Jordan McNamara is the Envato Support & Community Manager. You may have met him online in his support role, or heard him co-hosting the Envato podcast.

Last week Jords flew out of Australia for a while, and we caught up with him (mid air) via email about what he’s up to.

So, you’re going on a trip. Where are you heading, and how long are you away for?

I’ve always been a big fan of travelling, I even worked as a Travel Agent when I was a bit younger. So I’ve always dreamed of taking a fairly long trip around the world.

Until I started working at Envato this was never really a viable option for me for a few different reasons. At the beginning of this year, I started to think about the fact that we have so many of our staff (at all levels of the business) working remotely – so maybe I could do the same for a bit and do some exploring!

And voila! I’m currently planning on going to the United States (well, I’m already here – I’m writing this on a flight to Chicago!) and Europe. More specifically, I’ve just visited Los Angeles for two days where I stayed in a hostel in Hollywood.

Hollywood was pretty much what I expected! It’s a strange, strange place. But was pretty fun! I was eating my lunch at a cafe yesterday and saw all of these writers typing scripts away on their laptops – very cliched but I enjoyed it.

Now I’m off to Chicago for the 2010 Envato Conference where I’m excited to meet all of the staff I’ve been working with for the past year and a half or so in person! It’s also going to be great to meet some of our awesome Community members at the Community Meetup.

Afterwards I’m heading back to California and visiting San Francisco (and Yosemite National Park – I want to see bears!) and then I’ll zig zag back across the country to New York City (really is an amazing place – I visited last year).

Afterwards things are up to me! I’m thinking of going to visit Drew Douglass our Support Team Leader, in Fargo so we can work together in person and hopefully achieve some awesome productive things. From there I’m off to Europe if all is going well where hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with some of my friends who live in Berlin & London. I’m overseas for around three months all in all.

I understand you’ll be working while you’re away. How do you hope to balance work with sightseeing?

I am working while travelling! It’s certainly going to be to interesting to see how it all pans out but I’m confident I can do it well.

I’ll be working full time while travelling, so I’m thinking that the best way of balancing work and sight seeing is to not try and take too much travelling on at any one time and to stay put in one place for a few weeks to really soak up the atmosphere whilst still working. Thanks to my trusty MacBook Pro I’ll also try and work outside as much as possible so I get a bit of both worlds at the same time.

I’ll use my Annual Leave wisely (like on Fridays and Mondays ), but I have flexible working hours while travelling so if there’s say something that I want to do during the day – then I’ll just work my shift that night! It’s almost like being a contractor or freelancer but with extremely regular work – which will be an exciting experience for me as it’s something that I’ve never done before and it’s something that’s always appealed to me.

That said, I think I’ll miss the regularity of going into the office at some point, because I’m really social and I might get lonely! But I’m sure I’ll meet some awesome people around the world . I think overall it’s just going to take discipline and planning – which shouldn’t be too hard! If it is I’ll just come home

Tell us a bit about the work you do for Envato.

I started with Envato in June 2009 as the Support Team Leader. Previously Support was being looked after by one of the Directors of Envato, Jun and some part-time staff (I think at some point even Collis and Cyan were doing it!).

I think everyone probably realised that as the Marketplaces and other Envato brands grew, Support would no doubt increase (not to mention it is an inefficient use of a Directors time!). I came from a customer service background and applied. I’d always known about Envato and the idea of working for the Company really excited me.

I went in for an interview when we were still working in the Open Hub which was a shared workspace with other tech guys/creatives and got the job! I was so happy! After some time my responsibilities were expanded to include looking after the Community for the Marketplaces including moderation and more recently I’ve started to branch into community development across all Envato brands and a bit of Marketing.

What is the best thing about working for Envato?

The best thing, undoubtably in my mind, is the freedom and trust given to me to achieve goals and work in my own way. I report to Collis and I know that he trusts me to get the job done without the need for him to double check every single little thing or watch over my shoulder every five seconds. This allows for a lot of creative freedom in how I choose to approach projects and allows me to do things like this overseas trip! It’s a very motivating and empowering feeling. Also, having come from a very corporate background, the feeling of freedom for me in this manner is extremely liberating and satisfying.

In a broader sense, I simply just love the kind of work I get to do. I’m a geek (I love Star Trek and Buffy!), so working for a web company like Envato is a dream come true and I get to use all the skills I’ve previously gained from my other jobs and in general in interesting and different ways. I love the community aspects of my job and getting to interact with so many prominent people in the creative industries that Envato deals with is a privilege.

Will you make it to the big Chicago meet-up? What are you most looking forward to?

I’m flying there now! I’m so excited! It’s going to be amazing finally meeting most of my team as well as the rest of the folks I already feel like I know so well that work outside of the main office in Melbourne. I think we’re going to have a really productive week and hopefully get a lot out of the experience so that’s very exciting. But of course I’m super excited about the community meetup! We’ve got a fair few people coming now and it’s going to be so much fun finally putting the faces to the names of some of the awesome people I’ve come to know through the sites over the past year!

It’s just going to be a blast in general I can’t wait to eat Chicago style deep dish pizza and generally gorge on all the deliciously bad-for-you food that Australia misses out on. (I’m looking at you KFC Double Down!!)