I graduated from the GeenMBA a little over two years ago. The day after I received my degree I started my first day in my new job at Earthsite. I was gratefully employed, afterall, it was January 2008 and only months after the economy started tanking. I loved what I was doing (building online marketing campaigns and websites for green companies) and I was working with two very smart and talented people, Joey and Stacie Shepp.

Fast forward through a dozen projects, numerous cups of coffee, and many many meetings- It was time to take the show on the road! You see, prior to starting my MBA I had literally jumped from finishing my degree in Sociology in the summer of 2006 and started grad school in the fall of 2006, giving myself less then a month off! I highly recommend not going straight into an MBA after completing your bachelors degree. Although I had been consistently working for ten years at this point, and I had even had won a business plan competition and started my own business, I would have liked to focus on building that business first and then go back to school. Oh well, so now I’m making up for it with adventure travel and working abroad!

Not knowing what the next few months would look like, I packed up a netbook and a 44 liter backpack and took off for Central America. My intention was to find adventure, meet new interesting people, and not work…much.

Alas, when you love what you do you might as well do it! So three months into my trip (No Spanish, No Plan, No Problema) and five countries later, I’ve found myself building websites, setting up Facebook Pages, analyzing fledgling Google AdWords campaigns,  and developing marketing strategies for a variety of hotels and cafe’s. I don’t mind working with hotels and cafe’s, it works for a nice exchange, but I would really like to get involved with environmental or social justice organizations that could use my services (Jonah’s services too- I’m traveling with another friend who graduated from the same MBA program. Jonah is interested in developing energy audits for ecoresorts and also developing transition plans to solar or wind.).

So here’s a sample of the web development I’ve done in the last three months. All of these were pretty rapid development projects for people who aren’t too web savvy so I opted to go with WordPress.org (the hosted version). After a bit of training they were ready to go.

The Yellow House in Antigua, Guatemala

guatetravel.com

This is a great hotel in Antigua. They had no web presence other than their listings on a variety of travel directories. We ended building them this content rich website. One thing Jonah and I liked about them was their commitment to sustainable initiatives, like LED lighting and solar.

Cafe Atitlan in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala

cafeatitlan.wordpress.com
We ended up staying here and renting an apartment for a few weeks. I built the website on the free version of WordPress (WordPress.com). That way Berna, the owner didn’t have to pay for hosting. Great coffee at Cafe Atitlan!

Cotton Tree Lodge near Punta Gorda, Belize

www.cottontreelodge.com/community/blog
We’re currently staying here in this beautiful ecolodge in the jungle and we’re helping on a number of different projects. One of them was to see what I could do to enhance their blog. They had been using a stock template and in fact it still had the wrapping on it. So I dressed it up a bit to match the colors of their website and added a few new widgets to make it easier to navigate. I also plugged in some essential plugins and tools to get it seen more by search engines. Later this week I’ll take a look at their AdWords strategy. Next I’ll have to post about my trip to the Blue Creek Cave!