20 time project

     My 20 time project is coming along quite well. I recently found a website that lists their top 50 travel bloggers and have been using that to find people to look at. I recently found a travel blog run by three people who go around the world reviewing skii resorts which is something I was definitely interested in since I've been skiing like my whole life. I also followed several more people on twitter and am looking forward to getting in contact with all of them. My plans for the upcoming week with this project are to begin laying out an outline for my presentation. I want to start putting together my keynote or explain everything presentation and figure out what information I still need and what I have enough of. I still have a lot more work to do in the long run but I think my project is coming along well. Contrary to what I previously thought there are many different types of travel bloggers and travel sites dedicated to many different purposes. Depending on what kind of atmosphere you are looking for in a vacation spot you may be able to find a blogger with the same ideals who only visits places with that element. 

     As for the college websites, I am almost done everything. Yesterday I figured out how to embed a google earth tour video so now I have to do that for my two other sites. Overall I feel like this project went very well. I think my websites are almost good enough for presentation. The only thing I would need help with would be if maybe someone could scan over my sites and tell me if I missed anything important? I'm not entirely sure what we were supposed to with the pages, I just linked them to the page on the actual college site... Otherwise I think my websites are good to go.

     I commented on the Kara S blog. She is doing a project where she is fundraising with her friend to earn money to go on a missions trip to India. I also commented on Madeline T blog. She is doing a project where she is planning to go about and do random acts of kindness for everyone in her school. Lastly I commented on Halle M blog. She is doing a project where she is going to reach out and serve the Detroit community through community service, fundraisers and anything else she can do to help.

20 Time

     I think we can all agree that thanksgiving break was much needed. I definitely needed a break from school for a while, or in this case a couple days. So far in 20 time I have been focusing on finding all of the most popular travel bloggers. I have followed a few on twitter but some don't have accounts. However they all have well built websites so I would say that is essential to being a popular blogger. I've also been looking at their personal stories. Many of the bloggers have an "about me page" where they tell the story of how they became a travel blogger so I've read quite a few of those. This week I think I'm going to look into the physical and mental demands that this job requires. I also want to look into the writing style on their blogs and try to compare them to see what particularly made them successful. One of the bloggers I followed did a post on what the job really requires so I'm looking forward to reading that.

     PLN so far has been going well. I haven't contacted any of the bloggers yet but I'm planning to start next week. I'm still building up a list of all of them and I have followed several on twitter already. However I was surprised afterwards to realize random travel bloggers I hadn't even looked at began following me after that? Overall I would expect these travel bloggers to be more than willing to talk to me. After all their whole career revolves around self advertising and getting people to read their blogs and look at their websites. They need the recognition I'm going to give them.

     Overall I am starting to see some of the big picture... I think my main goal is to try and figure out if travel blogging is a realistic career to pursue. I don't think I've met a person yet who doesn't want to travel the world, that's what makes this project so attractive. Almost everyone can relate. Overall I think people need to be more aware of how close to your dreams you can get. Clearly it's hard to get started in this career, but in the end you literally get to have the experiences of a lifetime. I want to include the benefits of this career in my project and outline on average how many places these travel bloggers have been. 

     So far I have has trouble figuring out which travel bloggers are paid and which ones aren't. The thing with that is that they don't really work for anyone so it not like their specially certified. Some of them have the money and just travel because they can. I'm still working on figuring out who pays them and which ones get paid. The other thing I've had trouble with is finding the travel bloggers on twitter, some of them all work together on one website so it's hard to figure out who runs the site and who actually blogs. Still looking into this problem. 

     Overall I think I have a pretty good idea of what I want my project to be focused on. I think however its going to be majorly filled up with PLN responses because I feel like their opinions will aim more towards the questions I'm trying to answer.