserve payload capacity, and third world serviceability. All
1:26
Speaker 2: of this compatibility comes with one on one customer support
1:30
Speaker 2: and in the field training. Others take you far, Adrenaline
1:35
Speaker 2: Industries will take you further. Thanks again, Adrenaline Industries for
1:40
Speaker 2: making this podcast possible.
1:43
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining the Overland Journal podcast today.
1:46
Speaker 1: I am so so excited to chat with you because
1:51
Speaker 1: I feel like I Overlander and your blog life remotely
1:57
Speaker 1: have been two things that have been present in my
2:00
Speaker 1: life since we began back in twenty thirteen driving on
2:03
Speaker 1: the pan and Highway. So thank you so much for coming.
2:05
Speaker 3: To so I'm also so excited to be here Ashley
2:08
Speaker 3: and duct you.
2:11
Speaker 1: Good.
2:11
Speaker 3: That's the glory to senior editor Overland Journal. Awesome, fantastic stuff.
2:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been quite a journey for both of us,
2:17
Speaker 1: and it's really really fun to go back in time
2:20
Speaker 1: and chat about how things were and how they've progressed. Yeah,
2:23
Speaker 1: give us a little bit of a background and how
2:27
Speaker 1: you got into overlanding and yeah we'll just go from there.
2:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, personally I got into overlanding. I mean I
2:36
Speaker 3: started as a backpack traveler in Europe and that got boring.
2:39
Speaker 3: And then I met my husband and he is South African.
2:42
Speaker 3: So our first overlanding trip was actually in Africa, and
2:46
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven we got married and then we
2:48
Speaker 3: our second overland trip was also in Africa. We took
2:51
Speaker 3: a Ford Fiesta through Namibia, which is not a great
2:54
Speaker 3: idea by the way, and then we kind of later
2:58
Speaker 3: on we moved back to the States and my husband said.
3:02
Speaker 3: I had said, you know, I really want to go
3:03
Speaker 3: to Patagonia. I really want to go visit South America.
3:06
Speaker 3: And my husband agreed. He said, yeah, we can do that,
3:09
Speaker 3: but only if we can drive there. Okay, challenge accepted.
3:13
Speaker 3: Let's drive the Pan American And that was kind of
3:15
Speaker 3: our that's our setup. How we started that was I
3:18
Speaker 3: think we finished. And we went twenty eleven until twenty
3:21
Speaker 3: thirteen from Seattle to Argentina.
3:25
Speaker 1: It's so amazing. So we were following you and we
3:27
Speaker 1: started out on twenty thirteen and your website Life Remotely
3:32
Speaker 1: dot Com was one of the bibles that we used
3:34
Speaker 1: all along the way. I remember downloading there was a
3:37
Speaker 1: suggested packing list and you and kobis right your husband, Yeah,
3:44
Speaker 1: we're working while traveling back in.
3:47
Speaker 3: And my brother was with us as well, Jared, so
3:49
Speaker 3: there's actually three of us, it's right, And yeah, we
3:52
Speaker 3: decided it was so funny to think about this now
3:54
Speaker 3: because like there was no starlink, like were We did
3:57
Speaker 3: not even have a smartphone. I think we had like
4:00
Speaker 3: first en iPhone with us, but we never turned it
4:02
Speaker 3: on because it was just too much of a hasshle.
4:06
Speaker 3: I think we did everything with like zim cards in
4:08
Speaker 3: a USB st egg. But we were freelance workers, all
4:12
Speaker 3: of us, so we just cut our client load down
4:14
Speaker 3: to work ten twenty hours a week instead of forty.
4:18
Speaker 3: And you know, we worked pretty much the whole way
4:20
Speaker 3: down and kind of decided, Okay, there's a lot of
4:22
Speaker 3: information people don't have and there's a lot of misinformation,
4:26
Speaker 3: and I think it's a lot better now. But back then,
4:29
Speaker 3: the book that we wrote it was super cheeky. We
4:32
Speaker 3: titled it don't go there, it's not safe, You'll die,
4:35
Speaker 3: and other more rational advice because everybody kept saying you
4:38
Speaker 3: can't go to South America, you'll die, and it's like, no,
4:40
Speaker 3: everybody does this, so people do this. This is totally fine.
4:42
Speaker 3: We're going to go and we're going to work because
4:44
Speaker 3: otherwise we're not going to be able to afford to go.
4:47
Speaker 1: What were you doing as freelancers on the road. What
4:49
Speaker 1: type of people of work were you doing.
4:51
Speaker 3: So I am a graphic designer, that's my background, so
4:54
Speaker 3: I just all types of corporate marketing, graphic design. My
4:58
Speaker 3: husband as well was graphic design. I've designed. He had
5:00
Speaker 3: a few clients and actually at the time he was
5:03
Speaker 3: teaching for local community college, so he was doing online courses.
5:07
Speaker 3: My brother is a software engineer, so he, you know,
5:09
Speaker 3: worked for a health company during the TRUP.
5:13
Speaker 1: And you were in ground tents, all three of you, right, and.
5:16
Speaker 3: Yes, ground planks for life.
5:20
Speaker 1: I love it. What did you drive again?
5:23
Speaker 3: A ninety seven for Runner? And it's still our car
5:26
Speaker 3: by the way, we can't We're trying to buy a
5:29
Speaker 3: new car. It's totally impossible to upgrade. We're so in
5:31
Speaker 3: love with this car and pieces I love.
5:34
Speaker 1: It's just like the nostalgia of it, but also just
5:37
Speaker 1: the Forerunner is so solid that I'm impressed that you
5:40
Speaker 1: did it in ground tents the whole way and we're working.
5:43
Speaker 1: When when people.
5:44
Speaker 3: About this, like, do you know what the coolest thing
5:45
Speaker 3: about a ground ten is like you know exactly how
5:48
Speaker 3: many spiders are inside your space. That's what it's all about.
5:53
Speaker 3: It's all about bug control. I want to know what's
5:55
Speaker 3: living in my tent when I get in it.
5:58
Speaker 1: That's really good advice. I love that. That's like a
6:00
Speaker 1: pro for the ground ted because obviously rooftop teds are
6:04
Speaker 1: very popular, and I love a good rooftop tent. But
6:06
Speaker 1: the spider situation and knowing what's going on your tent.
6:09
Speaker 3: I like that and other like beer runs, like realistically,
6:12
Speaker 3: I don't have to have to put my tent down
6:13
Speaker 3: if I need to go get more beer, Like that's.
6:15
Speaker 1: True, that's true. Give me kind of an overview on
6:20
Speaker 1: what the what was working, like like what was the
6:25
Speaker 1: you were getting sim cards, like how were how was
6:27
Speaker 1: Wi Fi all the way down the pana, Like what
6:30
Speaker 1: was that experience like between twenty eleven.
6:33
Speaker 3: And I remember like being on the road and thinking, Wow,
6:39
Speaker 3: this is so much better than Africa. At the time,
6:41
Speaker 3: it was like there's more internet here than there was
6:44
Speaker 3: three years ago in Africa, so we're doing pretty good. Yeah,
6:47
Speaker 3: it was an absolute nightmare, like we hardly had Like
6:50
Speaker 3: buying data was so hard you had to it wasn't
6:54
Speaker 3: like everyone had it, and a lot of countries were like,
6:56
Speaker 3: you're a foreigner, we can't sell you a SIM card.
6:59
Speaker 3: And there was this circus that happened every time we
7:02
Speaker 3: crossed the border to find us in Curb put data
7:05
Speaker 3: on it. I mean, how it's changed was like I
7:07
Speaker 3: see these people with starlink and like, oh my goodness,
7:10
Speaker 3: if we had that, we just would have changed everything.
7:13
Speaker 3: How many like that quantity of energy that went into
7:16
Speaker 3: just find a place with Wi Fi or you know.
7:20
Speaker 3: And I was doing graphic designs, it was like I
7:22
Speaker 3: remember this project and it was this big trade show.
7:25
Speaker 3: Within the file was like one hundred and fifty megs.
7:28
Speaker 3: I was like, I need internet that can upload this
7:30
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty meg file because this has to
7:32
Speaker 3: go to the printer tomorrow. We were just somewhere where
7:35
Speaker 3: there was it just didn't exist. It took and we
7:38
Speaker 3: ended up finding this little hole in the wall shop
7:40
Speaker 3: full of thirteen year old boys that were in some
7:42
Speaker 3: gaming thing, and like we had to tell everyone in
7:45
Speaker 3: like please everybody just pause your games for ten minutes
7:48
Speaker 3: so I could upload this file. It was impossible. Like
7:52
Speaker 3: we did a lot of crazy stuff, but at the
7:54
Speaker 3: same time, I wouldn't have done it any other way.
7:56
Speaker 3: We would not have been able to do the trip
7:58
Speaker 3: if we weren't working. So when you put it that way,
8:01
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, we did what we had to do
8:04
Speaker 3: to stay home. Totally respect that. I want to shout
8:08
Speaker 3: out to your free ebook that you mentioned. Don't go there,
8:11
Speaker 3: it's not safe, You'll die, and other more rational advice
8:15
Speaker 3: for overlanding Mexico and Central America. Man, this was my
8:19
Speaker 3: favorite thing to reference for border crossings especially, and it
8:25
Speaker 3: was pretty incredible because for Central America, I think it
8:29
Speaker 3: was the most helpful for us in terms of the
8:34
Speaker 3: steps that were required to go through each border crossing
8:38
Speaker 3: because it was tricky, and you guys did such a
8:40
Speaker 3: good job of laying out, you know, go to this
8:43
Speaker 3: random red building where you will find a printer and
8:45
Speaker 3: a man and then go to this, you know, a
8:47
Speaker 3: little booth over here to get change or print something
8:50
Speaker 3: out or whatever. It was so invaluable to give you
8:54
Speaker 3: the confidence to kind of get an idea of what
8:57
Speaker 3: was going on to a certain extent. And by and
9:01
Speaker 3: I Overlander became the spin off of that. Because that
9:04
Speaker 3: book is now ten years old, a little bit and
9:06
Speaker 3: horribly out of date, and like to anybody that reads it,
9:09
Speaker 3: I'm sorry that it's not been updated. Go use i
9:11
Speaker 3: Overlander because it's now it's not all wrong and all
9:15
Speaker 3: out of date. And but yeah, I mean that was
9:17
Speaker 3: the whole idea. It was like, come on, people, just
9:19
Speaker 3: come down here. It's cool. So until America is great,
9:21
Speaker 3: you'll love it if don't be afraid.
9:22
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yeah it did. It did a great trip,
9:26
Speaker 1: a great job and giving the step by step, which
9:28
Speaker 1: I think is so helpful for people to break it
9:30
Speaker 1: down into these steps, that these little bites that take
9:35
Speaker 1: one at a time and you can do it. And
9:37
Speaker 1: then by I think it was cost riger Panama, we're like, oh,
9:40
Speaker 1: we're starting to see the patterns of how it all worked.
9:43
Speaker 1: So it's fun. And then you also made expedition tongs
9:48
Speaker 1: and published a recipe book called Forks on the Road.
9:53
Speaker 1: Tell me a bit more about that.
9:56
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is this is all my brother. He
9:59
Speaker 3: is just in the amazing cook and it's fantastic. We
10:02
Speaker 3: joke all the time that like we brought them along
10:04
Speaker 3: just to cook for us because we And it's funny
10:07
Speaker 3: because when we started Ioverlander, Sam was like we should
10:10
Speaker 3: had a restaurant category. Sam's my partner and I overlander.
10:13
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that more later, but he said, yeah,
10:15
Speaker 3: we should add a restaurant category. And I'm like, why
10:17
Speaker 3: we just cook. It was like, oh, that's not normal.
10:21
Speaker 3: You know. We had my brother, it was an amazing cook
10:23
Speaker 3: and my husband Covis, who is just loves to grill
10:27
Speaker 3: and made these like this grill tongues thing is like
10:29
Speaker 3: everywhere in South Africa, but it doesn't exist in the US.
10:32
Speaker 3: And we just thought, okay, let's just make this book
10:36
Speaker 3: and make these tongues and see what happens. Is something
10:38
Speaker 3: to do something fun, you know, life on the road
10:41
Speaker 3: and how to use Latin American ingredients and the cool
10:44
Speaker 3: stuff you can do while camping, like you know, baking
10:47
Speaker 3: bread and on a campfire and stuff like that. It
10:50
Speaker 3: was it was a big part of who we were
10:52
Speaker 3: and a big part of our trip was sitting around
10:56
Speaker 3: the campground just making an amazing meal with local ingredients
10:59
Speaker 3: and yeah, and it kind of the outcome. At the end,
11:02
Speaker 3: we were going to update our don't go there, It's
11:04
Speaker 3: in a safe you'll die book, but instead we wrote
11:06
Speaker 3: the cookbook because that was just way more fun.
11:08
Speaker 1: Yes, Fair, Do you have any favorite recipes from that cookbook?
11:13
Speaker 3: Jeez? I still use it today for so many things.
11:15
Speaker 3: It's like the cover image is Fabiola's white bean soup.
11:19
Speaker 3: That's one of my favorite recipes. But we just we
11:21
Speaker 3: learned from six weeks and go out amalat with It's
11:24
Speaker 3: just cooks in Central America, and the ingredients and the
11:26
Speaker 3: way they do it is like in the US, like
11:29
Speaker 3: we just have no idea what Mexicans so it is.
11:31
Speaker 3: It's so much better in Mexico. There's so many good
11:35
Speaker 3: things in that book, though, little things, and there's cheeky things,
11:37
Speaker 3: like we joke about Mike's gojuice, which is like just
11:40
Speaker 3: take instant coffee and pour water and it shake it
11:43
Speaker 3: and drink it, which is awful and please don't do it.
11:45
Speaker 3: But we've all been there. Like I just need a
11:47
Speaker 3: kick because I got across the border today and it's
11:51
Speaker 3: seven am, and I didn't sleep at all last night,
11:52
Speaker 3: and there's no hot water because the stove doesn't work.
11:55
Speaker 3: So give me a go juice.
11:56
Speaker 1: You gotta do what you gotta do, right, Yeah, yeah,
12:00
Speaker 1: you guys wrapped up your Pan American trip, and then
12:03
Speaker 1: eventually this is I don't know if this was in
12:07
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, if that's right, but you had to back
12:10
Speaker 1: to Africa.
12:11
Speaker 3: We came back to the States and totally went through
12:14
Speaker 3: culture shocks, just what are we doing? What are we
12:17
Speaker 3: doing next? Didn't have a plan, just kind of came
12:20
Speaker 3: back and we were living at my parents' house trying
12:23
Speaker 3: to figure out where we were going to move to.
12:26
Speaker 3: Kobus was like, so we spent a decade in your continent,
12:30
Speaker 3: can we go to mine? And I was like, yeah, cool,
12:33
Speaker 3: let's go. So we went to Africa and he intended
12:37
Speaker 3: to stay a couple of years and stayed almost a decade.
12:40
Speaker 1: Wow, my goodness, where were you based out of?
12:44
Speaker 3: So his family's in Johannesburg, so we sort of started
12:47
Speaker 3: there and we ended up kind of settling down in
12:49
Speaker 3: George on the Western Cape for the better part of
12:52
Speaker 3: that time. We did a couple over landing trips. We
12:54
Speaker 3: redid our honeymoon to maybe a trip in a slightly
12:58
Speaker 3: more reasonable vehicle.
13:00
Speaker 1: Fantastic. So you're back in Africa and this idea of
13:07
Speaker 1: I overlander comes up? How did this all come about?
13:12
Speaker 3: So it actually started before we went to Africa, when
13:15
Speaker 3: we had come back from our trip and we're sitting
13:18
Speaker 3: at my parents' house and Sam shows up, like he
13:22
Speaker 3: just contacted us, like, hey, I know you guys are
13:24
Speaker 3: back from your trip. We're just starting ours. Can we
13:26
Speaker 3: meet up? And we said yeah, come over, like and
13:29
Speaker 3: we're just sitting on the deck drinking beers and Sam says, so, guys, look,
13:34
Speaker 3: how do you find campgrounds in Mexico? And we were
13:39
Speaker 3: just like, well, there's like this book, but it's not
13:43
Speaker 3: really up to date, and you could look at some
13:45
Speaker 3: blogs and Google Maps isn't very good, but like, you know,
13:48
Speaker 3: try these forty things and then sometimes you'll find a
13:50
Speaker 3: place to get here and it's probably gonna be closed,
13:52
Speaker 3: so maybe find two or three. And Sam said, well,
13:55
Speaker 3: you know, it sounds like we need to like consolidate
13:57
Speaker 3: the data. And I was like, well, you know, I
14:00
Speaker 3: like spreadsheets, so that's cool. And he said, well, you know,
14:04
Speaker 3: I'm an iPhone app developer, and I you know, kind
14:08
Speaker 3: of bells went off, Well wait a minute, why aren't
14:10
Speaker 3: we doing this? And it's funny because Sam left and
14:13
Speaker 3: like nothing happened. We just kind of forgot the conversation.
14:16
Speaker 3: And then a couple months later, Sam actually got to Mexico,
14:19
Speaker 3: and he had posted on like the Facebook, like PAN
14:22
Speaker 3: and Facebook, like, hey, is anybody interested in organizing some data,
14:26
Speaker 3: pulling all these camp lists together of everybody's and having
14:29
Speaker 3: one master sheet. And I said, I'll do it, but
14:34
Speaker 3: you can't access it through a spreadsheet. That's horrible. Build away,
14:37
Speaker 3: build a way for people to access this data that's
14:39
Speaker 3: not staring at a Google sheet like right, nobody wants
14:43
Speaker 3: to do that. And so he said okay, and I
14:45
Speaker 3: said okay, and then we spent the next year building
14:47
Speaker 3: the foundations of Ioverlander.
14:49
Speaker 1: That is so awesome. I remember and I.
14:53
Speaker 3: Say, we is like it wasn't just Sam and I right,
14:55
Speaker 3: like right, like people jumped in, which was crazy that
14:59
Speaker 3: it over Landor's oneice chair information and the way everybody
15:04
Speaker 3: did it on their blogs. That's what got us through
15:06
Speaker 3: the PAN and was just looking through people ten years
15:09
Speaker 3: ago that had posted every place they stayed, every mechanic
15:11
Speaker 3: they went to, like, we've been searching through that and
15:14
Speaker 3: cambing through it. So we had just done it, and
15:16
Speaker 3: we knew the sources, and we reached out to all
15:19
Speaker 3: those people and said, hey, we're aggregating this data. Do
15:21
Speaker 3: we have permission to use yours and like everybody said, yes, yes,
15:25
Speaker 3: do it, yes, do it. And Sam had started building
15:29
Speaker 3: the structure. And I'll never forget this because he built
15:32
Speaker 3: this web app and he never He's an iPhone app
15:34
Speaker 3: developer who moved into this world of web you know,
15:37
Speaker 3: this massive rail Ruby on Rails project, and he described
15:41
Speaker 3: it as drinking water through a fire hose like it was.
15:45
Speaker 3: We didn't know what we were doing. We were just doing it,
15:48
Speaker 3: like hoping not to drown in the process, and we
15:52
Speaker 3: really really wanted to lodch Ie Overlin. The My goal
15:55
Speaker 3: was to have two thousand places when we started, and
16:00
Speaker 3: we got to like eighteen hundred and fifty and I
16:03
Speaker 3: had one more list that was three hundred spots, and
16:07
Speaker 3: I thought, yeah, this three hundred is going to get
16:09
Speaker 3: us a two thousand, and we merged it in and
16:12
Speaker 3: like two hundred of them were duplicates. No, so we
16:17
Speaker 3: ended up lunching with like nineteen hundred points and it
16:20
Speaker 3: was like crushing to me. But like now it's like
16:22
Speaker 3: we're at a quarter million points. Did it really matter? Yeah? Yeah,
16:26
Speaker 3: And that was like twenty fourteen, Yeah, that was ten
16:28
Speaker 3: years ago.
16:30
Speaker 1: So Sam and Erica were traveling together as Song of
16:33
Speaker 1: the Road in twenty thirteen, and we traveled through Baja
16:37
Speaker 1: with them, and I remember looking up. This was before
16:41
Speaker 1: the launch of I overland Er. I was combing through
16:44
Speaker 1: blogs as you guys did, and one of those blogs
16:46
Speaker 1: was yours looking for spots to camp for all of
16:51
Speaker 1: Mexico and Central America. And that was very time consuming,
16:55
Speaker 1: but it was really cool because Sam was working on
16:59
Speaker 1: it while we were camping with them. He was sitting
17:02
Speaker 1: in the camper, you know, putting this together, probably messaging
17:05
Speaker 1: with you to put together the origins of the app.
17:08
Speaker 1: I believe it launched. It was ready when we were
17:12
Speaker 1: ready to go to South America in twenty fifteen, and
17:14
Speaker 1: that revolutionized the way that we traveled through the rest
17:18
Speaker 1: of Central and South America, and it really freed up
17:22
Speaker 1: so much time. I loved reading through blogs. You know,
17:26
Speaker 1: I had my handful of go tos, but it's so
17:29
Speaker 1: much easier to see it on a map and go
17:31
Speaker 1: through it all very quickly and see what, you know,
17:34
Speaker 1: what do I need in terms of a campsite right now?
17:37
Speaker 1: And these are all the options. So yeah, and how
17:41
Speaker 1: is that?
17:42
Speaker 3: I think that was right? Like one of the first
17:45
Speaker 3: big discussions Sam and I had and so funny because
17:48
Speaker 3: like we didn't really have messaging, Like we just wrote
17:50
Speaker 3: each other emails that are like five pages long. Like
17:54
Speaker 3: that's like the essays that went back and forth about
17:57
Speaker 3: the simplest things. But you know, we said, Okay, it
17:59
Speaker 3: has to work offline, like internet access is not prevalent. Yes,
18:03
Speaker 3: people need this, and it has the work offline. And
18:05
Speaker 3: the second thing was that everything needs to be updateable,
18:09
Speaker 3: and that was the big problem with the blogs, is
18:11
Speaker 3: like campsites closed all the time, where stopped allowing vehicles
18:14
Speaker 3: or stopped having Wi Fi, which was like our nemesis.
18:18
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, that.
18:22
Speaker 1: Such an invaluable tool and it's been so fun to
18:26
Speaker 1: see it change over time. What were some other priorities
18:30
Speaker 1: that you had when you were first putting it together?
18:33
Speaker 1: And I guess my follow up question is did you
18:37
Speaker 1: start emailing a bunch of people that you know? Like
18:40
Speaker 1: how did you get everybody involved with crowdsourceing like locations
18:43
Speaker 1: for that spreadsheet? Originally?
18:47
Speaker 3: So initially we just went to the people we knew,
18:50
Speaker 3: the bloggers that we knew, and then said, okay, look
18:54
Speaker 3: we'll do all the work, but can we just take
18:56
Speaker 3: from your website, your data and plug it in. And
18:59
Speaker 3: then we had a couple other people join us, because
19:01
Speaker 3: once those first nineteen hundred places like that was the
19:05
Speaker 3: Pan American and you know, in the beginning, I was
19:08
Speaker 3: totally content to be like, no, let's just keep this
19:10
Speaker 3: north Central and South America. And Sam was like, well,
19:14
Speaker 3: why why wouldn't we do the world? M oh good point,
19:19
Speaker 3: I guess we better just add all the other countries.
19:21
Speaker 3: And so then it became okay, wait, there's a massive
19:24
Speaker 3: overlanding crowd in Europe and in Africa and you know,
19:29
Speaker 3: Central Asia. So a lot of people join us said hey,
19:32
Speaker 3: I have this list, can I can you add it?
19:34
Speaker 3: Or we had a volunteer, Fabian that joined us and
19:38
Speaker 3: he just was like, I know more people, I know
19:40
Speaker 3: more places. Can I help you guys? And we're like, yeah,
19:42
Speaker 3: just you find the list and we'll put them in.
19:45
Speaker 3: But that really only lasted about maybe about a year,
19:49
Speaker 3: and then we got in the hands of enough people
19:52
Speaker 3: on the road where was no longer worth it to
19:55
Speaker 3: bulk ad lists because they were all duplicates, right, or
19:59
Speaker 3: predominant duplicate. So we just like, you know, I don't
20:03
Speaker 3: think Instagram was not a thing then, so it was
20:05
Speaker 3: really just Facebook and Expedition Portal was, you know, a
20:08
Speaker 3: huge part of this. There was a review and a
20:10
Speaker 3: post done, then the word just got out. We just
20:13
Speaker 3: sort of let it grow and started working on all
20:18
Speaker 3: the other problems that come with growth.
20:19
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, tell me more about so you got you
20:24
Speaker 1: got you and Sam founding it, and then you have
20:29
Speaker 1: contributors who have populated so many databases and added to
20:38
Speaker 1: the infrastructure. You have a moderator team. Tell me a
20:41
Speaker 1: bit about how the team has grown and what it
20:44
Speaker 1: looks like today.
20:47
Speaker 3: So like when it started, it was me and Sam
20:51
Speaker 3: and then a handful of contributors like people like like
20:53
Speaker 3: you that were beta testing and adding, and then contributors grew,
20:58
Speaker 3: and then we realized we need to moderate, Like there
21:01
Speaker 3: has to be a way to make sure there's not
21:03
Speaker 3: malicious stuff happening, illegal stuff happening, or just mistakes and
21:07
Speaker 3: bugs in the app, which was far more likely. So
21:10
Speaker 3: we built this system of tasks that you know, whenever
21:14
Speaker 3: somebody made a change, it made a task and we
21:16
Speaker 3: could review it. Or whenever the system detected a duplicate,
21:19
Speaker 3: it made a task and we could review it. And
21:22
Speaker 3: it's funny because we built this system that you could
21:24
Speaker 3: assign tasks to multiple moderators, and it probably went five
21:29
Speaker 3: years before we ever used that. Like there was only
21:31
Speaker 3: ever one person doing tasks like me for the first
21:34
Speaker 3: couple of years. And then we had another volunteer, Tony Lee,
21:37
Speaker 3: the world's grumpiest Overlander, but he came and help us,
21:40
Speaker 3: saved our butt for a couple of years, and then yeah,
21:44
Speaker 3: we had again, people just kept coming in volunteers. Yan
21:48
Speaker 3: and Bjorn, two Dutch guys that also famous Overlanders, came
21:53
Speaker 3: in and were helping Tony, and then we started picking
21:56
Speaker 3: up and it was like, Okay, one person can't do
21:58
Speaker 3: this anymore. So the team just sort of grew and
22:01
Speaker 3: then we realized, well, crap, like nobody ever wrote down
22:05
Speaker 3: what the criteria is to accept a new place, like
22:09
Speaker 3: what's our rules here, guys, And so we spent this
22:14
Speaker 3: immense amount of time just discussing what do we allow
22:17
Speaker 3: and what don't we allow. We built this criteria which
22:21
Speaker 3: is the foundations of so much we do today. So
22:25
Speaker 3: that team eventually we started using tasks again, and now
22:28
Speaker 3: we have a team of probably twenty moderators and awesomely,
22:31
Speaker 3: they are all now paid, which is running on volunteer blood,
22:35
Speaker 3: sweat and tears for a decade. To finally be able
22:38
Speaker 3: to say to thank our moderators with cash is a
22:41
Speaker 3: great thing. Yeah. And our developer team, you know, it
22:45
Speaker 3: was sam for forever, but then we started slowly getting
22:49
Speaker 3: volunteers into help. And one of our big massive problems
22:53
Speaker 3: we noticed kind of about five years in was that
22:55
Speaker 3: our initial iPhone Android app is just built on a
22:59
Speaker 3: platform that kind of died. It's like nobody people are
23:04
Speaker 3: asking us like, hey, I want to help make your
23:05
Speaker 3: app better. What's it built in? Oh, it's built in
23:08
Speaker 3: Zamor And then they're like what the is zamor? Right,
23:11
Speaker 3: that's the correct answer, and it's dead. So we knew
23:14
Speaker 3: like we have to rebuild this. We have to start
23:16
Speaker 3: from the ground up. So we brought on developers to
23:19
Speaker 3: help us, and now you know, finally have income, so
23:23
Speaker 3: a little bit. So we've got a paid kind of
23:26
Speaker 3: developer team, which is awesome and I'm you know, ten
23:30
Speaker 3: years of tech debt to work through, but right, so
23:34
Speaker 3: so yeah, now it's like it's fantastic. We have a
23:36
Speaker 3: solid moderator team, We have a couple of people helping
23:39
Speaker 3: us michaela who's helping us with tech support and social media,
23:44
Speaker 3: who's just the most amazing from and several developers. So
23:48
Speaker 3: the team has like gotten a lot bigger, but it's
23:51
Speaker 3: still still just awesome people that love overlanding and just
23:55
Speaker 3: want to help people find a place to sleep at night.
23:59
Speaker 2: And especial thanks to on X for their support of
24:02
Speaker 2: this week's podcast. Going further on your adventures is about
24:06
Speaker 2: having the right tools. The on X off road apps
24:10
Speaker 2: intuitive maps make it easy to find trails and disperse camping,
24:14
Speaker 2: and their offline maps give you full GPS navigation capabilities
24:19
Speaker 2: even without cell coverage. Personally, I use on X for
24:23
Speaker 2: every trip in North America because I always know who
24:27
Speaker 2: owns or manages the land that I'm traveling on. It
24:30
Speaker 2: also makes for a reliable track recorder and I can
24:34
Speaker 2: filter the trails based on the full drive or motorcycle
24:37
Speaker 2: that I'm using. On my most recent trip in the Quartermaster,
24:41
Speaker 2: I use the on X to find trails near where
24:44
Speaker 2: I was staying in Joshua Tree. I use the difficulty
24:47
Speaker 2: rating and the elevation to determine which trails are best
24:51
Speaker 2: suited to the vehicle and the weather. Thanks again, on
24:55
Speaker 2: X for your support of the Ovalangoural podcast.
25:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say it. There's so much going
25:04
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes, Like when we just open up
25:07
Speaker 1: I Overlander and we're like, Oh, I need a place
25:08
Speaker 1: to stay. What works for me? Oh, look at all
25:11
Speaker 1: these options. This is so great, but we never think
25:14
Speaker 1: of the people that are behind this big project that
25:18
Speaker 1: seems so I don't know. I wouldn't say like a
25:21
Speaker 1: humble project, because it's it's very helpful and there are
25:26
Speaker 1: so there's so much going on and having to check
25:29
Speaker 1: in to those spots, And one thing I have seen
25:33
Speaker 1: in updates is like, is this spot an okay spot
25:38
Speaker 1: to sleep? Like, is it a legal place to sleep?
25:41
Speaker 1: Is it somewhere you should or shouldn't be sleep? You know?
25:44
Speaker 1: Is it on in a national park or you know? Yeah,
25:47
Speaker 1: I'm assuming the moderators are the ones that are going
25:50
Speaker 1: through to see and it can be tricky in some areas,
25:53
Speaker 1: so I'm assuming there's research involved in that. So yeah,
25:57
Speaker 1: tell me a bit more.
25:58
Speaker 3: About that awesome thing. So glad you're bringing this up
26:01
Speaker 3: because we were horrible at this and I apologized to
26:05
Speaker 3: our users in the environment for just being totally ignorant
26:10
Speaker 3: about the way I overlander was. What essentially happened is
26:16
Speaker 3: our policy was always okay, if a place is illegal,
26:18
Speaker 3: delete it. If a place is damaging the environment, delete it.
26:21
Speaker 3: But we didn't have the tools to detect these places right,
26:27
Speaker 3: and we didn't make it known like people, if you
26:30
Speaker 3: had in the legal place, we're going to delete it.
26:32
Speaker 3: And so we got in this vicious cycle where somebody
26:34
Speaker 3: would add a wild camp, it was then a week
26:37
Speaker 3: later to be marked illegal and it would get deleted,
26:40
Speaker 3: and then the next week somebody would come back and
26:42
Speaker 3: camp there again and add it back. So that's a
26:45
Speaker 3: stupid cycle that went on way too long. But we
26:48
Speaker 3: fixed it, and we went further than that. We wrote
26:51
Speaker 3: this responsibility packed ioverlander dot com slash packed, which essentially
26:57
Speaker 3: is a commitment to all of you to say we're
27:00
Speaker 3: done messing around, like if it's we stand for places
27:05
Speaker 3: that respect local people, cultures and environment, and if that
27:08
Speaker 3: place is not being respectful, it's gone. And also helps
27:12
Speaker 3: overlanders understand like, hey, if you're camping in a spot
27:15
Speaker 3: and that environment feels fragile like a meadow, this is
27:20
Speaker 3: the thing Like, as you're in this beautiful metal, you
27:22
Speaker 3: want to share it with a world. Just imagine what
27:24
Speaker 3: it's going to be like if ten more rigs show
27:26
Speaker 3: up there, is it still going to be a beautiful meadow?
27:29
Speaker 3: And if the answer is no, close your app. Enjoy
27:32
Speaker 3: the meadow. Don't edit to I over hindered. Please please
27:35
Speaker 3: don't edit to I Overlinder. We got to protect our
27:39
Speaker 3: world and we got to protect these places, and a
27:42
Speaker 3: big part of that is don't put it in the app,
27:45
Speaker 3: don't share it. It's like, it's okay, let's make sure
27:49
Speaker 3: Overlanding is here for everybody in the future. And so
27:52
Speaker 3: we're really building toward this, and our moderator team is
27:54
Speaker 3: really working a lot harder. We have a lot better
27:56
Speaker 3: tools to detect places that are illegal and flag them
28:00
Speaker 3: as such that we never had.
28:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing, I'm glad to hear it. I think it's
28:07
Speaker 1: hard in the beginning, right because you don't know the
28:09
Speaker 1: You're like, we just want to share this information with
28:11
Speaker 1: overlanders and over time, I mean, this app has been
28:16
Speaker 1: out for over a decade now. You can't see into
28:18
Speaker 1: the future, so you don't know how popular this spot
28:22
Speaker 1: will get. And I like that. It's like putting the
28:24
Speaker 1: responsibility on the overland traveler as well, because I have
28:29
Speaker 1: heard and I would say personally, like I love using
28:32
Speaker 1: I overlander. I don't use it all the time for
28:34
Speaker 1: every single spot that I stay, but there is or
28:39
Speaker 1: was this narrative that like, oh, I overland is just
28:41
Speaker 1: like making it so everybody's funneling and doing the exact
28:44
Speaker 1: same thing down the Pan American Highway and all of
28:48
Speaker 1: these spots are getting overcrowded.
28:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, but and then my response to that is like
28:52
Speaker 3: close the.
28:53
Speaker 1: App right right, carry on exactly. Yeah, so what you
29:00
Speaker 1: turning it around and saying, you know, you can take
29:03
Speaker 1: responsibility for where you can't and how you treat the
29:07
Speaker 1: those those places as well.
