Update: Looking for a change?  A new job?  New life?  If you’ve ever dreamed of exploring the world, this could be your chance.

We’re always planning and working for the next destination and the next season of Jet Set Zero.  One of our core points is that the Jet Set Zero adventure can be anyone’s story, and this time, we want our specific adventures to be your story.  We’ve had a great experience meeting new people and want to open the doors for a new cast member to come and join us.  Below are the requirements and instructions on how to apply.

What we’re looking for:

An exceptionally easygoing attitude. We work long hard days, we have unpredictable schedules, we’re constantly in uncomfortable situations, money is tight, etc.  Adventure isn’t easy, but with the right attitude it’s awesome and unforgettable.  You need to be able to laugh it off when the plan doesn’t go…as planned…because at Jet Set Zero, it never does.

An unparalleled sense of adventure. We  need someone who welcomes adventure in all its forms.  We’re going to do some amazing stuff, and the more excited about that you are, the better.

A real honest to goodness work ethic. We’re an independent company, and that means we have a lot of work to do to keep things running.  We all take up whatever needs doing – everything from getting supplies to making travel arrangements, from blogging and website maintenance to marketing and merchandise. Oh, and we all work locally too, which at the moment means teaching English. So we work intensely and together, and you’ll be a part of that too.

Awesomeness. We’re pretty awesome, and the dynamic works a lot better if you’re awesome too.  Also, it makes for better episodes.

Openness. We make a show.  A show that will be about your life in all its glory.  No matter how embarrassing that glory may be.  There is an adjustment process to being on camera all the time, but you’ve got to be comfortable with your life being documented, because we don’t turn the cameras off.

What you will need to get:

A desire to see Korea, specifically Seoul.  That’s where we’re going, so that’s where you should be excited to go.

A passport.

What you need to do to apply:

Send us anything and everything you think will convince us you are the perfect fit. Stories, pictures, paintings, sculptures, art, mementos, dioramas, robots, your friends, cash, booze, literally anything you can think of that will teach us about you.  Remember, you’ll have to live, work, and travel with us.  We have to do the same with you, so help us to see how you’re both a rock star and our next best friend.

Oh, and video.  We’re filmed, all the time.  And you need to be comfortable with that, or be able to get comfortable with it.  Fast.  Send us video, put video on YouTube and send us the link, you’re clever – figure it out.  Tell us about yourself, act out a play, film yourself living your life.  Video jumps you to the front of the line.

Send it all to: jobs [at] jetsetzero.tv

We look forward to meeting you, our new best friend.  Wherever you are.

Staring into the eyes of loved ones before parting company, I saw my home—a collective of shared experiences whose valediction was, quite plainly, difficult. In them I see myself; and for these 21 years of my life spent in and around my hometown of Glendale, California, all I have known and learned has come from my wonderful family and a bond with some special individuals who I have been lucky enough to know. My belief, however, that the world we live in deserves to be wandered through and explored is where I draw the strength to leave.

While studying Film & Television Production at the University of Southern California, friends, teachers and family have helped me to value the present, learn from my many, many mistakes, and embrace the unknown. In fact, for some time I thought that there was something wrong with feeling “lost;” that without a planned course of action I would ultimately fail. Instead I came to realize that it is a blessing in disguise. It gives us the opportunity to let life unfold before our eyes and in this unraveling time stop for a moment and say, “Wow! I can’t believe I’ve come this far.”  Jet Set Zero has now given me the unique opportunity to not only exercise my passion for filmmaking, but to share in their dream of seeing the world. Theirs is a story worth telling. One that stretches the possibilities of adventure and friendship—a philosophy I share in.

As my loved ones continue to inspire me everyday to follow my dreams, I leave them with conviction like never before. A conviction to show how they have touched me, taught me, shaped me.

To take a passage from those echoing electro-poets AIR; I move
like a vagabond through the distance,
looking for a song to sing
A song that lasts all night
and for the rest of our lives.

Here is to the joy of discovery!

-Bryan Gomez

I had it all.  A great job, amazing pay, large apartment, and a beautiful girlfriend.  What more can a guy ask for.  That all changed when she left me.

I fell into drafting after I graduated from high school as I, like many, had no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life.  After about 6 years of this, it was time for a change so I decided to pursue my dream of working in the film business.  I went to a school in Florida and graduated with an Associate’s degree in Film & Video.  I felt truly happy in the decision that I had just made as I was getting an amazing education and I had met the woman of my dreams who had all the same goals that I wanted to achieve in film like travel and adventure.  We moved out to L.A., worked on a few films but unfortunately PA jobs don’t pay the bills, so I had to go back to working as a drafter, something I didn’t really want to do while my girlfriend worked at a department store, something she didn’t want either.

