You may have seen Pam Mandel’s post on her blog about Blogher and our invitation to sponsor her attendance at the event and work with her to create a tightly knit travel blog community of some kind–yet to be defined…  It didn’t work out because Blogher was sold out by the time we had connected.

On to plan two…

I am still hoping to meet many travel bloggers at Blogher. Why? We would like to build a more connected community of travel bloggers for information sharing, ideas, and inspiration.  We think travel bloggers should be found more easily, there should be a means of connecting the related subjects and places discussed on all blogs and personally I could use a few tools to make it easier to include my fellow bloggers. Don’t you agree?

Here are few questions we would like to discuss at the travel meet-up:

1.  How can we build a travel blogger community in cooperation with all travel bloggers?  Great minds do think alike, right?

2.  What other communities do travel bloggers participate in that we could emulate? Does a tool or an application already exists that we can tap into for inspiration or improved communication?

3.  If we were to create a “travel blog meet-up” at other conferences, what kind of program would it be, would you attend, would you pay for it? Why or why not?

Pam sent me an email with her answers to these questions (thanks, Pam). We are hoping you too will respond and we can build this together:

How can we build more community for  travel bloggers?
Community building isn’t my expertise but I find that anything that encourages face to face meeting is good for the blog. I really have loved the travel bloggers I’ve met in 3D, really loved them.  Crazy, but true.

What other communities do travel bloggers participate in that we could emulate?
Boots n All and Lonely Planet have lively message boards. TripWolf is trying to create a Facebook type interactivity, but seems to be a real influx of social networking/travel sites on the market and I’m not clear on how to tell them apart.  I just reviewed My Life of Travel, another one with built in networking. Couch Surfing seems to me to be superior at getting the travelers together – I got my 20 year Austrian old niece on there and she can’t get enough of it. I recently spent some time explaining it to my folks. “You mean no money changes hands?” I’m a fan of the concept even while we don’t participate because my blogging connections keep a fairly steady rotation of travelers on our fold out.

Don’t overlook the expats. I got into blogging because I was an expat. It’s great informal community, the expat bloggers one. And Twitter -  I’m surprised to find myself saying how much I enjoy the 140 character conversations travelers are having on Twitter. I like it a lot and it’s put me in touch with folks I’d not have “met” otherwise.

If we were to create a travel blog meet up with other conferences, in a more organized fashion, what kind of program would they like, would they attend, would they pay for it? Other ideas…

1. I feel like many bloggers could wildly improve the readability of their blogs with some basic travel writing tips. My  .02 as someone who’s really wrapped up in writing.
2. “What’s in your travel kit?” is always a popular subject for bloggers who travel with their own technology.
3. Photography, of course.
4. Given the growing influence of blogs in the travel market, talking about ethics in travel blogging is an interesting, if contentious topic. Travel writers  want to take the high road when they’re faced with comped services, but at 10 bucks a post to blog about a destination, it’s hard to pay for your travels, much less make a living. Ethics on writing reviews, communicating with PR folks and travel providers, being transparent to your readers, etc… are all good topics for discussion.
5. Monetization, too, of course – can I make money writing a travel blog?
6. A lot of travel bloggers want to get off the blog into print and other media, how do they do that?
7. Finally, new media, pod casting, video… it’s really fun to work with other forms of blog communication.

Do you have suggestions, ideas or opinions about how to bring the travel community together and build some tools that work for us?  If so, email me, comment here, or meet at the meet-up.

Travel bloggers unite.

If you have not yet heard, Al gore won the Nobel Peace Prize today!

Well, he happened to be in the SF Bay area at the time and decided to hold a press conference only 5 blocks from the Kango Offices

After receiving the Tip from a friend the Kango Blogger news crew (3 people and one Digital SLR camera) traveled the 5 blocks to see if the tip was real (Alex von Oech got the tip).

With ~ 30+ news crews we figured that the former Vice President would soon be arriving. People from the community came out to catch a glimpse of Gore including some young children with signs.

