A note from the BCATW President
Dear Colleagues,
Please plan to attend our AGM on November 22nd.
LOCATION CHANGE. Due to a freak accident at Peppa Martin’s Truth and Beauty Gallery, we were forced to change the location and time of our AGM to: 10 am at Mt. Pleasant Community Centre Library, conveniently located at #1 Kingsway, in Vancouver between 7th and 8th Ave. Map.
You’ll see it’s easy to get to by bus, skytrain, bicycle, or car! For cars, there’s paid parking under Mt. Pleasant Community Centre. Free parking may be available three blocks east at Guelph Park.
For our planning, please RSVP through Meetup. (If you’re not a member of Meetup, why not? That’s how you get into our Monthly Meetups.)
Remember: Success is based on invigoration from energetic, enthusiastic, new-idea youths as well as involvement from those ageless, cool, keen and thoughtful veterans. Get ready for a great meeting by perusing the attached agenda!
Please attend and help us set new goals and to meet the quorum required to conduct business! If you can’t be there in person, please send the proxy Mari will email you before November 12th!
Hope to see you at the AGM!
– Rick Millikan
2014 Annual General Meeting Agenda
9:30 am – Library Doors Open. Networking with colleagues and enjoyment of refreshments.
10:00 am – Meeting Begins
1. Circulation & Adoption of Minutes of November, 2013 AGM and Adoption of Agenda for November 22, 2014
2. Executive Reports
- Overview of 2014 Activities -Rick Millikan, President
- Financial Statement (January 2014- November 2014) Treasurer -Karoline Cullen
- Communications-Mari Kane
- Marketing and Industry Relations-Randi Winter
3. Election of Directors
Pursuant to Bylaw 26.1 of the BCATW Constitution, in addition to submitted intentions to run, on-the-spot nominations will be accepted. Directors retired from office are eligible for reelection. If more than one nominated candidate for the same Board office, elections will be held with present members filling out ballot slips.
- President
- Member at Large
- Second Director of Communications
- Industrial Relations
4. New Business
- 2015 Symposium: Decision on date, venue, theme, etc.
- Selection of Symposium 2015 Chair Person and Committee Volunteers
- Meetups: Report on its success and scheduled presentations
- Industry member: Intrepid participation
5. Open Forum
- What will make our association more viable?
- What priorities should be set for 2015?
6. Motion to Adjourn
11:30 Break to Mix, Mingle and Munch
11:45 pm Mari will demonstrate the website directory and its implementation
12:00 pm Presentation by Sandra Salovitz, Destinos Enterprises and Kerri Jo Stewart, Argamak Photography
November BCATW Meetup
How to Use Social Media to Build Your Personal Brand as a Travel Writer
In this meetup, writer and teacher Rebecca Coleman will show us:
- How social media can give a second life to your traditional media (magazines, newspapers, etc) articles
- How social media can help you to build “expert status” as a travel writer
- How social media can help you to connect with tourist organizations, hotels and restaurants in cities you are travelling to
- How social media can help you to source ideas for stories
She will touch on the following social media tools and provide examples of how they can help to build your personal brand as a travel writer: blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and video-sharing networks, like YouTube, Vine, and Instagram video.
Rebecca Coleman is passionate about helping artists, small businesses and not-for-profits to become better marketers. An early adopter of Social Media, she has become increasingly interested in using it as a marketing tool, and writes about the subject on her blog. She has written 3 books, which help newbies create a marketing plan using social networking as a tool. She instructs courses in Social Media Marketing and blogging at BCIT, and travels internationally giving workshops.
Rebecca is an avid foodie with a healthy wanderlust, and shares her adventures on her personal blog: Cooking by Laptop, and is a regular contributor to Vancity Buzz.
Please join us for this exciting meetup! Remember, BCATW members attend Free!
http://www.meetup.com/BC-Association-of-Travel-Writers/events/213612602/
BCATW Member News
Joan Boxall is putting finishing touches on a ‘Seniors Swimming’ article, set for January’s Health Issue of ‘Senior Living’. She’s also doing a poetry reading November 13, 6:30pm, as one of six guest writers appearing with Kate Braid at Surrey City Centre Library.
Irene Butler and her husband Rick are still on the go in Europe! During the month of October they paid visits to Bosnia and Hercegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania. All of these countries were fascinating.
An Albanian bunker. 500,000 (some say 700,000) of these concrete/steel bunkers were built during the regime of Enver Hoxha. He was dictator of Albania during most of their previous 47 years of communism. Mindbogglingly to say the least!
