It sounds like it’s going to be a crazy week – lots of events, parties and a ton of people to meet. In fact, it’s kind of daunting thinking about it but we’re going with a laid back attitude to have a bit of fun, meet some people and introduce the Munchkin to the USA.

We’d love our community & readers to benefit from our attendance there too, so here’s what we’re hoping you can help us with…

There are hundreds of panels, talks, keynotes, parties and events to choose from – over 1,000 I believe – and we’d love to offer ourselves up as your eyes & ears on the ground in Austin. We’ll aim to attend the most requested events and provide a full report back to you – either in the form of a post, a podcast or a video.

So if you’d like us to attend something on your behalf, let us know! You can view the full schedule here.

But before you do, here are a few points to consider:

1. We’re there from Friday 12th to Monday 15th – although we don’t arrive until midday Friday and may be severely jet-lagged so please focus your choices on events happening on Saturday, Sunday & Monday.
2. We’ll have the Munchkin in tow so while we may try & attend some parties, we’re not likely to be out till the early hours of the morning (or even the latest hours of the nights!).
3. While there are some interesting films & cultural stuff happening, we’d rather you focus your choices on things that will benefit you & others in becoming or being location independent – so please try & make it relevant!

To let us know what you’d like us to report back on, leave us a comment here, on our Facebook page or send us an email [locationindependent at gmail].

If you’re new to the concept of Location Independence, it’s about being able to live & work from anywhere you choose – which usually means you can and need to be able to:

1. Earn an income online via a business and/or passive streams of income
2. Travel the world at the same time, or simply work from home or the coffee shop down the road
3. Navigate your way around the ever-changing technology & social media “scene”

We’ve got a lot of resources to help you – and our #1 mission is to enable anybody who wants to, to become location independent. Here are a few you might like to check out:

1. The (original) blog for Location Independent Professionals
2. Our new blog for Location Independent Parents (or aspiring ones!)
3. Our Location Independent eBook which shares our story & a practical roadmap for how to get started and become location independent yourself
4. The recently-launched Location Independent TV site with episodes & clips from our life on the road.

To see all the sites & resources in our network, click on the drop-down box up in the right-hand corner of our site. And if you’ve any questions, drop us a line on Twitter or on Facebook.

A belated Merry Christmas to you! We’ve been busy celebrating the Munchkin’s first Christmas and making plans to move to our next destination, Chiang Mai in less than a week’s time so, as usual, it’s been all go round here!

As is customary in the blogosphere at this time of the year, we thought it’d be fun to do a year in review since this year has been somewhat of a big one both personally but also for the Location Independent “project” so without further ado, here we go…

Personal Review

This year has been massive for us personally. As you may remember, we found out we were pregnant just over 12 months ago while we were in South Africa so we decided to put our nomadic life on hold temporarily while I gave birth and until we decided how we felt about being nomadic with a baby.

So along came the birth of the Littlest LIP (quite fittingly on Independence Day) and we had a rollercoaster ride as new parents. As you know, we’ve now resumed our nomadic lifestyle for the moment and are already planning our movements for next year, learning even more about location independence every day.

The year hasn’t been without its challenges – not least of all figuring out how to balance running our own business, pursuing our personal projects & passions all at the same time as becoming parents and doing this all on an average of about 4-5 hours sleep each day – it’s been really tough – but I think we’ve just about survived and we’re getting closer to figuring out how to balance and juggle each part of our lives so we can give it all 110%.

We’ve been privileged to connect with and make new friends online – and now have a much larger global network of friends than we ever thought possible – it’s one of the major benefits that’s come out of this year, even if we have been based in one place for much of it. That’s down to many of you – so thank you.

Project Review

For the Location Independent project (I still view it as my personal hobby project!), it’s also been a massive year. We’ve had some explosive growth thanks to some experimenting on the community-building front and we’ve had some pretty big network growth too, with an increase in the total number of sites in the network (check out the drop-down box in the top right of the site to see what we’ve now got).