We decided that what we were doing in California we could also do back in my home town of Boston as the movie industry has really picked up in the last few years.  I picked up a job as a drafter for a large global company and my girlfriend picked up a job as a secretary for an investment firm.  We were happy as can be until she said that this was not what she wanted to be doing with her life.  She didn’t want to rely on me anymore as I had paid all the bills and other expenses in California and in Boston.  She needed to have her own space and live her life by herself for a little while.  After all I had done, trying for the both of us to make a future together, it had all collapsed.

I was lost but that all changed when I found Jet Set Zero.

I had been wanting to go back into the film business and just by pure luck I found a post for an amazing opportunity that had everything I was looking for: travel, live in a foreign country, and film it all!  I had found my dream job.  I now know that I have to live for me and need some amazing stories to show and tell.  I don’t know what we’ll be doing or where exactly we’ll be but I do know that this is where I’m supposed to be.

Man.  Nothing cooler than this job.  So here I sit, in the town coffee house (there are two, but this is the classy one), laptop in… lap, churning away on a pre-season episode of JS0.  I’m watching the boys scale the icy slopes of Mt. Rainier and work their magic on camera.  I just finished a new design concept to go out on our next merch order.  The ladies, they can see that I’m an artist.  A bohemian artist.  This is a Macintosh, baby.  I’m editing.  Editing film.

Video editing, it brings all the girls to the yard

Remember the “adventure” that all these jokers are embarking on?  In SE Asia?  Sure, that’s cool.  I guess.  I’m embarking on an adventure in western Massachusetts, one that ends with me self employed and creating the kind of art that I have always lusted after — with a purpose, a message, an intent.  And that chicks totally dig.  Brian spent the better part of a year talking me up on this job and I fought him every stage of the way.  “It can’t be done,” “we don’t have the experience,” “there’s no guarantee that it will work,” “I’m scared to put my neck out and do something I really care about.“  Well, no longer.  Here I am — the production lead for an internet startup, working my ass off for the first job I’ve ever been legitimately excited about. 

It helps that I’m drunk.  And that it’s a Tuesday.  At 5:30 in the afternoon.

It only took one conversation with Brian on New Years Day to be sold on the plan to work and travel around the world.

I
had been living in my hometown of Oswego for most of my life, minus a
few short stints in Rochester, London and Barcelona.  Just prior to
leaving for Seattle I was working at a pretty good job in the IT field.
It wasn’t my dream job but I worked with some great people and had a
chance to learn some new skills and expand my knowledge base daily. The
only problem was, I found myself living in the same city I grew up in
and I wasn’t really doing anything new in my day-to-day life.  I loved
the friends and family that lived there with me, but I also missed
meeting new people and seeing new places.  I came to the conclusion
that I had to move away for a while and see the world.  I figured I
could either save up some money for another year, quit my job and then
travel around on my own for a little while or I could travel and work
along the way with some of my friends and capture the whole adventure
on film.

That was a while ago now. Since then, I’ve quit my job
and moved out to Seattle in April.  It’s already been a pretty crazy
ride so far.  Since my departure from Oswego I’ve travelled to the
westernmost point in the continental United States (Cape Alava),
touched the Pacific Ocean for the first time, met the Mayor of Seattle,
shared a house with a couple of punk bands, and camped at the base of
Mt. Rainier.

I’m still not too sure what the future will bring
but if the last few months have been any indication, it should be an
adventure i’ll never forget.

Dan and Rob relaxing in the livingroom.

I spent the last six years in the Bay Area. The first four were consumed with philosophy, literature, social theory, and other things practical. The last two were spent at a nonprofit futures think tank/foresight group/ forecasting consultancy called Institute for the Future (IFTF). And yes, there is some minor confusion about how to
categorize ourselves.

Working with IFTF was a dream job – I could research issues such as the future of education, sustainability, and leadership, to name a few. I worked with some of the most creative, intelligent, and intellectual people I’ve ever met, who, btw you can check out here: http://www.iftf.org/people/iftf

Here’s a picture of me facilitating a discussion around how new social media might change the nature and form of work in the next decade.

Facilitating at TYF 2008

So why would I walk away from an amazing job to join Jet Set Zero?

