Our First NomadMania meetup

We are part of several of Nomad Facebook groups, but have recently also joined NomadMania because of their new app functionality that enables member location identification, which is very helpful to initiate member meetups. Full time or mostly fulltime travelers lack a traditional community so online communities with the opportunity for meetups all over the world are important to us. We have been to almost 20 meetups in the past couple of years. Currently our mostly North American based Facebook groups don’t have functionality beyond posting on weekly Facebook threads saying where we are in the world, and seeing who might be near where we are. It works but is a bit clunky and many people don’t bother posting. Many of us have been talking about developing a location app that could make location finding easier which could lead to more meetups. Nomadmania had the same issue with their community, so their app solution is very interesting.

First, who and what is NomadMania? They are a nomad community with a website, Facebook group and an app that was previously mostly used to track where you have been in the world. You can track how many countries, regions and other stuff and then it gives you a ranking. If you have made it to all the UN countries in the world, you can be called a “UN Master”. It is pretty easy to use but the competitive nature of travel rankings doesn’t really match our nomad community ethos and really rubs me the wrong way. But, I can see it also as just a fun way to give people a goal for continued travel and I am all for that.

NomadMania also has conventions, awards, group tours and meetups. They were non-profit but recently switched to a for profit company because they needed to fund their activities. Meetups are done by volunteers but it is a lot more “top down” than our “grass roots” meetups although that may be changing with their new app functionality. The group has thousands of members and while we do have a lot in common with these nomads, they just don’t seem the same as us.

Our nomad Facebook groups are very diverse are still largely Canadians and Americans. These guys from NomadMania are mostly European and a lot of them are Eastern European and are much more focused on travel rankings. I think they might be lost at our meetups where we tend to discuss repositioning cruises, health insurance, our miles and points deals, or our favorite restaurants in Oaxaca and Chang Mai. Yes, we love our European and Australian members (who get a bit annoyed when we start talking credit cards and healthcare), but my point is that the NomadMania guys probably aren’t as focused on the same things that we are.

So what about their recent changes to their app?
In early December they added a feature so you can easily add your location. You just click on the button and it puts you on the map within 250 meters of where you actually are. This was done for safety reasons because it is a bit creepy if strangers can tell exactly where you are. My wife and I both signed up when were in Mexico a couple of months and I could see her dot about 3 blocks away from me in the ocean even though she was sitting right next to me.

The app shows everyone’s dots on the world map. You can click on a dot and see a person’s profile that includes their picture, nationality, age, travel “rankings”, and their map of where they have been in the world. You can even add links to your Facebook or Instagram profiles. It also has a way to message someone within the app which would be the way to create a meetup. You could message everyone in your location and invite them to a facebook event. There is no group messaging, nor event creation within NomadMania.

Sounds great, but before you sign up for this I need to explain some problems….

1. The map only tells you where you are the last time you used the app. If you move to a new city, you need to open up the app and reset your location. Many of the dots that I clicked on showed that their location has not been updated in 3 weeks.

2. The app does not allow you to share where you will be in the future. This would make it difficult to plan meetups a couple weeks away. Most of us move around regularly and we plan meetups for where we will be “next week”

Anyway, we have recently traveled to Da Nang, Vietnam and I decided to update my location dot on the Nomadmania app. I saw a couple others in town but I didn’t really look at them and just closed the app and forgot about it. The next day, I get a notification from Konstantin who saw my dot on the App and suggested we get together for coffee or a beer. It works! Location mapping can create connections! We agreed to meet the next day Konstantin a local bar. He also connected with another dot on the app- Mia, and invited her to join us.

Konstantin is a Nomadmania Master. He is Ukranian and has visited all 193 UN countries and is ranked very high on many of the other region lists. He has a lot of fun stories and is very knowledgeable about traveling and the different areas of the world. Really fun to hear about traveling from his perspective. Mia is from Oregon and moved to Serbia in 2018. She is now traveling across Asia with her cat Cleo. She told us stories about driving her car through Eastern Europe until she couldn’t get approval to bring a car across the Afghanistan border. Traveling with a cat is easier in a car but she is now doing fine using buses or planes once in a while. She also has a lot of stories and it was fun to compare her bravery of solo travel with our relatively easy travel stye.

We pride ourselves at being fairly adventurous travelers as compared to most Americans. We don’t travel to go to theme parks, go on cruises, or stay at large corporate hotel resorts. Our friends our amazed at the out of the way places we go and how we can travel for months using just carry on luggage. But, compared to these guys…. we are pretty lame. These guys are traveling on a different level than us. On one hand, we are pretty jealous of their experience and all the interesting places they have seen, but on the other hand… I like the comfortableness of our current travel style. I like this planned out ahead and knowing where we are going to be in the next few months. I don’t feel the need go to a remote African country or try to cross a difficult border by bribing an official to get a Visa.

I’m not sure how we fit into the Nomadmania community. I really enjoyed our meetup and listening to both of their stories but I somehow felt that we didn’t quite belong. I don’t have the same kind of stories to share. We have only been to 41 countries and it doesn’t seem like we have the same goals as the members of this group. I don’t have ambitions to see all the countries or even to see 100 countries. I just want to travel to places we have fun and if that means returning to countries that we like… we are going to do it. I am going to continue to stay on the Nomadmania app and if we have the chance for another meetup, we will definitely do it. I love hearing travel stories, even if it isn’t the type of travel that we are comfortable doing.