“The blog posts that were read at the TBEX community keynotes were as well-written and meaningful as anything I’ve read in glossy travel magazines lately.” — Here Comes Everybody: TBEX 10 || Chris Around the World
“…it struck me as the perfect bookend to the panel on travel writing: examples of great stories in action. And I want more more more!” — We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live* – TBEX’10 Wrap Up || Allison Stein Wellner, Perceptive Travel
The links in the list below go to the original blog posts we selected for the TBEX community keynote. In almost every case, we asked the writer to edit for brevity, so the versions you heard at TBEX vary from the versions you’ll find online. Go, tell these people how much you loved their work.
- Eileen Smith: Bear Shaped Sphere and the Terrible No Good Very Bad Never Ending Journey
- Conner Gorry: Cuba’s Secret Weapon: Little Old Ladies
- Sophia Dembling: The Making of a Flyover American
- Joshua Johnson: All Aboard! A Tale of a Curious Swimmer
- Leigh Shulman: Homecoming Is as a Bittersweet Chocolate Truffle
- Shelly Smith: We are Backpackers [Video]
- Mike Sowden: Breathe
- David Frey: Why I’m Stalking Hemingway
- Lauren Quinn: Vomit Ride through Heat Land
When you’re done leaving comments, come back here and let me know what you thought of the keynote. Too long? Fell asleep? Wanted more? Wished you were in and wonder why you didn’t submit your own story? Want to know more about what we were looking for? Anything else besides “Wow, you sure garbled the pronunciation of Essouaria!” It’s no excuse, but, reading after you’ve had all the moisture sucked out of your body by a New York summer is hard work.
In the comments, please. Thanks.
Damn. I’m honored to be a part of this list. And I really, really mean that.
Lauren: I wish you’d been there too. And it was SO cool to have Spud Hilton say to me afterward, “You know, we just ran a version of that piece….”
Total validation that Mike and I were right in choosing you and that YOU ARE AWESOME.
Dude, I got a lot of mileage outta that bus ride (extra points for bad puns!).
You know that as an official Nerd Groupie I NEVER have anything negative to say about you, so I’ll just sit here and keep swooning as per usual.
I love the Keynote. I loved the stories. I closed my eyes often during the reading, to listen and savor. The video story was very cool and I’ll bet we see more of those. I could go for a morning and afternoon keynote, frankly. It was that inspiring.
Thanks so much to you and Mike for doing that.
Pam, the Community Keynote was one of the best parts of TBEX! The stories were so…alive…poignant…compelling.
Not long enough! Stayed awake! Wanted more!!!
As I said to you and Mike on the street after your prez, thanks for all the work you both put into this.
Wow! Terrific writing everybody. Nice to feel that writerly vibe across the cyberspace void
Sorry i couldn’t make it to tbex this year but thrilled to be in the keynote.
NB: my last name is so bad, but worse when misspelled. Might you add another “r” to Gorry? Gracias!!
@Conner: Done and done and apologies. And a Cuba Libre raised in your honor.
The Community Keynote was one of my favorite parts of the conference, and I can’t think of two better people to curate the submissions and read them aloud. You and Mike did a great job. I actually wished that there would have been time for reading more of these stories.
This is a session that I would definitely like to see return next year in some form – either as is, with pieces being read throughout the conference (maybe one before each session) or at some kind of informal, more intimate gathering.
So very honored and enthralled to be in league with some amazing storytellers and travelers!!
thank you Pam and Mike for giving our stories voices…dim sum?
p.s. was the keynote recorded?
Loved reading these pieces. Thanks so much Pam and Mike for including mine.
I would have also loved to be there, but glad I could be a part in some way.
I’m honored to be in this company. Thanks for the privilege, and for making this available.
I loved this session and really enjoyed how it broke up the more “hard-boiled” nature of Sunday’s other topics. However, I do like Katie’s idea of spreading the storytelling out through the conference, in a more intimate setting, where it’s more like a poetry reading. I also would have liked to see one or two images to go with each story — which seemed to be the intent prior to the tech snafus.
Please do it again next year!
I loved the community keynote and hope it’s kept around for next year. I did think, however, that it would have been nice to listen to the pieces over an organized lunch period so more of the “conference” time could have been spent with educational sessions.
Thanks again to both you and Mike for doing this. It was an honor to have you read my piece for consideration.
I loved listening to these stories at TBEX. They were a great reminder of why we’re all doing this. It’s so easy to get caught up in stats, and Twitter, and marketing, and technical stuff — and forget that people love stories. People need stories.
And I really like the idea of spreading them out throughout the conference, and perhaps getting people to read their own. Not that you and Mike didn’t do a good job — you did. But nice to hear people’s voices. Cheers.
@Mariellen: I would have loved to have the writers read their own stories, too. I hope that there can be a way to make that happen next time.
Checking the links out now. I already LOVE the titles, I’m sure the articles are even better.
Thanks much for all your hard work in selecting and reading, and for pronouncing llapingachos pretty true to form. I was thrilled to be a part of this, and was in such stellar company! I loved the readings, and appreciate how much effort must have gone into it.
Thanks again to you and Mike!
I was glued to the livestream, right through a blazingly sunny English afternoon & evening – scribbling notes all the while, including during the Keynote. Some of these notes lack something in the coherency department (“Little old ladies! YES! [something unreadable] Remember Alamo, Stephen King.”) but that’s because I was struggling to capture everything useful with my pen.
(Should have typed them. Much faster. I’m an idiot).
Was an honor to be included, and slightly terrifying to see the standard set by everyone else.
One of my wild spidery scrawls says “Owe them a beer”.
I LOVED the Community Keynote!
And I really liked that you and Mike read them – I know that a number of others would have liked to have heard them in the author’s own voices, but thought the two of you did a great job. Sometimes an author – much like any artist – is too emotionally invested in their own work to pull off the rapid-fire delivery that was needed, and sometimes stories are better read from the perspective of the reader than the writer.
But in the future, perhaps a Pecha Kucha-like presentation? Even though there were times – like Sheila did – that I closed my eyes to better hear the words, it would have been nice to see some of the images that inspired the stories.
@Trisha: There was supposed to be a slideshow with that presentation. I know Kim launched it, but I think there was some kind of tech glitch and it just wouldn’t go. Given that timing was critical, it seemed best to just carry on. So, essentially, WHAT YOU SAID.