John Ryan, 30, is the coordinator of Lonely Planet New Media Unit’s Melbourne, Australia, office. The company produces a variety of travel information both on and offline. He studied fine arts and film and worked on print freelance writing projects before overcoming his technophobic tendencies to join Lonely Planet’s online division. Ryan recently helped build CitySync city travel guides for Palm computers.

Monster.com: Were you always technically adept?

John Ryan: When I landed my job at Lonely Planet, I'd been online, surfing frequently for a year or so. Prior to that, I was a technophobe. In 1995, I successfully pushed a Mac’s "on" button but had to ask a friend how to type on the computer. I didn't realize you had to start an application first.

Mc: How did you get this job?

JR: I'd been working part time at a small university publishing company to pay my way through tertiary study. I'd also been freelancing as a features and film writer for about three years. I was looking for full-time work as a writer and wasn’t having much luck. The Lonely Planet advertised in the newspaper for a writer/producer. All you needed was a writing folio and an interest in the Net. I had a long interview with a recruitment company, and then an interview and writing test at Lonely Planet. Then I got the job.

Mc: What prepared you for this position?

JR: I'd done a lot of freelance work and was used to writing on short deadline. One of my regular jobs for a local newspaper required me to conduct an interview and submit a 1,000-word feature the same afternoon. So writing quickly didn’t phase me. Also, I'm fairly talkative, and a culture fit is very high on Lonely Planet’s recruitment agenda. It's a young, willfully hip kind of place, so any personality I could show was an advantage.

Mc: What do you like best about the company?

JR: The company has a policy of hiring internally as much as possible. Opportunities and promotions are there if people feel stuck in a rut with their jobs. If people want a change, they can often move sideways or up a rung. It’s a great way of keeping things fresh while holding on to institutional knowledge.

Mc: Are you a traveler yourself?

JR: I was born and bred in Melbourne. I've traveled around, although not in the hyper-adventurous way many people at Lonely Planet do. I've backpacked through the United States, spent time with family in Ireland, wandered through the UK, and more recently spent time in Beijing and Singapore. Before the year is out, I'll be traveling to Lonely Planet's office in California and to Hong Kong to present a paper at a conference.

Mc: What is your typical day like?

JR: It starts with black coffee and a muffin. Then it's e-mail time. Our unit is fairly self-contained, so we share lots of duties, pick up each other's slack and endure each other’s terrible tastes in music. The workload is rarely unmanageable, but it is constant. Our deadlines are in hours. There's not much time to slack off, but when we do, we play pretty hard. A typical day here is a bit stressful and a lot of fun.

Mc: Lonely Planet is based in print. What challenges have you run into translating the content to the Web?

JR: One of the hardest things is drawing the line between our website as a digital product and as a marketing tool. At the moment, we're weighted towards being a product, but we've probably neglected some of the marketing potential of a site like ours. We are thinking about possible add-on services to assist our travel community.

Mc: What do you like best about your job?

JR: The people and the subject matter. The best thing about working for this Web site is that our work generates immediate reaction. The instant nature of online publishing puts us in a great position to understand and react to our community’s desires.

Mc: What advice would you give to someone who wants to work for a dotcom?

JR: The conventional answer is to just go for it, but I say take a step back. IT skills are needed in all areas these days. Match your job to the level of risk you're prepared to take. Oh, and don't bother learning HTML. There'll always be someone else who knows it.

As far as a travel-oriented dotcom, the hardest thing is getting your foot in the door. Start by understanding the product, and then make sure you know the travel industry. The most impressive thing to show at an interview is not what you know, but what you think.