The Adventurist News & Notes…Plus a Special Contest!
Posted by Jason A. Hendricks on May 29, 2008 |
I recently ran across an interesting idea over at the Lateral Lines blog. Jon Clausen, who writes the Lateral Lines blog has been a bit busy of late with school and his personal life and decided to do what he called a “Link Dump.” The idea being that there were many things that he would love to write more in-depth about, but he just doesn’t have the time. He put up the links to the interesting articles, with a couple lines of summary or an interesting point or two and the rest was left up to the reader to decide if it was interesting enough to click.
Many bloggers can attest to the fact that we have way more information coming at us than we can possibly ever write about. Along with that, add in any side-projects, reading, commenting etc. and you can see that this can become a full time job pretty fast.
Here is a bit of my own schedule, just in relation to this site over the past couple of weeks. I have done a blog host switch going from Wordpress to Skinny Moose Media. This alone took up anywhere from 2-5 hours a day for almost a week and a half straight. In the meantime I was putting up my daily Everest reports and anything else of interest, trying to get familiar with the Outdoor Bloggers Summit, answering between 25-50 emails a day, making comments on other blogs of interest and working on possibly two more side projects (will get into that a bit later), all while working a full-time job. Needless to say, I have been quite busy.
The “Link Dump” idea appeals to me in the fact that I can cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, plus offer up quite a few items of interest at once. I am thinking of possibly doing this on a weekly basis, much like the “My Indiana” pieces I am now including. Anytime I find something that appeals to me, or that I think might hold an interest for you, the reader, I “Bookmark” it for the future, hoping that I will have time to include it in a future post. More times than not, those bookmarks stay there untouched.
Go check out Jon Clausen’s “Lateral Lines” blog to see this idea in action. Then come back to The Adventurist and give me a suggestion for a title to this weekly “Link Dump.” The person who offers up the best idea for a title will receive a special gift–Hey Wow! My first contest. We will see how it goes. Leave your ideas in the comments section below.
I mentioned earlier that I am in the process of a couple of side-projects that don’t necessarily pertain to The Adventurist. One of these projects involves the Outdoor Bloggers Summit. Over the past few weeks I have been contacted a few times by outdoor writers and bloggers asking me questions about ‘blogging,’ and how to do certain things pertaining to this media format. After contacting Kristine, one of the editors over at the OBS, we have discussed having myself offer up a weekly column dedicated to these issues. This should be a fun project and hopefully will be informative, as well.
I have also been offered the opportunity to “Guest Blog” on another Outdoors related site, that has nothing to do with Adventure, but still involves the great outdoors. Kenny Breckenridge, who runs the Kenny’s Great Outdoors blog, has shot me an offer about writing over there on occasion. Kenny is quite the outdoorsman and if you ever get a chance to talk with him, he will leave you in stitches. He is definitely a funny guy, but knows his stuff as well. Go check out his site.
A few other things of interest: The Adventurist was recently mentioned on a Bulgarian Adventure Blog (You may need Google Translator to read this, I did!). That is kind of exciting. This follows up a couple of mentions in the UK–most notably UKClimbing.com, perhaps the biggest climbing site in the UK and all of Europe, as well as a site in Japan. Sometimes we forget the reach that we, as writers have. It is exciting, none the less, to have readers from all over the United States and the World tuning in to this site.
One of my reasonings I’m offering up this information publicly is not to brag by any means, but it is an effort to let all of you know that I do care about what I do and there is a real person on the other side of the screen. With many sites, you get the information without ever getting to know who it is writing. I care about my readers and am truly humbled by the small impact I have been able to make over the last year and a half. Without all of you, I probably wouldn’t be doing this. So, thank-you from the bottom of my heart for taking an interest in what I do.
With the new move to Skinny Moose Media being 90% complete, the future is looking good and my time should be getting better situated. Thanks for coming along for the ride and hopefully we will continue to have a good time here at The Adventurist. There will be a few new improvements, a couple more added features, but in the end, I will still be doing what I do and pushing forward with my goal of making this one of the best sites of it’s kind in the world.
If you have any ideas, news tips, stories, articles, etc. that may be of interest or just want to chat, I always have room in my email box. Drop me a line. The address can be found below.
Cheers-
Jason A. Hendricks Editor The Adventurist theadventurist@cliffhanger.com
Jason, a nice peek into the world of pro-blogging! Thanks for the comments over at my place. I’ve updated my link to you on my blogroll.
Link dumps are a great way to do a sort-of “run-down” of the stuff you’ve been reading and are interested in- as long as they’re nicely spaced between original content.
I like the idea of the OBS blogging column. A lot of what I do I based on your style, so I really appreciate your insight.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Clint,
Thanks for the nice comment. Haha–you mentioned that evil: “Pro-Blogging”. I really don’t like that term. That makes it sound like there is an upper-class and a lower-class to what we all do. I think all of us are in this together, no matter the experience. Don’t take it the wrong way, I work very hard at this, but I also know where I started–I didn’t know squat, but there were people along the way that helped. I recently corrected a writer over at Backpacker Magazine for saying I was in the “upper-hierarchy’ of outdoor blogging, as well, for the same reason–looks nice and sounds nice for the ego, but I am not about ego. If anything, I am just looking for a way to pay some of the awesome support I have received, back.
As for your comment on being an influence in your own writing and style, you, as well as I know that hard work pays dividends. You have gotten yourself where you are, but glad I could lend a hand along the way.
Clint, you do a lot of outdoors related writing with your own angle, you’d be great person to join the OBS..if you haven’t already, stop by and check it out. I think you’d get some enjoyment out of a friendly group of people that all support what we do–not matter our own personal angle.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:09 am
I’m not sure I like the term “link dump” but a lot of us doing something like that on occasion. I do Community Wednesday every week, where I link to stories that other bloggers have written. It’s more a way to try and point out blogs others might have missed. I tend to read more blogs than most, so I can usually find one or two things other people haven’t seen yet.
I did e-mail you about writing for the OBS. I’ve had some e-mail issues, so hopefully we can get together and work out the details.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Yeah, the term “link dump” isn’t so attractive. Haha. I have emailed you at the new address. Tried lastnight, but it was returned. Thanks for stopping by Kristine!
May 30th, 2008 at 2:56 pm