Viva Vacation Vocation!Team Leader : Audrey Tangonan

Team members: Joseph RascoPhilippines

Team Kawani’S

2013 2022

Virtual offices

Seeds of Today: What will Grow from those seeds?•Emergence of cloud based services and improved mobile solutions•Emergence of outsourcing industry and interests in freelancing•International travel is a trend and is becoming more accessible•Emergence of thousands of travel blogs•Booming travel industry •A lot of people’s ultimate dream is to travel the world!•Travelling the world for a living is limited to only certain types of fields of study such as writing, photography and tourism.•Interest in Social Enterprise and Sustainability

•A shift from ‘physical offices’ to the web, with improved technologies•Cuts down rent and daily transportation costs•Multinational → Multicultural•Companies and organizations will exist, where many majority of the members will have never even met each other in person•Emergence of ‘Virtual Office Industry’•Emergence of Vacation Vocation Program (VVP)

•Smaller, because of more competition.•Younger managers, a lot of the older generations will not be able to keep up with the changing and youth are likely cheaper•Social enterprises will grow to be a big competition to traditional settings.•Sciences and technology will industries will still dominate overall•Emergence of ‘Sustainablity Industry’•Companies investing more in developing Corporate Social Respoinsibility (CSR)

Vacation Vocation Program Developer

• Tasked to visit different travel destinations to set up a VVP site.• Design the travel experience and itinerary • Document the area and create logs for the company• Must use the principle of Eco-tourism and ensure program’s sustainability of incoming VVP professionals, researching culture, tourism spots and activities

Vacation Vocation Program (VVP)• A program which allows companies to compensate their employees, not focusing on salary but with an option to work while travelling the world• Designed for high skilled, specialized or top professionals where applicable (Such as psychiatrist, consultants, business analyst, mathematicians)• Instead of employees saving, quitting their job and travelling the world, they can keep their job, applicable to several types of fields• Customizable (length of stay per country, which countries, travel style, etc, <options available depending on performance of employees>)• Requires participants to be trained in responsible travel and sustainability training.

Our Dream Job:

September 26, 2022

Dear Diary,

What an exciting day it has been! This job of mine as a VVP Developer really keeps me on my toes, but it is all worth it. I can’t believe I am really staying here in a beautiful and well preserved beach in India for 3 months. To think, just two months ago I was enjoy crispy tomatokeftes in breezy Santorini, and now I’m in an interesting new setting. This doesn’t feel like work at all!

This morning I woke up at 7AM, an hour earlier than my usual wake time, because a curious yellow bird happened to wander into my resort window to give me a morning claw to the forehead. I didn’t really mind it the since I had a chance to extend my usual morning jog along the pink shores. It was just the boost I needed after spending all day yesterday in the veranda of my nipa hut finishing reports and editing photos from the previous week.

A Day in My Dream JobGood thing I had a fantastic view, the backdrop of soothing waves and fresh Kachumber to keep me company all day. I have managed to finish all the work so I could do my usual rounds of the village and visit the popular adventure nature park in the neighboring town for more ‘research’, aka fun time for me.

I rode my bike to the nearby organic farm and saw that Prashant and Shruthi, two of the local farmers, was already hard at work in the tomato garden. My, how their tomatoes have grown! No wonder yesterday’s Kachumber was that juicy. I set to work with them, attending to the produce, while I do my routine consultation about how they applied what they have learned through the sustainable agriculture online class that my company has enrolled them in. I must say I really like this kind of discussions, where we are embraced by nature, unlike my concrete world in my job 10 years ago.

They said they have already seen some improvements in the quality of their harvest but there are still a lot to learn. I assure them that they should really take their time. If we are to send thousands of our VVP professionals to this village in two years time, we should really work on preparing to create a healthy and sustainable agricultural system. Rushing things is always hazardous when we think of long term, I told them.

