We’ve just wrapped up the first time out with our brand new event My First “Press Trip,” and I can’t believe how much we covered in two days!

This new event grew out of our Coaching Program Summer Camp, a very chill week in which we all co-work in the morning and explore the Catskills and the Hudson Valley in the afternoon and on the weekends.

One morning, while having a brunch of housemade Tartine-style sourdough loaves, Greek-style yogurt, and a selection of our jams (apricot rosemary, spiced yellow plum, vanilla peach–to name a few), we launched into an impromptu lesson on food styling, light sources, and minimizing shadows. During a car ride home from exploring a nearby art-heavy town, we have a lively discussion on ethics with sources after one gallery owner spent an hour giving tons of information to one of our writers only to say–as she was walking out the door–that she couldn’t write about anything he said.

Throughout the summer session, I was struck again and again by how active and engaging these unexpected lessons and the discussion they provoked were. As anyone who has ever taught or tried to teach anything to anyone ever for any reason knows–100% of people you’re teaching are very rarely 100% engaged very often or for very long.

Our first My First “Press Trip” event was everything I was hoping it would be from the impromptu-awesome-lesson-and-discussion standpoint! We dove deeply into:

  • systems for capturing article ideas and making sure you actually use them after a trip
  • what information PR people will typically prepare you with before a visit vs. all of the things that you really would like to know in advance, and how to bridge that gap
  • how spinning one trip into a multitude of ideas works for a blog as opposed to when you’re pitching magazine ideas–especially in the current SEO “EAT” era
  • how the meat for one story or the fodder for a great many other stories most often comes from sources (people you meet and speak to in your travels), how many people are missing out on it by not engaging others, and scripts and “opening lines” to ease that work for you
  • and more!

I’ve been making notes about the most impactful things we discussed, and I’ve outlined an 11-part series for our Six-Figure Travel Writer blog that I’m working on to explore how these discussion points came up and how you can use them in your own travel writing.

Look out for it in the next few weeks!

In the meantime, here’s a visual sneak peak of some of our discoveries at the sites we visited during the event: