Vacations Blog

I attended the travel bloggers meet-up at Blogher on Friday afternoon. The travel meet-up was originally discussed by Pam Mandel at nerdseyeview and on Blogher.  It was moderated by Suzanne Reisman at  cussandotherrants (who has also written a new book, Off the Beaten Subway Track, more on that later) The majority of our time was spent on introductions, but we did have a few moments to discuss how we could create a more tightly-knit travel blogger community.  Delicious Baby collected cards from everyone who is interested in building the community and will be posting the list of bloggers on her site.  I captured a few names during the introductions and subsequent discussion of some great travel blogs I want to add to my google reader in addition to the blogs already listed:

ms.adventuresinitaly

perceptivetravelblog.com

Jet Set Girls Blogspot–all about girls getaways

See Jane Fly–for the female road warrior

Mommy Poppins–telling us how to get more out of NY

TasteFood

Headed to Margaritaville

everyday adventures

What A Trip written by Nancy Brown, a contributor to Uptake

Mile High Mamas–(the Denver Post)

KitchenGadgetGirl (and consultant to Uptake) has an idea for creating a page with RSS feeds  from all the sites that wish to participate. I think this is the best idea yet, but I may be biased sine I have been working with her for nearly a year.

Uptake also have  a travel blog search widget we created in cooperation with the t-list to make it easier to find travel bloggers everywhere.  If you are interested in participating, please go here to join the search widget and here for information on the twitter t-list..

A few corporations sent some representatives including SeaWorld, DisneyWorld Orlando, Teleflora, and the Hilton were all there to gain insight into the travel blogger community.  They want to reach travel bloggers of all kinds (see Blogher, travel is big business….)

Many of the bloggers were interested in building a more cohesive community and wanted to make ourselves more available to other bloggers, publicists and corporations trying to reach us.  Please add to the conversation.  Give us your ideas to build a more connected travel community.  Next year, we hope Blogher ‘09 will have a panel devoted to travel.

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.