I talked to a couple more locals in the area to hear some of their personal stories and suggestions for the enterprise and when lunch time came, Shruthi taught me how to make Mooli Lachha from the ingredients we picked ourselves. I documented the whole process and listened intently. I already had an idea of integrating one on one cooking classes, pairing our professionals with locals, in this town’s VVP program. This will really get our professionals immersed with the culture. Within an hour of uploading a photo on my social media, I received almost a hundred positive feedback already. It’s a good thing wireless internet is now available anywhere, without a glitch.

Since the Solar Train to the next town is still in construction, I opted to take my bike to the adventure nature park instead of the crowded bus. It took me 30 minutes longer than it should have but my healthy lunch put me in an energetic mood. Besides, it wasn’t so bad because the heat was significantly reduced by the Tree Branch Weaving scheme adopted in some areas on my route. I just wish there would be more of this forestation of road, like in my hometown in the Philippines.

I finally met with the tourism head of the park, Anita, in person when I arrived. Our connection felt like we were long time colleagues since I have had several video meetings with her before. She led me around the park and I tried all their activities, such as the root climb, cliff rappel and zipline. There were so many cool things to do there that I had not realized that it was already very late and dark out. I was so too tired to ride by bike back so Anita was nice enough to let me stay here, in their tree cabins for the night.

This was completely out of my itinerary but it turned out to be great. It is really cozy here and the sounds of crickets and leaves rustling made it really hard for me to stay awake. Maybe I would suggest to Anita to grow some arabica coffee plants around the area and set up a local coffee shop? This is a perfect place for our professionals to spend their workday. Our constant challenge with VVPs is always optimizing productivity even in exciting or relaxing places.

I wonder why I had not thought of staying the night here in the 1st place? Since I had my rollable tablet computer with me, I was still able to attend the online updates meeting an hour ago with my fellow VVP Developers. Joseph is back in our home country, in Coron, Palawan, overseeing one of our pioneer VVP sites.

He says things are going really well and the professionals, most of them new to VVP, are really happy and having the time of their lives. I was really proud of that because we were the ones who did the groundwork two years ago. He said our idea of requiring VVP participants to undergo freediving/scuba training and do regular cleanup dives in the area have proven beneficial. The bad news is, since there have been a lot of professionals interested to be placed in the area, we have reached our quota for maximum number of participants and a lot of prospect travelers had to be put on hold or rebooked to other sites. It’s a hard decision for the company to disappoint new customers and sacrifice growth, but I know we are doing the right thing to protect the environment of Coron. The task of Joseph now is to find and apply new technologies we have learned via our online agriculture trainings, that would improve the sustainability of Coron to increase it’s sustainable population capacity.

I was also nice hearing via online chat from the head of one of our first client companies. He said he was really pleased that they have adopted the VVP for their company. He said that since they acquired the program for their employees, the rate of resignations in their company dropped by almost 70%, and their number of applicants, mostly from the youth sector, increased five folds - statistics they have never been able to reach until this year. He said it was great since they had more options to really pick out the best people to join their team. They even had a lot of job inquiries even if there wasn’t any positions available.

He also reported that his employees’ quality of work seemed to decrease as first. This is probably because the program takes a bit of getting used to. But he was quick to say that after a few weeks, his employees’ quality of work would improve back and more often better than before. I laughed at this and told him that I was sure it was because his employees are properly motivated, enjoying the program so much that they wouldn’t want to be taken off of it.

Job and financial security are ofcourse important, but I suggested to him that benefits and quirky perks are very attractive to the youth. Open-mindedness to offer the VVP in their company was just the right move for them to achieving a Google-like status. I just recalled how 10 years ago, everybody wanted to work in Google. The standard they have set in taking care and giving value to it’s employees is that standard still applies today. That’s why he made the right choice to partner with us because their company was the first in his industry to adopt this program.

