1,000 nautical miles on an authentic wooden pinisi ship… read my recaps from the journey along the eastern coast of Indonesia’s Sulawesi south to Flores in my Sulawesi cruise review, Ombak Putih ship review and an informational How to Choose Your Indonesia Cruise blog post.
I’m honored to be among the ranks of professionals now interviewed on Managing Editor, a website dedicated to editorial management, tech, marketing, writing and inspiration. The site and its newsletter have fast become weekly go-to reads for me.
Scope out my conversation with Lee Price: All Aboard! How to Get Your Whole Team Involved with Content Marketing, and her e-news preface of our talk:
Content marketing can be a lonely job.
But the stereotype of a solitary writer holed up in a cabin with a typewriter doesn’t really hold up when you’re trying to tell stories about other people’s work and experiences. You need to be closer to the action.
That’s why I was intrigued by Lis Korb, who runs marketing at the small cruise ship travel company AdventureSmith Explorations. Her team’s primary content is reviews of travel experiences. And they generate that content by sending every employee on trips. (Amazing perk, right?)
So as you can imagine, Lis has a really helpful perspective about collaborating with non-writers to use language in new and interesting ways. Here’s my favorite advice she shared:
“Treat your writing like you’re packing a carry-on. Lay everything out & then cut it in half.”
I attended PURE Life Experiences in Marrakesh for AdventureSmith this past September, representing our company as a buyer at trade show for the high-end experiential travel industry. While the trip was mostly work filled, I had a little time for exploring in the Atlas Mountains with my cousin (who lives in Casablanca) and for roaming in Marrakesh’s Medina and the gorgeous Jardin Majorelle.
Along with meeting with AdventureSmith’s current partner operators, I was tasked with scoping out new small ships and luxury lodges to bring to our clients & met a fun range of folks—my show besties being from Sheldon Chalet and FeelViana Hotel. PURE was also an opportunity to learn from great minds, like Andy Lark of Group Lark who spoke about “cracking the code on experience.”
This past weekend I was a guest camp counselor at Camp BC, a grown-ups-only camp experience at Basecamp Tahoe City, teaching a group about travel writing and journaling—with a focus on how to document a trip while you’re on one.
Our small group met while a light snow dusted the ground outside, chatting about tricks of the trade writing for all platforms, from magazines and books to blogs and Instagram. I live-reported the event on AdventureSmith’s Instagram account. A few highlights:
So nice to see the 🍌🍓🥝🍍 of my labor in print. Look for AdventureSmith Explorations in Sunset magazine’s April Travel section, where we get kudos in the “Be the Change” sidebar for carbon-free cruising since 2005.
While AdventureSmith is regularly featured in national newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and in Condé Nast Traveler for the magazine’s annual Top Travel Specialists roundup, this Sunset story was an unexpected nod to one of the core principles of our travel company—in a publication I’ve long subscribed to—so I am especially proud of the mention and our PR/marketing team at AdventureSmith.
The story is only in print right now; find it on stands this month. You can read a snippet of the article on AdventureSmith’s website, as well as view our other recent News & Awards.
I flew to Antarctica this past December. Hard to believe, hard to explain, but I tried my best on AdventureSmith’s blog. Read my review of my air cruise: Expert Review: Antarctic Express Fly the Drake.
I was honored to be a crafty part of my good friends Brittney and Adam’s wedding: from carving their save-the-date design, then block printing their thank-you cards at B’s bachelorette weekend, to designing and installing their Camp Notes message board at the big event. A few pictures from the process, which started way back in February!
Some of my good friends recently got married in Baja and post-wedding spontaneously hopped a ride north from Pescadero with another friend. I love the impulsiveness of these adventurers, so I took a portrait I drew of them from the beach volleyball court and Photoshopped it on some of their road-trip photos. These are the results:
I recently traveled to Peru for a work trip with AdventureSmith Explorations and only had time for two small sketches. For photos from the journey, view my Instagram feeds: the personal/llama-filled @lis_k and the professional @adventure_smith, which features a fuller look at my wanderings in the Lares and Salkantay regions, Sacred Valley, Cusco and Machu Picchu. Huayna Picchu is sketched above while I waited in line for the gates to open; below is a view of Humantay Glacier, an acclimatization hike I took on the Salkantay trek. My full expert review is also now published on this trip – read my trip report.
_____smith 