Exactly six months ago, I made the biggest announcement of my life ever by revealing that I was about to embark on a round-the-world tour by… car! It goes without saying that this is a huge project especially given the fact that no other DJ in history, or artist/entertainer for that matter, has ever undertaken such an adventure.
What have I been up to in the last six months?
Well, it turns out that planning an adventure around the world that is half a trip and half a DJ tour is as complex as staging a project as big as a huge festival!
Let’s use the most popular festival in Canada as an example. Over 2 million people attend the Montreal International Jazz Fest yearly and attendance to some shows is over 100,000 and sometimes over 200,000 according to official figures.
While I don’t think that any of my shows will attract as many people overall my Big Journey (the project name of my world tour), I believe that it will have the same reach if not ten times more overall.
Wishful thinking on my part?
Not if you consider this:
- Four to five years performing in nightclubs, at festivals and at other various music events in hundreds of countries on six continents, will certainly put the total live audience to over 150 000.
- The Big Journey will also include a round-the-world radio tour where I will be guest DJing live on the air. Personally, I don’t listen to the radio but it turns out that millions around the world still do which make sense given the fact that when stuck in a traffic jam there are no other methods of entertainment.
- Blogs: my personal Big Journey blog/official website (JaBig.com) does not get a significant amount of traffic, yet. However, I will be a contributing editor and columnist for a number of blogs that make the Technorati Top 100 Blogs list. To put numbers into perspective, they each attract over 2 million monthly unique visitors.
- I cannot predict the reach of television and newspaper publicity efforts because it’s like trying to predict the lotto. I can score small or score big but will hopefully score big 
Before I get carried away with numbers (I am semi-obsessed with “the reach” because the more people are aware of the Big Journey, the better I can champion my cause), let me get back to the original point of explaining why this is a complex project that requires meticulous planning as so many variables will be at play once I hit the road and one off little element can have semi-disastrous consequences.
When I made the big announcement six months ago, I just wanted to get in a car and drive around the world without too much fanfare. As time went by, the project grew more than I had anticipated. From there, my team and I decided to go all out and make it as big as possible if we really want to impact the world.
- The World Food Programme says: “It takes just 25 cents to fill one of the Red Cups that WFP uses to give hungry kids regular school meals”. If the millions of people that will hear about the Big Journey can contribute a dollar each, how many children can we feed collectively?
Thus, we’ve been planning and slaving over details to make sure that the Big Journey and its related projects such as Beats for Life, DEX 101, the radio tour, the speaking engagements and more (without forgetting sightseeing and having fun of course!) are a success in all the countries and cities around the world that they will tour.
This is getting too long so I will stop here
In a future post, I will be detailing exactly what I will be doing when I am travelling and touring. In the meantime, I’d like to thank you for your support and kind words and I look forward to seeing you in your country, city or community