29:08
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, well, I mean it's shared, Like I
29:11
Speaker 3: don't want to put this all on travelers because you
29:13
Speaker 3: got us our responsibilities in this too that I totally admit.
29:17
Speaker 3: We were spend a very long amount of time ignoring
29:20
Speaker 3: and a lot of that was lack of resources. And
29:23
Speaker 3: we're fixing it and we're working super hard at like
29:27
Speaker 3: just protecting everything, I mean, not just the environment, respecting
29:31
Speaker 3: what locals say, like and it's probably out hours every
29:36
Speaker 3: week just answering emails like National Park rangers, the National
29:40
Speaker 3: Park service for Tiro del Fuego was like emailing us
29:43
Speaker 3: like in Spanish, Hey guys, this is totally illegal, get
29:47
Speaker 3: rid of this, like okay, sorry, Like of course, we
29:50
Speaker 3: want to protect national parks around the world, and just
29:53
Speaker 3: monitoring that is it's an immense amount of work, but
29:56
Speaker 3: we are committed to doing whatever we have to do
29:58
Speaker 3: to get resources in there. Most travelers do it innocently.
30:02
Speaker 3: They don't add a spot. Yeah it's illegal, They just
30:05
Speaker 3: sure and they don't get caught, and then it's like, okay,
30:09
Speaker 3: we gotta we gotta work towards something better here.
30:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's such a good point. I would say, like
30:14
Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine percent of us do it accidentally. Yeah,
30:17
Speaker 1: and you're you're in a place maybe you don't you're
30:19
Speaker 1: not familiar with, or you don't understand, or yeah, you're
30:22
Speaker 1: not doing it intentionally, but working together as a community
30:25
Speaker 1: to make our impact better. So I love that. What
30:29
Speaker 1: are some ways that you guys are doing those things? Now?
30:34
Speaker 1: You're saying you have more resources now to be able
30:35
Speaker 1: to to move in that direction.
30:39
Speaker 3: So a couple of different things that we've done. The
30:42
Speaker 3: biggest impact is adding a category that is overnight prohibited.
30:46
Speaker 3: So whenever a place is like, Okay, you definitely cannot
30:50
Speaker 3: camp here, it is illegal, we add a pin that
30:52
Speaker 3: says it's illegal to camp here. It never goes away
30:54
Speaker 3: and everybody can see it. And we don't do that
30:56
Speaker 3: on every like not every single parking piece of private
31:00
Speaker 3: property in the world. But if it's a place where
31:01
Speaker 3: an overlander is likely to try and camp, you know,
31:05
Speaker 3: like a national park. Right, there's a lot of national
31:07
Speaker 3: parks and some of them allow disperse camping and some
31:09
Speaker 3: of them don't. So if they don't, we put a
31:11
Speaker 3: pin at the entrance of the park says you can't.
31:14
Speaker 3: Wild camping is illegal, you know, established areas.
31:16
Speaker 1: Only.
31:17
Speaker 3: The other thing we do is we flag. Our term
31:21
Speaker 3: is flag check ins. But we review check ins for
31:24
Speaker 3: keywords like, you know, to make sure, okay, is there
31:28
Speaker 3: somebody writes no camping sign and a check in, we
31:31
Speaker 3: get an alert that says it's another task, Hey, is
31:33
Speaker 3: this is it illegal to camp here? Go review it?
31:37
Speaker 3: See did someone see a no camping sign and forget
31:39
Speaker 3: to close the place. So there's a lot just to
31:42
Speaker 3: look for keywords that indicate to us, hey, this could
31:46
Speaker 3: be a problem, this place could be illegal.
31:48
Speaker 1: Excellent, Yeah, I'm thinking of places in Europe as well
31:51
Speaker 1: where they're signs saying no camping allowed or yeah, in
31:56
Speaker 1: Banff National Park, they're really strict about that. Over where
31:59
Speaker 1: we are, Yeah.
32:00
Speaker 3: We have the we have like BAMP like BAMP rangers
32:03
Speaker 3: are like on our speed dial, but definitely like I
32:08
Speaker 3: mean working with national parks of mangers and we're like
32:10
Speaker 3: we now have a dedicated person on email all the
32:12
Speaker 3: time that it's like somebody writes about in the legal place,
32:15
Speaker 3: we got twenty four hours to reply to them and
32:17
Speaker 3: get rid of it, Like it's not a thing. Well,
32:20
Speaker 3: there's nobody available to do emails this week, so it's
32:23
Speaker 3: going to have to wait, you know, like like you
32:26
Speaker 3: can't find volunteers to like reply to emails. That's it's
32:29
Speaker 3: a drag.
32:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you're touching on something that I'd like to
32:33
Speaker 1: circle around to because one of the things that has
32:38
Speaker 1: come up recently is monetization, and you've given a few
32:41
Speaker 1: examples already of how that monetization is helping make the
32:44
Speaker 1: app better and helping volunteers be compensated for the hours
32:49
Speaker 1: and hours they're putting in. So maybe if you could
32:52
Speaker 1: just share a little bit about the progression of the app,
32:55
Speaker 1: because you know, there's free for a long time and
32:59
Speaker 1: there's some change that have happened in the last little while.
33:01
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, it's painful. I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry
33:04
Speaker 3: about the money thing, Like I know it hurts. It
33:08
Speaker 3: was free forever. I wanted to be free forever. That
33:11
Speaker 3: was like, that was it. That was like, we never
33:15
Speaker 3: started this to make money off of it, and we're
33:17
Speaker 3: not in it for that. But we hit a wall
33:21
Speaker 3: where like shut it down or find a way to
33:25
Speaker 3: make income. Honestly, Sam and I waffled there, like I
33:28
Speaker 3: am tired, he is tired. All our volunteers are like
33:32
Speaker 3: got real jobs. And when you have the quantity of
33:36
Speaker 3: just outdated systems that we had, I mean, an app
33:39
Speaker 3: that could not be updnated, it was start over right.
33:43
Speaker 3: It was such we're just in this like rock and
33:46
Speaker 3: a hard place. And it was like, well, so we
33:48
Speaker 3: could sell out, we could bring on a whole bunch
33:51
Speaker 3: of advertisers, we could like allow owners to promote places.
33:55
Speaker 3: And this is a big debate we had, like well
33:58
Speaker 3: we could just let campgrounds out their places. But then
34:01
Speaker 3: we thought, well, this is this is no longer an
34:03
Speaker 3: app by overlanders for overlanders, this is an app by campgrounds.
34:08
Speaker 3: Then this is an app by whoever can pay us
34:10
Speaker 3: the most to promote, and we didn't want that. And
34:13
Speaker 3: we came to this point that the best thing is
34:15
Speaker 3: that overlanders contribute to the app, and we do as
34:18
Speaker 3: much as possible to keep a free version, but that
34:21
Speaker 3: there has to be some way, and someone sent up
34:23
Speaker 3: to upgrade. So we built the new app. We launched
34:26
Speaker 3: the new app, and like, all I can say is
34:28
Speaker 3: like guys were working on it. We know the new
34:29
Speaker 3: app's not perfect. We know the pricing is like all
34:32
Speaker 3: over the place, and we're really working hard to fix it.
34:35
Speaker 3: But it had to happen. Like the other option was
34:38
Speaker 3: shut it down right, which I think would have been worse,
34:42
Speaker 3: But I don't know. Sometimes I come to my desk
34:44
Speaker 3: and I see the hate emails and I'm like, maybe
34:46
Speaker 3: I just should have flipped that switch.
34:48
Speaker 1: No, don't do it. But also mental health is important.
34:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's okay. I got a lot of coffee and
34:57
Speaker 3: a lot of long looks and some like people. Really
35:00
Speaker 3: it's so the dichotomy is just crazy. Like I some
35:04
Speaker 3: days I just can't handle it. It's like I get
35:05
Speaker 3: five emails from just people saying this is amazing, thank
35:08
Speaker 3: you so much, here's all this stuff. Could you please
35:10
Speaker 3: work on fixing these things, and then we get like
35:13
Speaker 3: scathing reviews like how could you charge us? We did
35:16
Speaker 3: all this. And one other thing I'll say is when
35:20
Speaker 3: we launched, we we hold some lists of people who
35:24
Speaker 3: were like the biggest contributors, and it's like, I don't know,
35:27
Speaker 3: thirty five hundred and four thousand people contributors bloggers while
35:31
Speaker 3: we call them blogs users in Ioverlander, and we emailed
35:34
Speaker 3: all these people and gave them free upgrades, like thank
35:36
Speaker 3: you for building us. Here's your free upgrade, right, but
35:40
Speaker 3: like only like twenty five percent of you have replied
35:43
Speaker 3: to that email. So like, if you check your check
35:47
Speaker 3: your junk folder, check your email, it came from admin
35:50
Speaker 3: at Ioverlander. If you don't see the email and you
35:52
Speaker 3: contributed a bunch of places, send us an email and
35:55
Speaker 3: we will go look you up. Like we have gotten
35:57
Speaker 3: like these hate emails from people, and it's like, dudes,
36:01
Speaker 3: you have a free upgrade for life, right, well check
36:04
Speaker 3: your email. It's cool. Yeah, And we are working very
36:07
Speaker 3: very hard because one thing that we don't do now,
36:09
Speaker 3: that's A huge problem is people that are continuing to contribute.
