A New Era, and more time in front of the screen of a computer

Today - Monday, October 18, 2010 - marks the official beginning of a project that I hope to someday be able to look back on and say "Geez - remember way back when the OBN started?"

I'm sure some of you have noticed the Outdoor Blogger Network buttons / logos that have been appearing on the sidebars of some blogs over the past few days. Well, today is the official launch of that website. What is the OBN? Why do we need another website? Who cares? Read on and I'll explain in my own simple way.

A few months back, Rebeca Garlock - The Outdooress - and I met to fish some of the fine waters she writes about. That was it - we were going fishing. If you read these pages (and I'm assuming you do, because you're reading this!) you know that we "clicked" from the moment we met. No weird awkward silences, nothing - just like we were old friends fishing together. And, as we found out throughout those couple of days, we shared a few visions of what we would like to see our respective blogs become, and, even more so, where we thought the whole Outdoor Blogging community was heading. Or where we thought it SHOULD BE heading. These conversations were much the same as many we've all had - "What would you do if you won a million dollars?", "What do you want to be when you grow up?", ... [BTW - I have NO intentions of ever growing up!] Just typical, pie-in-the-sky kind of conversations. Except that this one didn't just fade away, into the background, into the graveyard of "What if...". We kept talking about this. And we started laying the groundwork to actually DO the site.

Our vision, in a nutshell, was to develop a place for readers of Outdoor blogs to find the best material on the web, and for Outdoor bloggers to have a centralized "meeting place" - a cyber "neighborhood bar / cafe", if you will. We wanted the Outdoor Blogging community to have something to be a part of, and to be able to amass a common voice in the media if need be. We feel that if we can have a somewhat consolidated voice, that we can become a viable part of the media (strength in numbers, if you will) where, now, we are individual voices in the forest of the industry. Finally, we wanted to create a centralized point of contact for manufacturers of outdoor related products, so they can more easily facilitate product placement for reviews, and have an archived listing of past reviews.

It is a pretty ambitious plan and goal.

And, the one thing we don't ever want to lose sight of (because, if we do, it will be the death of the site) is that the OBN HAS TO be a place people want to log into, and want to be a part of. It has to be fun.

Because, in the end, if we're not having fun doing this stuff - why are we doing it?

If you're a fellow blogger, and want to become part of the Outdoor Blogger Network, click on the OBN button alongside this post and become a part of the network!

Finally, if you've already signed up for the OBN, make sure you return to the site to see how YOU can win some cool stuff in our Inaugural Giveaway!!