The First Fully Integrated African Micro Travel Blog Attempt

Okay so I’ve been thinking about what to call this post for days and that is the simplest title I could come up with. I apologise profusely but the truth is what I am attempting is quite complicated and I’m pretty sure ground breaking in terms of Micro Travel Blogging (if someone can think of an example before this, then I will humbly apologise). The idea is to come up with a simple (for my readers), media rich blogging experience accessible across all the social media platforms that I have a presence on. So let me explain how I it works and maybe you can try it out with something interesting.

The Trip

The idea for this whole micro-blogging system was born out of a long chain of thoughts when I was planning for my African road trip through the Okavango Delta, Poppa Falls, Caprivi Strip, Katimo Mulilo, Vic Falls and Makgadigadi pans with a few more unplanned stops I’m sure.

Me and my dad have wanted to do this trip for ages as my dad served in the SADF on the Caprivi Strip during the ‘Silent War’ of the seventies. He hasn’t been back since. So as I am finishing work for good at Netcare this Friday and my dad is self employed, the opportunity for this trip re-emerged. We decided to take the gap “before my dad was too old to do it.” A few phone calls later and three of my dad’s mates, who served with him in the Caprivi, were on-board as well as two fully rigged 4x4s with roof tents and all important beer fridges.

On the morning of Sunday 2^nd March, we depart from Joburg for a trip that is roughly 3500kms but we will zoot the first 1300kms through Botswana to get to the Kavango River where we will find somewhere to set up camp. From there on, we will take it easy and stop and sleep where ever we feel like it, no accommodation has been booked, but like the humble tortoise, we carry our house above our heads so where we stop is where we sleep. As the only planning we have done is route knowledge (distances, towns, petrol stations etc), we also can’t say how long we will be gone for (imagine the wives’ responses to that!) so we’ll just trickle along until we see what we want to see and come home a week or two later.

The Micro Blogging Idea

I was thinking of how to keep my friends and family updated on our progress and then I thought maybe my readers would like to know and maybe my blogging peers would like to know and maybe even random readers curios about any or all of the destinations on the trip would like to know. So of course my immediate idea was to blog it, that way everyone could read it. But the thought of lugging my 17” HP through some of the roughest parts of Africa as well as my oversized digicam didn’t really appeal to me and is probably contrary to the spirit of the adventure (Captain Morgan anyone?). The same day, I had set my Nokia E50 to roaming for the trip which then sparked the notion that I could use my camera as a micro and picture blogging tool. I also decided that because of my attempt to access a broader target market than I normally do (most of my friends don’t have a clue what I talk about in my normal marketing posts) it should go across a lot of platforms to catch everyone who wants to follow it. It was also important that everything gets updated automatically from my phone as I will have no PC access and to be honest, I don’t want to see one. A few hours of tweaking a myriad social networking services including my blog, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr and I was ready for a world first (I think)!

How it all Works

As the graph explains: I take (hopefully highly interesting and unique) pics on my E50 and write a short description. Shozu (on my phone) then sends this info to Blogger (www.jonin60seconds.com) and Flickr. Blogger creates a post with pic and description. The post is then sent to my subscribers via Feedburner, Twitter via Twitterfeed and Facebook via Flog Blog. Flickr sends a tweet to Twitter via Twittergram and the pics to Facebook via Zuport. A big thanks to uber blogger Rafiq Phillips for pointing out the joys of Shozu to me and saving me from an undesirable death by roaming MMS bill.

A side note for the semantically prone readers:

Yes I am still calling it a micro blog even though I’m sending the posts to Blogger as the descriptions will be short just like when micro blogging. And yes I am doing a travel blog on my marketing/web 2.0 blog as this is travel 2.0 my man, and my readers can get great ideas on how to use the services I have used.

What can go wrong?

The only things that can go wrong are phone related:

• Inability to charge phone
• Breakage by phone (for example dropping it in a Gnu stampede, being chewed by a lion, swimming in the Kavango river)
• Losing of phone (for example drunkenness, darkness, somewhere between all the supplies, dropping it in a Gnu stampede)
• Lack of adequate reception, it is Africa after all.
• No backups: I don’t do phones so I only have one simple Nokia and my dad refuses to let Shozu near his phone (he’s just coming to terms with not suffering from internetless-ness anymore so lets not push him!). So if something like chewing, water or a stampede happens to my phone, that’s it, micro blogging all over!

So if you stop hearing from me, one of these misfortunes have consumes my poor old E50.

Macroblogging

I will be taking my proper camera, armed with polarizing filter and many SD cards, with me in hope of picking up some awesome shots (mental image of me kneeling over a scorpion, cellphone in left hand big camera in right hand) so I will do a proper blog story equipped with full a write-up and some hopefully good quality pics. If I’m feeling energetic (remember I am getting married, going on honeymoon and moving to the UK when I get back) I’ll even track the route on Google earth or something.

Where to follow my progress:

Perhaps the easiest place will be to go to my blog where you can leave comments etc:

www.jonin60seconds.com

Otherwise:

www.flickr.com/photos/jonin60seconds

http://twitter.com/jonin60seconds

My Facebook profile but friend me this week while I can still accept!