For a few minutes we went down a hall labeled “Press” and were politely asked to leave;

But we heard a tip that he would be arriving on the other side of the building; this tip also proved true and we were able to catch a glimpse of Gore as we stepped out of his Mercedes sedan “Eco 10” (powered by bio-diesel)

The Vice President was very polite to the press, and to the locals who had come out to support him; he stayed briefly outside the Alliance for Climate Protection offices and shook the hands of the children and their parents and thanked them for their support.

The place was buzzing after Gore arrived; and we went down the hall to the press room, going to the back door entrance we were welcomed inside by the “Alliance for Climate Protection” staff (despite our lack of press badges), climbing some steps in the back of the room already crowded by 10-15 journalists) we waited for Al Gore to deliver his speech.

His spokesperson entered the room first saying that Mr. Gore would be coming in 2 minutes to give a short speech and that he would not be answering questions; when he arrived he was hailed by the sound of 60+ cameras snapping photo’s (which failed to cease throughout the five minute speech) and the glare of the lights.

First the former vice president acknowledged the Nobel Prize committee for selecting him the (shared) winner and announced that he would be donating the prize to combat the climate crisis; he also said that he would travel to accept the prize in person.

Then he spoke briefly about the continuing effects of global warming on the polar ice caps “polar scientists are now warning that at current rates the polar ice caps will be completely gone within 23 years” (or language very similar, this humble blogger is relying only on memory)

He then spoke from a place of his own passion delivering a call in the form of an African proverb

Gore said:

“There is an old African proverb, If you want to go fast; go alone, if you want to go far; go together we need to act both quickly and together if we are going to put an end to the climate crisis” (Again I quote from memory)

With that, he concluded the press conference and thanked everyone for coming.

As he walked out of the room he was met with shouts from the press “Mr. Vice President Do you plan to run for president after winning this award?… Mr Vice president!”

With that; he left the room and he went to a private meeting with members of the Alliance for Climate Protection.

His message was loud and clear it sends a strong message that this years’ Nobel Prize is awarded to Al Gore. The world’s most important institutions are recognizing the urgency of the problem that we all face, for my part; I hope that we are able to make the simple green choices that will make that difference.

All photographs in this story may be republished under the creative commons attribution license, if you would like to republish any of the photo’s please link each one to this blog post and http://www.kango.com from any web-page using them. Thank you.

I love the idea of Blog Day as a way of featuring new and emerging bloggers. Oh yeah, I guess that’s us! Give us a year to discover the hidden gems out there in the blogosphere. But for now, I want to just highlight some blogs that are each an authority in their own space (yes, helping the rich get richer…sigh) but perhaps never often listed together!

1. Wangjianshuo’s Blog – Wang Jianshuo is one of the pioneering bloggers in China. He writes about his own life in Shanghai and provides great resources to travelers to Shanghai and China. He also has very nice photography on the site. I met him over coffee in Palo Alto, a super sharp and engaging guy.

2. Travel-Betty – Tracy’s mission is to enable “fearless independent travel for women.” Its a great mission, but what I really like is her concept of the 30-second vacation, short video clips that aim to take you away from your everyday. I guess vacations are getting ever shorter here in America.

3. Occam’s Razor – I’ve watched from afar as former colleague Avinash Kaushik was the Peter Parker of Intuit’s Web Commerce Group but then became the Spiderman of Web Analytics. Here’s an example of both great blogging and great analytics, two great tastes in one. This post cured me of my desired to get Dugg. Quality over quantity.

4. HobbyPrincess – Fashion, crafting and technology. I’m neither a crafter nor am I fashionable. I do support my wife’s yarn habit though, so that counts for something.

5. TheSilentI – Glennia has some great tips for traveling with kids. And she has been an inspiration to us for what Kango can do to help parents to travel with their kids, as well as a personal kick-in-the-pants to take my 2 kids to exotic places (like where my wife and I used to go before we had the kids).

5 and 1/2. CreativeThink – I think I ran into the Whack Pack and the Ball of Whacks when I was working at Microsoft a long time ago. Roger’s blog is good for a zen-slap anytime you need one. I guess some people have blogging in their DNA because Alex of Kango fame appears to be the most widely read blogger at the company with his exploring cartograms post.

Lets see, what are the instructions again? Add a link to Blog Day’s site. Now it says to add a technorati tag for Blog Day 2007

I guess that’s it. Now isn’t this an eclectic list?