Irene and Rick have now arrived in Athens, Greece and are looking forward to renewing their fond memories of this great city from 16 years ago…and applying for their India visas here (for when Europe’s winter chills set in).
Cherie checking out the best beaches in the Gulf Islands for Pacific Yachting Magazine
Cherie Thiessen is looking forward to the TMAC Whistler event on Nov. 6-8 and wondering who is going from BCATW.
Cherie’s story on Pender Island’s Fire Cadet Camp is in the current issue of Aqua Magazine. Click on Aqua to open a digital copy. If you click on the Gulf Islander image, her stories on Mayne, Saturna, Galiano and Pender are in that magazine as well. Stories on Molokai and on canal coating in England also ran in travel writers tales syndicate’s 3 weeklies. Pacific Yachting’s October issue ran her roundup on historic buildings in the Gulf Islands and Explore Magazine’s current issue has her story on the Kinsol Trestle and the Cowichan Valley Trail.
Julie H. Ferguson is home again but leaving for a “real” vacation in ten days — lots of golf and good books for a month, mostly off the grid. She has been stick handling over 3000 images and writing what will eventually be more than twelve articles about the Hebrides and Iceland for UK, US, and Canadian markets.
My rental car in the Outer Hebrides was the same width as the single-track roads and I quickly learned the etiquette when approaching a passing place. This one was particularly tricky as neither driver could see the other coming….
Julie’s promotion efforts for the centennial edition of her first book, Through a Canadian Periscope, have consumed the time that was left over after nine+ weeks of travel. Now it’s time to consider 2015 travel plans.
Ruth Kozak recently returned from Greece where she successfully promoted her recently published historical-fiction novel SHADOW OF THE LION: BLOOD ON THE MOON (Volume 1). She also kept busy there researching stories and locations for travel and for the Athens Guide e-book she is writing for an American publisher.
While she was away she had several stories published in Europe Up Close, Travel Generation and TRAVEL THRU HISTORY: Venus, Mistress of Seas in Travel Generation Italy, Greece: A Walk about the Hills of Athens in Travel Generation Greece, The Exotic Resorts of Soma Bay in Travel Generation Egypt, Searching for Crocodiles in the Nile River in TRAVEL THRU HISTORY Egypt, and Ghost Legends of Greece in Europe Up Close.
Now that she is back, Ruth is planning her formal book launch with the help of Greek Consul Ilias Kremmydas to be held at the Hellenic Community Centre on January 14, 2015. Ruth has also been contacted by the Greek Attache in Ottawa and was invited to do readings of the novel in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto where there are large Greek communities.
Jett & Kathryn Britnell are presently catching up. They were in the Bahamas in late September diving with Tiger Sharks. They also had a creature feature story, “Night Flight” about the Red-eye Medusa Jellyfish published in the September issue of DIVER Magazine. Also, in September their first feature story, “Wakatobi Resort” for Matador Network was published.
Jett also went snorkelling up to Adams River, BC two weeks ago to photograph the sockeye salmon run. When he returned home he received confirmation fro the Professional Photographers of Canada that his images had earned him national accreditation with the PPOC for “Travel Illustration.”
Ricky Shetty’s monthly YVR Bloggers event will be on Thursday, Nov 20, 2014 from 6-9 pm.
Barb Rees‘ latest book, “RV Canada An Exotic Land” is her fifth in the RV Canada series. This book tells stories of Barb and Dave Rees’s 2013 cross-Canada adventures especially Newfoundland. It introduces the reader to fascinating Canadian characters, tells the Rees’s stories while sharing the lessons of travelling on a tight budget, and includes a resource section for RVers. Barb Rees has published five books since 2003, taking them on various road trips around Canada. A Métis travel writer and speaker, she has written for Canadian and American magazines. The Rees’s will be at Magpies Diner, 6762 Cranberry St. Powell River, BC on Nov.4 to launch the latest book. Barb and Dave are already planning next year’s adventure which would make book six in the RV Canada series. Her winter project is to re-publish her first book from 2001, “Lessons From the Potholes of Life,” currently out of print.
Snowbirds & RV Travelers has gone national online and hard copy. In the process Barb was asked to submit six articles on eastern Canada ASAP. Nothing like a deadline when you’re going on holidays to get the adrenaline pumping. The first four stories appeared in the Oct/Nov. issue with full page color photos.
Finally, if you didn’t set your clocks back last night, fall back now!
Looking forward to seeing you at the BCATW AGM and Meetups!
Happy November!
-Mari Kane
“October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
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