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.

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

How do JaBig and Gotsoul Records welcome the summer season and the 2010 Canadian Formula 1 Grand Prix back to Montreal after a year hiatus? With a big, beautiful brash bash of course!

The Love Sundays afternoon party coincided with a crazy weekend in the unofficially official Canadian culture capital city in which the famed Montreal festival kicked-off with the Francofolies Festival and the Fireworks Festivals in full effect without forgetting the 2010 South Africa World Cup of course.

How many more excuses to party did fun-loving Montrealers need, if they ever needed one in the first place?

Sunday afternoon + great weather + a slick terrace + dope music + up-for-it party people + JaBig & gotsoul DJs and guests = Love Sundays, the supreme sexy summer starter. Not even Jamie Oliver himself would have come with such a perfect recipe.

Click on the pic below for the complete photo album set courtesy of Steve Bishop, the Love Sundays curator.

A few “FYI” facts on this International Women’s Day:

- Who produces 60 to 80 percent of food in developing nations?
Women.

- When food is scarce, who is the last to eat?
Women.

- Who ensures that children have food to eat, even before themselves?
Women.

Women have the power to break the cycle of hunger and poverty, and you and I can help reach this goal. (Source: WFP)

I have sent a message of solidarity to women across the globe who fight everyday to make hunger history in their own households and around the world.

(If you cannot view the video above, click here: International Women’s Day 2010 – Women: the Front line Against Hunger)

After 15 days* of mental gaming and torturing all my friends, supporters and colleagues worldwide, the day has come to at last let the cat out of the bag and make my biggest announcement ever.

In 2010, I will embark on the world’s first round-the-world DJ tour… by car! Yes, you read that right: one world, one DJ, one car, hundreds of thousands of kilometres or miles.

This DJ tour/road trip of a lifetime is to fulfill a lifelong dream to travel all over the planet and DJ for and meet for its diverse people but to also set a Guiness World of Record for the largest world tour ever by an artist.

Historic trips of this nature tend to attract widespread attention, which will be a perfect opportunity to raise awareness to my number one concern: the one billion people who may die of hunger if we, fellow humans, do nothing about it.

Did you know for instance that every six seconds a child dies because of hunger and related causes? And that hunger really is preventable if we just pull up our socks and decide to play our part.

This is why, I have dedicated this world tour to raising awareness and raising funds for the World Food Programme, the largest hunger relief agency in the world that is doing amazing work in fighting and preventing starvation in regions where people are literally dying because they do not have anything to put in their mouth.

My goal is to get the music and nighlife world to band together and fight hunger once and for all! Ambitious project? Yes! Achievable? Oh, Yes!

Close friends of mine certainly know that I have a passion for traveling, music, DJing but I seldom ever reveal that I am not too proud to admit that most of my life’s accomplishments have only benefited me and the people close to me.

I am part of a really small percentage (I would dare say 0.5%) of Africans who 1) were raised in above comfortable surroundings 2) managed to escape war and violence 3) were able to immigrate in a Western country without any hassle and actually hit the ground running – unlike many immigrants, I landed in Canada with a full bank account and was able to DJ and conduct lucrative business activities from day one). You could say that I am plagued with “living-the-good-life-while-some-in-the-world-are-hurting guilt”.

This Big Journey is the ultimate opportunity to combine my restless rebellious nature to always want to discover new places and people, my passion for music and DJing and above all to finally use my God-given talent and blessings for the well-being of those who cannot help themselves. To quote a good friend of mine “If I don’t do it, who will?”

To follow JaBig’s biggest journey ever, please join me on twitter or Facebook where I will be making constant updates and answering all the questions that you may have (when exactly, where first, with who, how much, what I am most fearful of, and so forth…).

http://twitter.com/JaBig

http://www.facebook.com/JaBig

Edited to add:

* On December 1st, 2009, I posted a Facebook status that said: “15 Days to Go Until JaBig’s Biggest Announcement Ever!”. Every day I would update the countdown and as the day went by, the more restless and curious my friends got until eventually, 15 days later, I made the announcement that you have just read.

Where in the world will I be when Iron Man 2 is released in May 2010? I know it’s going to be somewhere in the US or Canada during the North American tour, the first leg of my round-the-world DJ tour and road trip.

I really liked the first one and have watched it time and time again.

This brings up an interesting thought. Am I going to have the time to just go to the movies, an activity I really enjoy, while globetrotting? I should remember to take pics of all the theaters I attend and compile them into a Flickr photo album or something…

I have noticed that Google is adding live results to their search results. I tweeted about it and later on ( an hour to be precise) while doing some vanity search (everyone should do it ), my tweeter updates showed up!

On the Big Journey, I plan on using the Internet especially social media to promote my tour, cause (relief and prevention of world hunger), new record label and my DJ career. That’s why important tech developments are of interest to me because they let me figure out what’s going on, what’s hot, what’s not and above all, what nastiness people are going to dish out about me (did I mention that I am paranoid? ).

I seldom google myself though. The reason I did it today is because I am kind of mad that my YouTube profile shows up before my official site. I am going to have to either some serious linkbaiting or solicit some love from websites and blogs with a substantial pagerank (if you are not following the tech lingo, fret not. You don’t need to be clued up to follow the Big Journey…)

I can see the power of Live Updates. The first thing that comes to mind is that now we all should be paranoid of what people tweet or post on other social tools about us because it will show up live. Monitoring what people say about a brand or a person is going to become more and important so that when people say nasty stuff about your assets, you can react before rumours become news!

The New York Times has a write-up: Google Adds Live Updates to Results‎