I think it boils down to 3 factors (for some reason, justifications/inspirations always boil down to 3 factors).

Adventure

This is a time in my life of immense freedom. No family to support. No house payment. No career to construct immediately. Actually, I think many people in their young 20’s enjoy a similar freedom. I think it should be adventurously exercised – not just to go crazy or wild, but to engage in endeavors that are risky but approached as learning opportunities; slightly reckless by virtue of their uncertainty; and promise personal and intellectual development.

Friendship

It’s not just an opportunity to travel. This is traveling with people you trust, respect, and whose company you enjoy. This is traveling to meet new local people. This is an opportunity to celebrate existing and emergent friendships. It’s a cause worthy of any human being.

Compelling and Important Story

Travel can expand minds and perspectives, cultivate a cosmopolitan sense of things, and prepare one to participate in global affairs. Travel can do these things, if one travels in the right ways. For us, this is neither vacationing nor tourism nor backpacking. It’s an immersive learning journey through another culture – living, working, and socializing locally. The closest term we’ve encountered is vagabonding, but ours is with a twist. We’re leveraging the digital tools largely native to our generation – we’re not unplugging but using social media to share our experiences, connect with people across the world and next-door, and enabling others to participate in our journeys.

See, the real question is how I could walk away from an opportunity and look at myself in the mirror everyday thereafter?

Snowballs in July, Mt. Rainier

Out of all of the crackpot schemes Brian hatched at IHOP, only one really caught my attention.

“I have this great idea,” he says. “We start a travel show. Go around the world and film it in HD.”

The fact that he was selling the idea over a funny-face pancake didn’t help his case—but to me it made perfect sense. I like to think of life in terms of stories. Like books furnish a library, good stories decorate a life and give it meaning. That’s why I had decided to marry my wonderful girlfriend and take off to Ghana in the Peace Corps.

But each weekend, we would talk about it nonstop over beers and omelets and each time I found a new reason to go. Finally, I called the recruiter that I had worked with for over a year and told her that I would be filming a travel show. In the end, risking everything on this company might seem foolhardy compared to the guarantees of the Peace Corps, but it sure makes a better story.

Brian and I enjoy a cordial meal.

After only a few months at my job in Seattle I began to notice a strange phenomenon in my office:  the walls grew a bit more oppressive each day, and the light a bit dimmer.  However the meetings, hallway discussions, weekend recaps, long days, working weekends, political power plays, and assignments remained exactly the same.

Day after day, after day.

Presenting in Mumbai, India

About every month I would travel to a conference or event, sit through meetings extraordinarily similar to
the ones back at the office, attend and present sessions about a multitude of mundane topics, and indulge in lavish company dinners.

On the whole, I loved the travel.  As soon as it became international I got to frequently travel to places that before would have been a brief vacation if I was lucky and willing to spend the money. It was an outrageous lifestyle: dinner in Singapore, meetings in Tokyo, a conference in Barcelona, presentations in Mumbai.  I was traveling almost 100,000 miles a year. It was amazing, and it was surreal.

There was however a severe catch to it:  I was alone.

Singapore Airlines Business Lounge, Hong Kong

I realized quickly that as much as I loved travel, and was truly excited about each new international destination – it just was not the same experience I had come to appreciate when I had adventures before, friends by my side. I was sharing these experiences with my friends in story only.  I shrugged it off as an insane complaint, I was so lucky to find a career at a successful company that let me travel, there was no one on earth that could feel sorry for me.

A thought keep nagging me though.  Why couldn’t I travel with all my friends?  Why couldn’t we head to all these exotic locations with the same, or an even more frequent regularity?   Why couldn’t every day be spent seeking out awe inspiring experiences with your friends? There was a short list of reasons: money, time, commitments – but with each new day in my ever dimmer never changing office an excuse fell away.

Finally I was left with nothing but the conviction that this was possible and that it would be insane to do anything but work as hard as I could, as soon as I could to make it happen.  I would have to give up a lifestyle I had become accustomed to living. It would certainly be the most difficult, ambitious, and risk filled undertaking I had ever dreamed up.  And I could already hear of chorus of concerned objection from friends and family.

However the chance to travel the world each and every day, the chance to seek out adventure and awe as a lifestyle
instead of a vacation, and the chance to do it with my friends was worth leaving behind a comfortable existence, was worth risking financial security, and was certainly worth the work to make it possible.

Living the Dream