CampHacker Podcast at the TriState Camping Conference

Travis Allison February 13, 2011

speak directly to your summer camp clients

CampHacker.org is planning to go to TriState 2011 and we’d like to invite you to be a sponsor of this awesome summer camp recording roadtrip.

The Plan:

Travel to the TriState Camping conference in Atlantic City, NJ, March 15-18, 2011
Produce 3-5 shot audio or video shows per day featuring the camping professionals and vendors at the conference (the largest camping conference in the world). Picture something like the TWIT coverage of CES (if that’s some crazy-moon-man language... click the link to see).
Interview as many of the keynote speakers as we can
Release the shows on CampHacker.org, YouTube and Vimeo over the three weeks following the show.

We Are Looking For:

A company who sells products to summer camps and cares about building up the camp community
A visionary decision maker to say “Heck, yes! Our Awesome Company can be a part of the CampHacker program and partner to make great video and audio podcasts. It’s a GREAT way to use social media to reach potential clients!”
You.

What’s the Catch?

Nothing weird, we promise. There are two levels of sponsorship available:

Title Sponsor ($3000 Canadian) - Exclusive! You own us. For the duration of TriState, the show will be called “The Your Company CampHacker Show”.
Advertising Sponsor ($900 CA) - only 4 spots available. Your Company will get a “commercial” in each audio and video piece produced at TriState - read by our host, Travis Allison. Plus... (yes, there’s more!) an in-depth interview/commercial that will play on CampHacker.org speaking about your very own amazing products.

Who Are These Awesome People Making This Weird Request? We’ve Never Heard of Anything Like It In The Camping Industry

CampHacker.org and the CampHacker Podcast are the brain-childs of Walking Maverick Consulting.

CampHacker is the only regularly produced podcast and video show for the camp industry in North America (maybe even the world!).

Walking Maverick Consulting is run by Beth and Travis Allison, Summer Camp Experts with 15 years of running camps in Ontario, Canada.

Stop With the Silly - Give Me The Numbers

Although we have been around and blogging on CampHacker.org for a few years, in the past eight months we have concentrated on building our audience of summer camp professionals from around the world (and you know how hard they can be to get a hold of).

In the past 8 months we have had:

1200 views on each blog posting
The average time on CampHacker.org: 2:17 minutes
695% growth in unique visits/month
334% growth in Pageviews
110% determination to make this a great TriState conference for you, our sponsors.

Thank you very much for considering this. Travis will be in touch with you to find out your answer. With the number of businesses considering this opportunity, you don’t want to take too long to think it over!

Posterous Groups for Summer Camps - CampHacker Interview

Travis Allison February 7, 2011

Summer camps need to manage their online communities. Whether we are active in online social media (Facebook, YouTube, etc.), or not, our clients and our potential clients are VERY involved. That gives us lots of chances to be a part of the conversation.

When families are looking for a summer camp they are more likely to choose one that is active at online communication. Would you rather send your child to a camp that is cold and distant or one that is open and you can see talking to their families online?

I spoke with Rich from Posterous (the company that makes the backbone of the CampHacker website) about their new Posterous Groups feature. Groups allows you to create an easy online community. People involved in that community can talk back an forth via email, send pictures and video and have a website to gather all of that together in one place. That communication can then either be private or public.

Have a listen to our conversation:

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/camphacker/CampHacker-Special-Posterous.mp3]

(if you would like automatic updates when we post our interviews and CampHacker shows, subscribe to CampHacker in iTunes)

Camp Uses for Posterous Groups

create a Group for this summer's staff to get to know each other before June. You can also use this list to send out your most important information.
keep your LITs together. Like most of you, my Leader in Training summer (and the summer that I was the LIT Director) was one of my best at camp. By creating a Group for each bunch of LITs (or each year's LIT) they can keep in touch with the people with which they have shared those awesome experiences.
have a New Parent's Group. If you build a place where new parents can talk to each other and you can answer their questions, you will be giving your clients another reason to spread the word about your camp - great word of mouth value.

What do you provide for your camp community to talk amongst themselves?

Our Most Important Summer Camp Lesson

Travis Allison February 6, 2011

photo by Travis Allison (@ Camp Kintail)

Community is INTENTIONAL.

You should think about it in every aspect of every program that you offer during summer camp and in all contact you have with your campers and staff outside of the summer months.

This is a difficult task. We hope we can make it easier for you. Here is one of the best things we ever developed at camp...

The 4 S’s - In our many years of camping, we discovered that it was imperative to create guidelines for young people to make wise decisions, decisions they could make on their own without too many rules to remember. In our second year of directing, we developed the 4 S’s, a test by which any activity at all could be rendered appropriate to the community or not.

A person must answer ‘yes’ to all 4 S questions before doing any kind of activity (large or small). If they cannot answer ‘yes’ to all 4, it does not help to build community and, therefore, cannot be done. This is an excellent way to empower your young people to make decisions on their own and to make them feel safe and wanted in the community you are building with them.

The 4 S’s - Safety, Stewardship, Servanthood, Self-Esteem

Safety - is it physically and emotionally safe?
Stewardship - are you being a good steward of the earth?
Servanthood - are you serving other people and the community?
Self-Esteem - are you building someone’s self-esteem?

What do you think is your most important summer camp lesson?

Success is...

Travis Allison February 3, 2011

I just came across some quotes that I had sitting on my desk.

Last year I ran an 8 hour workshop at the

Buckeye Leadership Workshop

on Creating a Culture of Success. One of the first things we did in the session was have everyone write out what they thought success was, here are their responses.

Success is being able to pull a group together, while having fun, so they can accomplish a task later.
Success is that my staff feel comfortable, confident & satisfied in all that they do. This in tow will ensure that the campers have the best experience.
In general, success is accomplishing a goal (very general).
Success, in the context of summer camp, is when the campers become part of the community of fun, learning, friendship and courage. The campers go away with new experiences, knowledge & self-realization.
At camp success is everything going smoothly, everyone having fun and making good memories and meeting new people. The kids enjoying themselves and getting as much out of it as they can.
Success is having positive impact on growth and confidence of others.
Success is execution of the camp that created a safe environment to grow & learn new skills while having a complete blast.
Success (noun; adj: successfully) 1) the summer runs safely without any physical or emotional injuries to staff or participants; 2) somehow, someone, somewhere learns something; 3) there are more smiles than frowns; 4) when campers and staff leave, they can't wait to come back.
In a county 4-H setting success could be defined as achieving goals at the county and state level. It also could be considered as having a group of young interested members who are enjoying and doing well in projects.
Success for me is - everyone eating lunch together; kids going home dirty; parents asking children specific questions about their day; volunteers coming back year after year; teens stepping up to be leaders.
Success is positively affecting others in methods of teaching and leadership
Success as a General Manager: making all financial goals; making all operational goals; growing my team to next; creating a "fish" environment; balancing work & life to a create happiness.
Success is: 1) a staff that works together as a unit to achieve a safe and positive camp experience for our campers; 2) as well as growing in their own personal skill set and abilities.
Success is 1) build mutual respect-consistently; 2) develop self confidence; 3) dedication to self-improvement; 4) attitude of openness; 5) service-heart oriented
As a wellness coordinator, success is having active voluntary participation in programs, along with positive attitudes and high moral.
As a camp staffer, success is having a staff that works well as a team and presents a program that pleases campers and encourages them to learn and discover. It is also having campers that want to return and bring their friends to camp.
Success is - staff invest themselves in campers and in camp - staff grow & mature - program develops & evolves - campers leave with positive change.
Success is everyone works & plays happily together & supports each other.