A Taste of the Uncharted Lifestyle

As we sat around the kitchen table, Alan eating the second half of his Big Juds burger, John crunching away at a cup of half-cooked ramen noodles, and me sitting there looking hung over even though I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol, the discussion was this: How can we make all of our workdays like today?

This was our workday:

Up at 6, out the door by 6:45. Snowmobile suits, snow pants, parkas, gloves and hats help us to ward off the chilly weather, with temperatures hovering at a mere 6 above zero. Shortly after 7 am, we weaved through the snow-ridden streets of Ashton, Idaho, trying to find a place to park. Then we wander the streets with the sun rising in our faces as we talk to the owners of dogs set to compete in the American Dog Derby, featured on our home page today. Between the twin tasks of putting booties on his dogs’ feet and cleaning up their messes with a small rake and shovel, Bino Fowler of Sunriver, Oregon, told us why he loves sled dog racing. Up the street and around the corner are two dozen other contestants, likely with similar stories.

As the racers leave town one by one, we’re all pleasantly surprised by the easy, friendly manner of the Ashtonites we bump into. When we say hello, nobody turns the cold shoulder. They’re happy to be in this little town, awake so early in the cold. With a few sentences of explanation of who we are and what Uncharted is, we’re given the same insider tips these friendly folk give most everyone with a camera and a question. We follow it, along highways east of town and through banks of snow that force themselves into Alan’s shoes, making his socks soggy.

Nobody treats us as if we were interlopers. This is significant. Both Alan and I have worked for newspapers, and are used to bracing ourselves for the expected comments: You work for the paper, eh? Well, don’t screw it up. We might still screw it up, because newspapers do not corner the market on infallibility. But we’ll do our best. And have fun doing it.

So at the table, having lunch at about 2 pm, we ask ourselves: When will this become our full-time occupation? When will we be able to wake up in the morning and have Uncharted be our full-time, paying gig, not the part-time, volunteer gig it is now? We had fun. We want more of that. Someday soon, we hope. Someday soon.

Of course we’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then. We’ve got to get more agile. More mobile. More integrated with the folks we want to connect with. We’re working on it. And we expect great things to happen.

Lighting the Sky

Legend tells the tale of a young girl, who, in the dark of night, grabs embers from a glowing fire. She throws them high into the night sky, creating the Milky Way, full of formations of flickering stars, allowing navigation to the uncharted regions of the world.

Now, if only illuminating cyberspace were that easy.

That’s what we’ve been working on––mapping cyberspace with those little-known, less-traveled places of the globe, full of people, culture, moments and stories otherwise lost to time.

And it hasn’t been easy. Bringing a team together with the skills and experience necessary to pull off a project this complex and widespread was a formidable challenge. Over the past four years, we’ve worked, in some cases, across five time zones. All of our team members hold full-time jobs in a variety of disciplines, anything from journalists to officers in the armed forces, to programmers, artists, marketers and teachers. They speak a variety of languages and have lived and traveled around the world.

And they’re all volunteers. They’ve worked with minimal funding and scavenged resources. Their ingenuity and ability to come together in difficult situations sets them apart from any other team I’ve ever worked with. And while, at first glance, it seems an unlikely group to be working together, the mix has yielded unique results.

It has been my privilege to serve as director of this incredible group, who have labored, often into the late hours of the night and well into the early morning, sacrificing vacations, free time and other opportunities, on a project aiming to bring the world together one journey at a time.

Tomorrow evening you’ll get to see the first glimpse of all that hard work and sacrifice as we unveil, for the first public view, our project, www.uncharted.net. We’ll share with you our first three stories highlighting some of our favorite people and places. And while much of our efforts have been close to home, our vision stretches into your backyard and beyond.

But more importantly, you’ll get to help us throw some embers into the sky as well, because Uncharted, after all, is a community of friends, our friends and, yes, most importantly, yours. We look forward to seeing the places you’ve been and the interesting people you’ve met. We look forward to getting to know each of you as we journey from place to place. We can’t wait to explore, live and feel the world through your eyes and show you the things we’ve seen as well.

So, wherever you are, however far away you might reside, come join us tomorrow evening for this historic moment in our project’s history, the beginning of many journeys to come.

Alan Murray is Executive Director of Uncharted. He enjoys snowshoeing and likes seahorses and likes to leave the country frequently.

Uncharted programming underway

Now the tough part... programming! We've been discovering how cool it is to come up with great ideas, but also how painfully challenging it is to translate those ideas into reality. Especially with some of the challenges Joomla presents to the non-techies on the team (ahem.. that would be me). The learning curve is steep but everyday we're making progress bit by bit. Sweet persistence.

Our programmer is the bread and our designer is the butter of this creation. (Note - our designer would really dig that analogy since he is a food maniac and we're all expecting he'll be our lead contributor to the food section.) Our fate rests in their hands! I'm sure they'll introduce themselves here eventually, but for right now they are pretty busy plugging away and its no easy task.

Here's their first concept for the framework of the new design. Nostalgic! We've already improved upon this, but we're mostly sticking with what you see as the foundation.


Now just imagine all the spaces filled with picturesque scenes of mountains, trails, ski slopes and off the beaten path surprises, and bam! You have a better idea what it will look like. I know, I know. Pretty lame to ask you to imagine. All I can say is its coming and I'm just as anxious as you, and hey, I didn't have to post any of this to start with.

Sneak Peak Teaser - pics and audio

Here's something that we threw together to give a sneak peak at some of the photos and type of content we'll be posting later this year in the new release. It takes a little while to load. We have figured out how to make sure content like this loads much faster, so no worries for our future content.


My favorite part of the teaser is the photo and audio from the Wind Caves located in Logan Canyon, Utah. Other photos were taken at the Snake River & Shoshone Falls, Idaho, and Great Salt Lake and Bear Lake, Utah. I wish I could take as good of pics as some of these guys on our team. I'm just the communications guy... anything I take that is good happens purely by luck!

Enjoy the teaser!

And by all means let me know what you think so far.