Photo credit: http://www.borneoclassic.com

It was quite an adventure. Danum, I mean. Well, the website too. But let me talk about the rainforests first because that’s why we all do what we do – so we can travel and explore new places.

In Danum, which at 43,800 hectares is bigger than Singapore, something I was repeatedly told by my guides, there is no mobile phone coverage, just lots of trees, birds, insects, monkeys and orang utans.

So for three days, I walked, trekked and hiked through the wilds of the jungle without my Blackberry.

I heard sweet birdsong, I saw my first orang utan in the wild – a 37-year-old male called King, I flicked leeches off my body (okay, just two or three because obviously I am too cold-blooded for them), I peered up at the tallest trees I had ever seen and I walked up trails and slipped down some.

I took photos and videos of everything, even the thunderstorm which finally arrived and broke the dry spell that had gripped the valley for months, and brought out the leeches by the gazillions.

I slept to the sound of cicadas and frogs and I woke up each morning to the call of gibbons, the singing of the bulbul and the deep echoing sounds of hornbills.

Every now and then I would think of the team at Spoon, working on the new website, and I smiled. As we all know, trust is an important element in any partnership and I trusted them to do the right thing.

So welcome to the new WIT. What we wanted to do was to reflect what WIT had become since its first event in 2005. It started out as a two-day conference which, over time, has evolved into a news platform. And then we started adding multi-media content and events, and the poor website just couldn’t cope.

This new website reflects the multi-media platform WIT has become. Think of it as a house and the different tenants within it – a blog and news feed, the WIT Conference, WIT Events (WIT*e, WITovation and WIT Branding Bootcamp) as well as The Transit Café (my other website for travel insiders) and ITB Asia, WIT’s partner event.

There’s more to do after this (very) soft launch – call it a V0.8. So please bear with us while we keep adding to it over the next few days, weeks, months. There’s masses of content to be migrated over and  lots of things to get right. The Transit Café will be revamped and integrated into the site by the end of this month – expect some changes there too.

It’s been quite an adventure trying to fit all the different elements into one house. You know how it is – you start something and it starts growing, and growing, and before you know it, it’s outgrown itself. And then you find you need a new house to put everything in it.

At this point, you could choose to throw away some stuff – like some hoarders ought to – but we felt WIT still had room to grow.

As with any new thing, you will probably find it overwhelming – like we did when we were brainstorming on the new site and what it should be. But we hope you will get used to it and, over time, grow to like it and visit us more often to get your regular dose of news, blogs, discussion and inspiration and, of course, to get frequent updates on the WIT Conference this year.

Like the trails in Danum Valley, we know it’s a long, winding and slippery trek to get any website right. The secret is to listen to the birds sing on the way and occasionally, stop and watch the orang utans at play. (Watch video)