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Right now, as I write this, I am seated in the confines of a quiet airplane, Buenos Aires bound.

I cherish this time. Turn off the inflight entertainment and simply enjoy the time sitting and thinking. Sure, my Emirates flight has WiFi and an abundance of entertainment. In fact, I don't have to disconnect at all. I can call the studio, text, email and tweet (Facebook was a bit of a fail). But I won't succumb. I believe one should, and must, resign to the potential for zero communication whilst in transit. Because if there's any time left in our lives to contemplate for a few consecutive hours, now is that time. Sad isn't it?

Right now, I'm thinking about the next 3.5 weeks of my field trip (and ironically, documenting) where I'll be travelling across the Americas to meet developers, world-class agencies, and creatives. My intention is to gather and reflect on the latest thinking on everything from online tech to business process management and even corporate culture.

My trip starts in Buenos Aires where we've historically sourced our talented full-stack devs and FED's (front-end web developers to the uninitiated). There's such an abundance of creative and technical talent in Argentina. In my last trip, it was clear to me that many of the world's savviest US creative agencies are either outsourcing or establishing local offices in B.A. to cater for technical work. Great minds surely think alike!

With our Art Director, Juan (a native Argentinian) living in Melbourne for the last 15 years, we travel to hang out with our compadres Murray, Chris and Fernando (who runs his own creative studio but feels more like a brother-in-arms at Indietech).

Besides hanging out and catching up over cups of mate (tea) and large sides of meat roasting over an Argentinian asado (BBQ), we'll be theorising and further evolving our intricate development processes. Building an environment that's conducive to constant improvement is a great challenge for a business like ours - especially when digital development is so inextricably linked to creative processes and mindsets.

Further along the trip, a notable stop will be New York, where I will have the privilege of meeting some of the world's thought leaders in digital design and tech. I'm truly excited about the conversations to be had over hamburgers and bagels.

If I have to predict what I believe will be of most value from my international research trip, I believe it will be the very time that I take out - away from the daily management of a business - to concentrate on the big picture. This time will reap the biggest rewards for me, Indietech, and our customers. Second in line, much to the delight of our communications department, is the opportunity it will give me to make a significant contribution to our social and content strategies. And truly, I am excited about regularly documenting my thoughts, insights and learnings to our readers as I traverse the Americas.

But, as I sit upon my flight to Buenos Aires via Auckland rapidly changing time zones, the only important question I need to answer now is do I read the news over filtered coffee or watch the latest Terminator release over whisky?

Time to disconnect Ben... For now.

Follow Ben's updates on Twitter and Periscope throughout this September and October.