January 2019 - Open Letter

Cheers!

Here we are in 2019. I have a lot of updates for what is happening to the brand that is NOMAD. Firstly, NOMAD is reaching a much larger audience, and with this comes the opportunity for a conversation this magazine was designed to encompass. Secondly, the direction for NOMAD is solidifying, not only as a publication, but as a community. Lastly, I want to mention the number of influencers who agreed not only to write, but also to be interviewed for NOMAD. The amount of support everyone has contributed to make this year’s issue a success was incredible. I couldn’t have done it alone, and I have you to thank for your hard work and dedication to the vision. This issue is dedicated to you, the foundation builders.

QUICK PROGRESSION

I want to talk about some improvements we made to the content creation and editing the magazine. At the beginning, it was just me putting everything together, writing for the magazine. Now, in this issue, we have a team contributing to the content of the issue, all pushing the same theme of trailblazing, our mission statement.

"NOMAD is a guide for the trailblazer. We curate stories of exploration on the journey towards innovation. For those who struggle making the first step on their journey, we help build confidence. We are the first step."

I’m finding there is a subtlety to establishing a voice for a publication consistently known through the issues. Something which is seen and heard by multiple writers. I haven’t been able to explore this completely just yet, but I have been noticing a contrast from the personal voice I had written in the previous two issues of NOMAD. While building the team to work on this issue, I needed to make decisions which were not only based on content curation, but also how the article was going to be viewed in the context of the whole. Understanding how these articles all mesh together is crucial to the magazine’s progression for this year.

NOMAD'S HISTORY

The history of NOMAD is pretty simple to explain. In 2016, a couple months before I graduated from college, I began to conjure up this idea of working to create a stronger network within my family, and began to brainstorm potential ideas to make this happen. I found I was the one making regular connections with my cousins on a weekly basis, and I found I had some kind of clout to ask what was really going on in their lives. I was just checking in on them, and then the idea sprouted from a conversation I had with my grandmother in 2014, “Justin, the cousins need to talk more, they need to connect more.” I agreed and I started putting together this magazine as a way of connecting family members who don’t speak regularly and as a way to also start a conversation from cousin to cousin.

I started cobbling stories and ideas together, I was aiming in the dark and had no idea what was going to be the finished product. I began to delegate work, asking cousins to write something for the magazine and they all agreed. The magazine also allowed me to keep more tabs on them. But time passed and I wasn’t making any headway. To be honest, I didn’t have an adequate process in place to make sure my cousins were making progress and it took a serious amount of frustration and education before I could come up with something robust enough to get other writers to write their articles. I was just taking them at their word. As it became clear I was going to have a tough time getting anything from my cousins after months, I started stocking the magazine with my happenings: stories from work, stories of people who came to visit me in Toronto, and stories of travels with the family. It was 114 pages and I printed 10 issues. I distributed the issues to close friends and family. I received huge applauses from everyone, and knew when I released it (before the applause even started), I was going to make NOMAD a yearly thing. I was just curious as to how big NOMAD was going to get, was my family going to help write content for the magazine? Was I going to be able to bring up controversial issues which would spur discussion in my family? I had no idea, but I began coming up with an adequate system to make sure I kept a timeline intact for making the magazine a yearly project.

Cover for NOMAD 2016

Justin McAfee

Cover for NOMAD 2017

Ryan Alexander

In 2017, I really poured my heart and soul into the project, and when I was done with the publication, I was scared of releasing the magazine. So, I didn’t. I did not release it in the way I wanted: on Facebook, on Instagram, blurting out for others to see what I had put together. Instead, I just told friends I had something I put together, here take a look. I ended up needing to start selling the magazine because of the popularity which came of it. There was absolutely no way I was able to keep up with the personal cost of printing how many issues were made. Friends of friends started to request issues, and I began to really struggle with how to deal with the volume. This is when it became clear there was a business opportunity.

DIRECTION AND VALUES

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

NOMAD is a publication I would have bled forwhen I was in high school and college. It’s apublication which shows others the bigger pictureof education; NOMAD celebrates the potential a person can gain through self-education. As Mark Twain famously said, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” This does not discount schooling, but rather highlights how formalized education is not universal and there are plenty of avenues which are open for personal exploration. NOMAD is a publication curated for those with ambition. This publication does not give you a reason to achieve something, but helps you accomplish that which you set your mind to achieve.