Plus we went “global” and added Spanish, French and Turkish versions of the Location Independent Professionals site – and of course, there was the launch of the Location Independent Parents site.

From a product perspective, we launched the Location Independent Business Guide, almost tripled the number of Little LIP Travel Guides in the directory and re-launched the 2nd edition of the Location Independent Lifestyle Guide. We’ve also been experimenting with the LIP Freedom Roundtable – our first attempt at providing hands-on, all-access support to a small number of aspiring LIPs.

The term “Location Independent” has become hugely popular – almost mainstream! – and the concept is not just the domain of a crazy few, it’s become something that many people aspire to and are inspired by. That to me is amazing – Jonathan and I still laugh about the fact that around 18 months ago I was moaning about how I didn’t think the phrase “location independent” was exciting enough and I wanted to change it

We’ve been featured in the national UK press (and have another feature coming up in January in the travel section of The Guardian) and across various websites…not bad for a couple who don’t like being in the limelight, eh?!

Looking Forward To 2010

Back in the corporate world, we used to use a thing called “Start, Stop & Continue” to evaluate our own performance and that of our colleagues. It’s quite a useful tool, so I’m going to use it here to outline some of what we’ve got planned and how we hope this project will continue to evolve throughout 2010…

What We’re Going To Stop Doing:

One of the things we’re going to stop is being so haphazard in what we launch. This past year has largely been a case of me going “Oooh, wouldn’t it be cool to do this? Let’s do it” and so we’ve done it!

It’s stretched us a bit too much at times and I think the success of some of the things has suffered because of this, which is frustrating and not good for a business.

So, we’ve already stopped that approach and have a whole roadmap planned out for 2010 to guide our decisions and ensure we are doing what is best for the network and for the community.

What We’re Going To Start Doing:

There are so many places we’ve been dropping the ball….and this is where we’re going to start picking them up again! There are two main areas I’d like to improve upon:

Firstly there’s the Priority Mailing list. If you’re on it, expect an email soon about what’s to come and laying our cards on the table – I promise you we’ll be improving in this area in 2010.

Side note: If you’d like to join the list, it’s in the sidebar of the site – over there >>>

Secondly, there’s our affiliates & partners. I would honestly far rather a sale be made by an affiliate than just by us. One of my main goals for turning Location Independent into a business rather than just my hobby was to expand the pie, as Chris Gullebeau always says. That is, it’s never been about creating income solely for us but I’ve always wanted it to be something that will help others create a location independent income from.

We’re already doing that with the Little LIP Travel Guides (authors get a cut of all sales of their guides) and with a couple of joint ventures – and we’ve got some more to come, including one of the first new products that we’ll be launching in the new year.

So we’ll be focusing in on affiliate management and hoping to better enable and support our affiliates make more sales and generate more income for both them and us.

Finally, we are going to start marketing our products & services better; I am not a fan of pushy marketing tactics and, according to some people, have gone far too much the other way in that we don’t market our stuff enough here.

Never fear – we’re not going to start ramming our products & services down your throat but we will be making it easier to find what we’ve got and giving you a gentle nudge when we have new things to launch which might be of value to you

What We’re Going To Continue Doing:

We’re really proud of the quality of our products so far and we’re going to continue to put out top quality stuff in 2010. Look out for the launch of the Location Independent Tax & Finance Guide (for US citizens) early in the new year (a joint project with someone who knows far more about this than we do) and also for the launch of another Location Independent Guide which will be specifically for bootstrapping businesses a little after that.

We’ll continue to provide a range of platforms for our community – and will be stepping up our game on several fronts in this area. And we’re going to continue to look for win-win partnerships and joint ventures to keep expanding the pie.

As part of our networking and connecting effort, we’ll be attending SXSWi (so excited!!) and holding even more LIP meet-ups around the world – so we hope to get meet more of you in real life

And of course, we will continue to evolve and develop what it means to be location independent and forge our own path in both the online and offline world.

How about you? How’s your 2009 gone and what are you going to stop, start and continue in 2010?