Well, that is it for another one of my eventful days as a VVP Developer. I wish I had this job 10 years ago so I could have starting living this fulfilling life, having fun and making a positive impact at the same time. I have to get some rest because tomorrow I have to meet with the Mayor of the town I am staying at to discuss policies in ecotourism and our ongoing partnership with the local government. And after that maybe I will go surfing or freediving. I’ll guess I’ll decide that tomorrow.

xoxo,

Audrey

EDUCATION IN THE FUTURE IN GENERAL

• To overcome the challenge of increasing human knowledge, education systems must focus on specialization• Future children will have too may options in career, so finding his career of choice should start as early as possible!• Elementary education still in play but shorter, focusing on the very basics• Elementary education geared toward exposing child to different fields of interest • Career counseling should start earlier, helping the student narrow his or her field of interest to at most 3• High School education should be designed to help choose among the 3 fields of interest which he or she is most inclined to. High School Education can thus have an indefinite duration until the student is set to pursue as field.• Students who find their calling the earliest will have the opportunity to be more specialized earlier.• Less on theories and more on actual application of theories.• Utilization of media and technology• Books will be replaced by highly interactive electronic books.• Student are to be placed nearer actual work places as early as possible in the course. Medicine students should study in hospitals. Architects near construction sites and firms. Programmers should study in… well, anywhere there’s a computer! :D

EDUCATION FOR IN PREPARATION FOR VIRTUAL OFFICES

• Boom of online education• Student who learn through online classes are more likely adapted to the concept of online work in general.• Student who are engaged in online education will be trained to be flexible, independent and diligent• Discipline and self-reliance would be cultivated from online education• Convenience of self-pacing

EDUCATION FOR IN PREPARATION FOR VVP DEVELOPER

• Fitness and Health Training• Training in optimizing computer time usage and operational knowledge in future machines•Advance computer literacy•Specialization in sustainability•People skills

A perfect day in School

Setting: An efficient and sustainable “Eco-town” in the world. Some of my classmates are with me. Most of my other classmates are in other different locations of the world. My professors are in different places as well (because they are highly specialized, no one professor should teach us all lessons) but we have are assigned an over all mentor who is on site.

Perfect day in school should be highly customized depending on the field of study. This perfect day should be different for every kind of specialization. This is a perfect day in VVP Developer Training.

Time Activity

Pre-class (Morning)

Physical ActivityWe are required to participate in a physical activity / exercise atleast 30 minutes everymorning. We can chose whatever activity of our preference (biking, swimming, sports) but we are required “log-in” via a specialized wristwatch which records a real-time video of us, logs our activity, intensity, heart rate and duration.

8:00 - 8:30 Receiving our instructions for the dayThe schedule is very flexible, depending on the subject and student progress. Mornings are usually routine rounds in the area, students assigned to different areas weekly. Clarifications and announcements should be made here.

8:30 -10:00 Routine check on the Rain Catchment FacilityThis week I am scheduled to check on the rain catchment facilities. I go to different infrastructures and learn about the rain catchment facility first hand from the people maintaining them and do hands on training. Only a maximum of two other students are with me because hands on activities should have good supervision.

10:00 – 10:30 Create a log and make my way backWe have all have tablet computers and we take photos and create logs onsite, which will update the town’s centralized database via wifi.

Time Activity

10:30 – 11:30 Effective Communication ClassWe are trained in counseling and communication skills with different types of culture. Half of the week we have theoretical classes (online), half of the week we give actual counseling or talks with locals, a facilitator giving us feed back afterwards

11:30 – 13:30(afternoon)

LunchLunch time is 2 hours. Students have a rotation task to prepare food. It is time to do extra online studies for you if you are not scheduled to prepare food. All meals are organic or sourced locally. During lunch.

13:30 – 14:00 VVP Management IIThe is a series of specialized management courses for VVP Managing that covers topics of procedures, protocols, decision-making.

14:00 – 15:00 Confidence Boost and Self-ImageThere will be various personal development courses offered that you can choose, depending on your needs.

15:00 – 16:00 Sustainability Science II Covering the theoretical topics and also updating of new discoveries. This should always be in outdoor settings, for nature appreciation.

16:00 - onwards

Peer DiscussionThere are different groups assigned to you once or twice a month. There will be a guided discussion about solutions and idea creation about the issues that are affecting the eco-town or your own towns, and just personal discoveries and career assessment.