We are a magazine striving not only to challenge your idea of the status quo, but also help found new ideas from different perspectives. We are a publication striving to build confidence in individuals around not only how we act and how we want to be perceived by the world; but also, in how we see opportunities which are given to us everyday but we don’t harness. We often miss potential opportunities because we are focusing too much on the details, or we do not have the foresight to know there was even an opportunity to seize. “Le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés - Chance favors only the prepared mind” by Louis Pasteur. The stories in NOMAD highlight those who seized the day and used their imagination (and by ‘imagination’ I mean have logically stepped through a series of ideas to come up with something actionable and original). NOMAD will help you capture the next step in your education and give you the preparation necessary to seize upon the opportunity.

NOMAD is not a publication in which you will find short stories to be enjoyed and then forgotten. You will find only opportunities, préparés votres esprits. As you read articles from people like yourself, you may see opportunities which the writer missed, you will reach into your own experiences giving yourself the opportunity to understand a scenario which the writer had not seen.

Reach out to these writers. Contact them and tell them what you learned from reading their story. With this you start a conversation in which the writer and reader can lead each other in new directions, teach new ways of thinking, and explore new opportunities. Not only are you stepping with the writer through the story, you are also learning why the writer didn’t write your idea--was it because they were too close to the action and didn’t see the opportunity? Perhaps the writer faced a challenge you can help overcome or there were complications which prevented them from including the information about your idea in this venue.

This aspect of community is present in NOMAD’s previous two issues and is something which holds great potential. In the past few years, I have seen friends, as well as friends-of-friends, reacting to NOMAD. This reaction has brought me to believe I am touching on something which is unaccessible or not completely comprehensible, a tacit mentality which cannot be explicitly expressed. With thisin mind I continue to push the overall theme forNOMAD below.

NOMAD is a magazine which pushes someoneinto movement. They cannot stand still becauseof a calling, an idea, or because they see anopportunity to progress society. These grand ideasneed one small step to get started, and NOMADholds the key to the first step. It provides youcontext to get moving, to help achieve your vision.

CULTIVATING CONTACTS

As I field tested this letter, there have been somequestions as to how I come across contacts forNOMAD. For example, in this year’s edition thereare various types of people who all hold to thetheme above. This interaction is best described byNapoleon Hill, “The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

NOMAD is the connector. I want to use thispublication to change the way we think, act, andfeel about education. Not learning, but education.Society thinks education is directly related toschool; in reality it’s related to gaining wisdom.This is the core ethos and why we go to school.Learning is what you do at school, where youmemorize the spelling of words, you learn to workconcepts, but you do not gain the experienceyou need to succeed in the world. It’s like readingabout how to drive in a classroom and then beinggiven a driver’s license at the end of the coursewithout having the experience behind the wheelof a car. There is no substitution for experience,and this is where Mark Twain’s advice rings true.

I have curated friends to write for NOMAD,to talk about their lives, their businesses, theirvisions, and their goals. I found, that readingbooks on what people did during challengingaspects of their lives, dried my tears and kept me moving forward. I have compiled interviews of various friends who have captivated me with what they accomplished this past year or have gone through personally. I have compiled stories from friends on thoughts they find imperative not only to the futures of their business but also the future of them personally.

As I continue to pursue this path to achieve my goals, I find people, naturally, who are aiming not in the same direction, but who are currently or have in the past faced the same struggles I am. Gravitating towards someone in conversation can only be done through general interest, and this is done on an expressive level with multiple conversations at various depths. Getting to the core of a person is not as easy as cutting directly to the center of an onion but is done by peeling back one layer at a time, one conversation at a time. I postulate you are not capable of faking this gravitational pull, instead you must genuinely believe and be interested for what you want to achieve, and by doing so, you will attract others who are like you and who want to achieve the same vision. These are the partnerships created by a publication like NOMAD. Building a community which strives to harness the idea of crowdsourcing ideas.

ONE MORE THING

Every issue has had a big note, a topic which has dominated throughout. The theme for 2016 was my graduation from college and taking the next step into the working world. The theme for 2017 was the conversation of coming out, my experience, and working with a nonprofit effort for emergency displaced LGBT youth. Ironically, these previous two themes meshed nicely with the overarching theme for NOMAD: progressing forward, pushing one’s self to the next extreme. This year’s theme is no different: foundation building. Encompassing what we aim to achieve with this issue. It starts the process of formalizing this publication and making it more than a backyard dream and into a magazine that cultivates, curates, underwrites, and facilitates progression.

I am tremendously excited about the positive response NOMAD has received. My last word will remain on NOMAD’s main theme of progression. As a friend of mine says, “Onward and Upward!” and I look forward to what the future will bring us.

Cheers!