36:14
Speaker 3: Like absolutely, if you're on the road and you're regularly contributing,
36:18
Speaker 3: you should be we shouldn't be charging you for the app.
36:21
Speaker 3: We totally get that. Like when you're building us and
36:25
Speaker 3: you're building our data, yeah, you shouldn't be paying for
36:27
Speaker 3: an upgrade. But the system is really difficult to figure
36:30
Speaker 3: out because the moment we say hey, if you add
36:33
Speaker 3: twenty check ins, you get a free upgrade, then everybody
36:36
Speaker 3: adds garbage and we don't we don't know how to
36:39
Speaker 3: deal with that. And so we're we are building this,
36:42
Speaker 3: we are working on rewarding people that contribute. It's a
36:45
Speaker 3: huge priority for me, as well as fixing and adjusting pricing.
36:49
Speaker 3: Like I'm sorry all of Europe the prices are they
36:51
Speaker 3: added that and so like all the prices are like
36:54
Speaker 3: twenty thirty percent higher and we have to go fix it,
36:56
Speaker 3: and we're working on it. That's what I can say.
36:59
Speaker 3: It's painful, but we we just really got stuck between
37:02
Speaker 3: a rock and a hard place and had to rebuild
37:05
Speaker 3: so much. And we didn't we didn't want I Overlander
37:08
Speaker 3: to be run by advertisers or to be run by campgrounds.
37:12
Speaker 3: We just we wanted the income to come from overlanders
37:15
Speaker 3: so that overlanders could continue to dictate what we should
37:19
Speaker 3: do and build.
37:20
Speaker 1: Wow. I wanted to say thank you for continuing to
37:24
Speaker 1: do what you do and everybody involved with I Overlander,
37:27
Speaker 1: you know, we really appreciate you Allso check those junk
37:31
Speaker 1: those junk messages, and Jessica and Sam and the whole
37:34
Speaker 1: team will continue to go through. There's what I imagine
37:37
Speaker 1: is a giant to do list. So yeah, like any
37:40
Speaker 1: like any app, right, like any app? Sure, yeah, but
37:44
Speaker 1: it's cool.
37:44
Speaker 3: I mean we've done stuff. We've done more, fixed more things,
37:47
Speaker 3: and built more stuff in the last year than and
37:49
Speaker 3: dare I say in the last ten years before that.
37:52
Speaker 3: It's it's awesome what we're doing and the things that
37:56
Speaker 3: I just want to give everybody a peek, like into
37:58
Speaker 3: our discord chat, Like the idea is this guy like
38:01
Speaker 3: last night, like ten o'clock, he's just sent me and
38:03
Speaker 3: he was like, have you guys ever thought about adding rooting?
38:06
Speaker 3: We could totally do this. It's so like, look, it's
38:09
Speaker 3: all open source. Okay, cool, Yeah, it's on the list.
38:11
Speaker 3: Let's let's do it.
38:13
Speaker 1: Amazing Yeah yeah, yeah, So the latest version is Ioverlander
38:18
Speaker 1: Too yep okay, available in the App Store and play Store.
38:23
Speaker 1: And is it a new app or is it a
38:25
Speaker 1: kind of like a refresh of it?
38:28
Speaker 3: Is it's a whole new app, so we essentially on
38:30
Speaker 3: the App Store playstore. Now there are two apps. There's
38:33
Speaker 3: I Overlander Legacy, which is the old app still works
38:37
Speaker 3: and you can keep using it if you don't like
38:38
Speaker 3: the new app, that's cool. And the new app is
38:41
Speaker 3: I Overlander Too, which is grounds up, rebuilt. It's the
38:44
Speaker 3: same functionality, but there's there's new stuff, there's favorites. The
38:47
Speaker 3: new app is like the UI is available in Spanish
38:50
Speaker 3: and Portuguese to help all our friends in Central and
38:52
Speaker 3: South America.
38:53
Speaker 1: Oh wow, like Brazil.
38:55
Speaker 3: By the way, we love you Brazil. I'm sorry we
38:57
Speaker 3: haven't had Portuguese support for a long time. Please keep
38:59
Speaker 3: it in your place. Is do it in Portuguese, that's
39:01
Speaker 3: cool with us. There's so much there's a lot of
39:04
Speaker 3: little stuff in there, like dark mode just in case
39:08
Speaker 3: you want to look for a spot to camp and
39:10
Speaker 3: like not have blaring white light in your eyes head
39:14
Speaker 3: at night. Yeah, there's just you know, a lot of
39:19
Speaker 3: improvements on the new app. Of way better UI. A
39:22
Speaker 3: lot of stuff that on the old app that is
39:25
Speaker 3: just really really broken, and we can't fix the old app,
39:28
Speaker 3: and the old app we're gonna leave it there as
39:31
Speaker 3: long as we can. But there are things like this
39:35
Speaker 3: year August like Zamer and shut down like in May,
39:38
Speaker 3: and then the program we could work around program shut
39:41
Speaker 3: down August thirty first, so that app cannot We can't
39:44
Speaker 3: change it, we can't do anything with it. And there's
39:46
Speaker 3: gonna be a point, just full disclosure for everybody out
39:49
Speaker 3: there where that app is. It either we have to
39:52
Speaker 3: shut it down or Google or Apple's gonna pull it
39:55
Speaker 3: for us just for violating too many, too many things.
39:59
Speaker 3: So eventually we will move all the way to Ioverlander too.
40:03
Speaker 3: We're hoping to get everything fixed before we have to
40:05
Speaker 3: do that, so it's less painful the transition, work through
40:08
Speaker 3: some of these big issues that we have. But new
40:10
Speaker 3: app does cool stuff. At least check it out and yeah,
40:13
Speaker 3: give it a run, and then you know, send us
40:14
Speaker 3: an email if you got feedback or you want things fixed.
40:17
Speaker 3: We're here, we're listening. It doesn't always happen right away,
40:19
Speaker 3: but you know, I believe in to do list. We
40:21
Speaker 3: get through it, and we have an awesome developer team
40:24
Speaker 3: that's just plugging away and stuff.
40:27
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things to add is like where
40:29
Speaker 1: to get propane, you know, yeah abroad. I like love that.
40:33
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we're it's very it's still populated.
40:37
Speaker 1: Now we'll add like special spots maybe to camp, but
40:40
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff now that we're adding is
40:42
Speaker 1: like practical the things that we are going or the
40:44
Speaker 1: other one that we like to add is like long
40:48
Speaker 1: term storage facilities. That's my other one that's like super favorite.
40:52
Speaker 1: If we've left the truck somewhere for a specific amount
40:55
Speaker 1: of time and they've just been awesome there. That stuff's
40:58
Speaker 1: not as easy to find. I mean, it's it's definitely findable,
41:02
Speaker 1: but to have it in the appice is really helpful.
41:05
Speaker 3: So yeah, that kind of stuff, especially in I mean,
41:07
Speaker 3: we really it's funny because we really started with this
41:09
Speaker 3: idea of long distance international overlanders, right like Pan American travelers.
41:14
Speaker 3: And one thing that's really funny is that kind of
41:18
Speaker 3: with COVID, and even before COVID, like escalating housing prices,
41:22
Speaker 3: van life revolution took over, and so it's funny because
41:26
Speaker 3: fifty percent of our users are in the US, like
41:30
Speaker 3: they're just traveling around in the US trying to find
41:33
Speaker 3: a place to camp. That's not like a one hundred
41:35
Speaker 3: and twenty dollars koa, right, and it's it's the dichotomy
41:40
Speaker 3: is quite funny because you know, like if you add
41:42
Speaker 3: a place with showers and you are like trying to
41:45
Speaker 3: add it, like one of the options is bucket showers,
41:48
Speaker 3: Like yeah, everybody, we get these, Like what the heck
41:51
Speaker 3: is a bucket shower? Like, Oh, don't worry about it,
41:53
Speaker 3: just go to Africa.
41:54
Speaker 1: Oh, that's so great.
42:00
Speaker 2: I also wanted to take a brief moment to thank
42:03
Speaker 2: all of you for listening to the Overland Journal podcast.
42:07
Speaker 2: By listening to this podcast and subscribing to the Ovalan
42:10
Speaker 2: Journal magazine, you're supporting our employee own and veteran owned business.
42:15
Speaker 2: Impartial reviews and in depth content like this would not
42:19
Speaker 2: be possible without your support. If you enjoy the podcast,
42:23
Speaker 2: I think you'd really love the print magazine as well.
42:26
Speaker 2: And one hundred percent of that subscription price goes back
42:29
Speaker 2: into creating the content like you're listening to right now.
