About Us
Ahh, so you’re trying to figure out who these folks behind the always detour brand are? Well, we’re happy to share!
We’re John and Vi. He’s an open book with a long history of being in the public eye online, and she’s the lovely and brilliant – normally behind the scenes – brains behind the… well whatever he’s got.
About John
Decades ago, John founded HTMLHelp.com – one of the very first websites on the internet – to teach people how to build websites using the newly defined HTML standard. He’s truly one of the OG’s of the Web! He then spent the next decade in leadership roles for companies like GTE (now Verizon), the UK’s Cable & Wireless, SAVVIS (then CenturyLink – now Lumen Technologies… sheesh), and Layered Technologies (then Datapipe, now Rackspace!). His roles included Director of N. American Sales, and SVP, to CMO.
John is also a prolific entrepreneur, having founded Woopra (with two partners) – the world’s first truly live web analytics firm, Livid Lobster – a media company that produced the wildly popular GeekBeat.TV franchise, and Texas Metal Works – now the largest producer of specialized welding tables in America (among other things).
About Vi
Vi is the brainy, over-achiever that everyone loves! After getting her electrical engineering degree, she served in the US Navy, where she literally taught physics at the Nuclear Naval Institute!
If that wasn’t enough, she went on to become a satellite engineer, and later spent 25 years with Cisco Systems, sometimes serving as the top network engineer on the entire Verizon global network, and eventually taking on a specialized role as the company’s top troubleshooter for the most serious escalations the world faced.
About Our Independence
John and Vi are documenting their journeys for two primary purposes:
- To serve as a sort of visual diary. It’s fun to travel and explore, and it’s also fun to think back and relive experiences that you enjoyed.
- If something was a fantastic experience they want to share it with the world so others can get ideas to build their own memories.
They will only travel to places they want to go, and do things they want to do, and will never accept payment or act as spokespersons for anyone. So anything you see or read is 100% unbiased, and based solely on what they think and feel.