42:34
Speaker 2: And as a special thank you for your loyalty, we're
42:36
Speaker 2: giving twenty percent off any subscription, and that even includes
42:40
Speaker 2: our special lifetime subscription which includes numerous lifetime only benefits.
42:47
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42:49
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42:55
Speaker 2: podcast at checkout, and I'll give you twenty percent off.
42:58
Speaker 2: I sincerely appreciate your support.
43:01
Speaker 1: So I bet you're seeing some spots popping up, you know,
43:04
Speaker 1: in Africa, across the across the world. It sounds like,
43:08
Speaker 1: I can't remember what you said earlier at the amount
43:10
Speaker 1: of spots that have been added or that are in
43:13
Speaker 1: there right now.
43:15
Speaker 3: Fifty thousand about is where we're at. We are like
43:19
Speaker 3: all but four countries. I think would somebody just go
43:22
Speaker 3: add like the Vatican City as a tourist attraction, so
43:25
Speaker 3: we love that country like I think that. I know
43:29
Speaker 3: obviously you can't cancer there, but all but like a
43:32
Speaker 3: few island countries, we have points. But some area is
43:35
Speaker 3: way better than others, like Australia. Just just if you
43:38
Speaker 3: use our app in Australia, that's awesome, but there's better
43:40
Speaker 3: options there like wiki Camper are doing a great job.
43:43
Speaker 3: Use their stuff. Oh interesting interesting, Yeah, And Europe A
43:48
Speaker 3: park for night is in Europe and they also if
43:50
Speaker 3: you're if you're in a ground tent, maybe not, but
43:52
Speaker 3: if you're in like a small RV, they have awesome places.
43:56
Speaker 3: Like it's we aren't the only one out there, especially
43:59
Speaker 3: in the worldwide You.
44:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, we use park for night inner Europe a lot.
44:04
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I was like, I need a park for
44:05
Speaker 1: night break, like I'm on this thing, so often have
44:10
Speaker 1: a park for night hangover a deal break.
44:14
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, well okay, so right now we're at three
44:17
Speaker 3: hundreds and eight thousand places, but that's the total number
44:21
Speaker 3: that's been added, and the actual active number is far
44:26
Speaker 3: less because of duplicates and deleted places. Right, two hundred
44:30
Speaker 3: and forty four thousand, So sixty thousand places have been
44:35
Speaker 3: we were either duplicates or deleted since we started, which
44:37
Speaker 3: is pretty like twenty percent of our database gone just
44:42
Speaker 3: out of updates. And that's like the corrections we get
44:46
Speaker 3: and the quantity of people making edits to places and
44:48
Speaker 3: what changes is It's insane how much how much place
44:52
Speaker 3: has change all the time? Close, open, close, open, Wow.
44:56
Speaker 1: What keeps you going? Like why are you so passionate
45:02
Speaker 1: about sharing these places and keeping eye Overlander running and
45:07
Speaker 1: your commitment to getting through those negative emails. Obviously the
45:11
Speaker 1: positive ones help, but what drives you to keep this
45:15
Speaker 1: whole thing running.
45:17
Speaker 3: Well, like mostly espresso. So really, I like the world
45:22
Speaker 3: is going to be a better place if people leave
45:25
Speaker 3: their country. That's how that's like. And that's a little
45:28
Speaker 3: bit eye Overlander, but a lot made like go see
45:31
Speaker 3: how the rest of the world lives. Go experience someplace new.
45:34
Speaker 3: And it doesn't even have to be leaving the country,
45:36
Speaker 3: like leave your state. Just go. You don't have to
45:39
Speaker 3: have a pile of money, you don't have to stay
45:42
Speaker 3: at the ritz. You can do it on with whatever
45:45
Speaker 3: you've got with it doesn't matter. I mean, take a
45:48
Speaker 3: twenty five year old Forerunner and sleep in a ground
45:50
Speaker 3: ten it's doable. Buy a good you know, like sleeping
45:54
Speaker 3: mat because the ground is hard. We just we just
45:58
Speaker 3: want people to go explore the and we don't want
46:02
Speaker 3: that I don't have a place to sleep tonight to
46:04
Speaker 3: be what makes you stay home?
46:07
Speaker 1: Right?
46:08
Speaker 3: And yeah, Overlanders are this amazing community of people that
46:12
Speaker 3: are just caring and sharing and they want to give
46:16
Speaker 3: information back and help the next person that's gonna be there,
46:19
Speaker 3: and they just need a tool to do it. And
46:22
Speaker 3: when our tools break, that sharing breaks and that sucks,
46:25
Speaker 3: like you know, not that it's all less, like there's
46:27
Speaker 3: a million ways to share, and it's it's not all.
46:29
Speaker 3: It's not all in our world. And that's the other
46:32
Speaker 3: thing that keeps me going is we have this tool
46:35
Speaker 3: in I Overlander to moderate images. The absolutely the best
46:39
Speaker 3: job at I Overlander is to open the images moderation page,
46:44
Speaker 3: which is like one hundred images at a time, the
46:47
Speaker 3: most recent ones added. It is the most inspiring thing.
46:51
Speaker 3: Goo get like one hundred and then like you do
46:54
Speaker 3: that page and then you get another one hundred images
46:56
Speaker 3: and it's around the world and it's absolutely we'll take
47:02
Speaker 3: your breath away the places people go and the things
47:04
Speaker 3: that are happening, and also the seriously weird stuff that
47:07
Speaker 3: please don't taking because of dirty toilets. It really really
47:11
Speaker 3: ruined my days, like thetive moment, why am I here? God?
47:15
Speaker 3: Not only the dirty toy.
47:18
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I want to ask you too. One of
47:21
Speaker 1: the most hilarious things about any camping or overland app
47:26
Speaker 1: is like the weirdest camp spots that are put in there,
47:29
Speaker 1: you know, like there's one buy it, like an abandoned
47:32
Speaker 1: playground or at a cemetery, what are some of the
47:35
Speaker 1: strangest spots or photos you've seen.
47:40
Speaker 3: I should have put a call out to my team
47:41
Speaker 3: about this, because we actually we have on our check group,
47:44
Speaker 3: we have a channel that's just random and people whenever
47:47
Speaker 3: moderators find something weird, they put it on there. So
47:50
Speaker 3: much there's like a just came out as like a
47:54
Speaker 3: some type of palace or tourist area in the Middle
47:58
Speaker 3: East and the whole building is shaped like a giant spider.
48:02
Speaker 3: Oh my god, this is just a few weeks ago.
48:04
Speaker 3: There's a place somebody I can't even think, like, there's
48:08
Speaker 3: so many weird things, like the place that there's a
48:11
Speaker 3: toy store in Lapause in Bolivia. No, it's in Uni.
48:15
Speaker 3: It's right before you go on the salt plans where
48:17
Speaker 3: you can buy small figurines like t rexes, so you
48:20
Speaker 3: can take those hilarious photos in the saltpan of like
48:23
Speaker 3: a t rex eating your car. Yes, like that's it, Like, yes,
48:28
Speaker 3: this is the thing that's super critical. We need a
48:30
Speaker 3: shopping category just for this point. That is so good.
48:35
Speaker 1: I love the creativity there.
48:37
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and what overlhinters add like go through the
48:40
Speaker 3: other category. It's hilarious. I love that review, it's like
48:43
Speaker 3: what why. And sometimes we see places and we're like,
48:46
Speaker 3: what is the importance of this place? And then we
48:49
Speaker 3: email the person and there's this like like three page
48:51
Speaker 3: story as to why you might need that. Like, Okay,
48:54
Speaker 3: that's cool, it can stay there. Probably that's a problem
48:56
Speaker 3: in that part of the world. We didn't know.
48:58
Speaker 1: Yep, very cool. Yeah, it's funny. We would joke with
49:03
Speaker 1: each other, Richard and I would be like, oh, there's
49:05
Speaker 1: another whatever abandoned hospital. Time to put it on I overlander.
49:14
Speaker 3: Fun And the funny thing is we used to get
49:15
Speaker 3: a whole lot of abandoned buildings, and a lot of
49:18
Speaker 3: them we would delete, and then we realized that this
49:21
Speaker 3: is that a lot a lot of them were cyclists
49:24
Speaker 3: just trying to get out of the weather, right, And
49:27
Speaker 3: it was like, Okay, I have a car and a
49:30
Speaker 3: tent and these people have like barely a tent and
49:33
Speaker 3: a bicycle. And so we we had to totally rethink, Okay,
49:37
Speaker 3: how do we support how do we better support cyclists,
49:40
Speaker 3: because like, we're living the posh life in our vehicle,
49:43
Speaker 3: and we did have to restrict it a bit and say, okay,
49:45
Speaker 3: you have to have permission for that abandoned building because otherwise, yeah,
49:48
Speaker 3: there's definitely some some weird stuff people. There's different levels
49:52
Speaker 3: of uncomfortable camping here, and we don't judge where. Whatever
49:56
Speaker 3: you want to do, it's cool, just as long as
49:58
Speaker 3: it's legal and you know, otherwise.
50:01
Speaker 1: Bring me to one of your favorite memories or experiences. Well, overlanding.
50:07
Speaker 3: One of my one of my most amazing moments in
50:11
Speaker 3: not just overlanding, but it leads to Ioverlander as well.
50:14
Speaker 3: Is we were in Peru and we were going from
50:19
Speaker 3: Cusco I think it was Cusco to over the border
50:22
Speaker 3: to Lake titdy Kaka and the drive was like more
50:25
Speaker 3: than we wanted to do in a day because like
50:28
Speaker 3: everybody in our car had like a four hour women
50:30
Speaker 3: we just got grumpy. So it was like, let's just
50:32
Speaker 3: split this drive up. But there was nothing. There was
50:35
Speaker 3: no place to camp. There was It was totally unknown,
50:38
Speaker 3: and we had found like one blog from ten years
50:43
Speaker 3: ago where people said there's a really cool canyon here,
50:45
Speaker 3: check it out, and we thought, okay, let's check out
50:47
Speaker 3: that canyon. Maybe we can camp. And we went there
50:51
Speaker 3: and this absolutely stunning place and we had met kind
50:54
Speaker 3: of a local guy that was there that had a
50:57
Speaker 3: herd of lallamas he was raising, and it was because
51:01
Speaker 3: you know, he was Peruvian, and you know, we're speaking
51:05
Speaker 3: Spanish as a second language. He's speaking Spanish as a
51:07
Speaker 3: second language. With this hilarious conversation where we wanted to
51:10
Speaker 3: know how many lamas do you have? And he kept
51:12
Speaker 3: trying to sell us a lama, telling us how much
51:14
Speaker 3: it cost. But it was this apps, you know, middle
51:17
Speaker 3: of nowhere place. There was no campground inside, but it
51:19
Speaker 3: was a perfect place to pitch a tent out of
51:22
Speaker 3: this world. And we never we never would have stopped there.
51:25
Speaker 3: If you know, this one blog hadn't said there's a
51:27
Speaker 3: canyon here, you never would have known. And what's really
51:31
Speaker 3: incredible is that we added that as a wildcamp on Ioverlander,
51:35
Speaker 3: and this farmer actually turned it into an established campground.
51:39
Speaker 3: And it's not much, but now you have a garbage can,
51:42
Speaker 3: a toilet and a palapa, and it's like everybody goes there.
51:46
Speaker 3: It's like you need a place to stop and there's
51:48
Speaker 3: a stunning canyon and here's a guy that was, you know,
51:51
Speaker 3: trying to sell us a lama for whatever I don't
51:54
Speaker 3: remember the Peruvian currency. Three hundred wing wings who now
51:57
Speaker 3: has us this other source of income just letting people
52:00
Speaker 3: camp and is warm, you know, in the middle of Ohor,
52:03
Speaker 3: which I love. I love that aspect of you know,
52:06
Speaker 3: it's not just about overlanders, it's it's also about bringing
52:10
Speaker 3: overlanders to these communities and giving these communities a way
52:13
Speaker 3: to support us.
52:14
Speaker 1: That is a really a good point. And I was
52:18
Speaker 1: going to say that he also witnessed that in Peru
52:21
Speaker 1: there was one place where this guy had started a
52:26
Speaker 1: campground and more travelers were coming through. You know, I
52:30
Speaker 1: overlander put him on the map. But what he was
52:32
Speaker 1: able to do, similar to that situation you were just
52:34
Speaker 1: talking about, is he slowly started to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade,
52:38
Speaker 1: and eventually you know, he's adding Wi Fi, he's adding
52:41
Speaker 1: better toilets, and you could tell he was just so
52:45
Speaker 1: so stoked to have people from all over the world
52:49
Speaker 1: coming to his place and experiencing the scenery, and he
52:54
Speaker 1: would chat with everybody, and you know, our way of
52:58
Speaker 1: giving back is to pay for those services, and so
53:01
Speaker 1: over time he can keep expanding and making his dream
53:05
Speaker 1: come true. So those are kind of the things that yeah,
53:09
Speaker 1: so great, Like you're yeah, and these are of your
53:13
Speaker 1: heart to think out those things.
53:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and these are the connections that I think
53:18
Speaker 3: just it just makes the world a better place when
53:21
Speaker 3: you know the struggles of other people and when you
53:24
Speaker 3: meet them and see the way they live and see
53:27
Speaker 3: there their surroundings and they get to know you, there
53:30
Speaker 3: is a connection there that makes everybody care about each
53:34
Speaker 3: other a little bit more. And I think that that's
53:36
Speaker 3: really really powerful.
53:39
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. Okay, well, Jessica, I have one more question
53:45
Speaker 1: for you before we wrap up, and that is what
53:47
Speaker 1: is your favorite book?
53:50
Speaker 3: Oh, you're killing me.
53:53
Speaker 1: And stealing the question from Scott Brady because he asks
53:56
Speaker 1: in his podcast episodes people what they favorite book or
54:01
Speaker 1: what their favorite books are. And it's a tough one.
54:05
Speaker 3: It is a tough one. I'm going to take a
54:07
Speaker 3: second and think about it. I edit out all this silence. Nope,
54:15
Speaker 3: I know what it is. I think my favorite book
54:18
Speaker 3: is On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
54:21
Speaker 1: Classic.
54:22
Speaker 3: That book just totally hit my life at the right
54:27
Speaker 3: time and kind of landed in my lap. And it
54:31
Speaker 3: was like, I mean, I guess that book is about
54:34
Speaker 3: running and fleeing, but it's also about travel and it
54:38
Speaker 3: sort of opened a door which you know, originally led
54:42
Speaker 3: me to Europe. But that was the stepping stone for
54:46
Speaker 3: everything else beautiful. And I think second one kind of
54:51
Speaker 3: the second book is Motorcycle Diaries. Yeah, that's another amazing
54:55
Speaker 3: book that is very you know, PanAm related. I read
54:58
Speaker 3: that book on the PanAm and thought, okay, this now
55:02
Speaker 3: I understand. It just was eye opening to read it
55:06
Speaker 3: and to hear.
55:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you watch the movie? What are your thoughts?
55:12
Speaker 3: I did enough?
55:15
Speaker 1: No, so just start with the book first.
55:19
Speaker 3: Yes, And I always I always had this goal that
55:22
Speaker 3: my Spanish would be good enough that I could read
55:24
Speaker 3: the book in Spanish, and sadly I never got there.
55:27
Speaker 3: I built Ie Overlander instead, and I put my dreams
55:30
Speaker 3: of fluent Spanish.
55:32
Speaker 1: Maybe one day, maybe one day.
55:35
Speaker 3: Awesome.
55:36
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so so so much to Jessica. It's
55:39
Speaker 1: been an absolute pleasure to speak you with to you,
55:41
Speaker 1: and thank you for sharing the behind the scenes of Overlander.
55:46
Speaker 1: Where can we find you?
55:49
Speaker 3: Like you can't? You know? I'm on eye Overlander, and
55:52
Speaker 3: I guess I just want to reiterate guys like I.
55:54
Speaker 3: Overlander is here for Overlanders, so you have feedback, you
55:58
Speaker 3: have suggestions, you have ideas support at ioverlander dot com,
56:02
Speaker 3: like I don't read all of those emails, but they
56:06
Speaker 3: make it to me like those what people say, what
56:08
Speaker 3: real Overlanders on the road are saying and complaining about,
56:12
Speaker 3: Like it gets on the list, it gets done. We're
56:14
Speaker 3: not We're not ignoring you. We are building and now
56:18
Speaker 3: we're building faster than ever, so you know, keep us
56:21
Speaker 3: in the lope. I am not on social media because
56:24
Speaker 3: if I go on there it takes away hours of
56:26
Speaker 3: my life that I could be fixing I overlanders stuff.
56:30
Speaker 3: Give me for that. I am just hyper focused on
56:32
Speaker 3: making this stuff better. And I sadly am not as
56:36
Speaker 3: reachable in this community as I want to be, But
56:39
Speaker 3: I am listening. My ear is to the ground. Whatever
56:41
Speaker 3: you guys need perfect.
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Speaker 1: So you visit ioverlander dot com and I Overlander on Instagram.
56:48
Speaker 1: You can also check out like remotely dot com. There's
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Speaker 1: quite an archive on there to learn more about you
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Speaker 1: and your journey and everything. So yeah, thank you. Oh
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Speaker 1: it's been a pleasure, super appreciate it having you on
57:03
Speaker 1: the Overland Journal podcast. Absolutely great. Well, thank you so
57:09
Speaker 1: much to all the Overland Journal podcast listeners for tuning
57:12
Speaker 1: in today. I hope you enjoyed this episode and we
57:15
Speaker 1: will catch you later.