2011-06-10T05:05:00.001-07:00

Never again will I beat myself up for only updating my website or blogging on an irregular basis.
I discovered yesterday (attending the Magazines Canada "Magnet" industry conference) that Toronto Life has a staff of 12 on their web division, uploads up to 150 times a day, and they watch their stats on a real-time basis. If a story is slow to take off, they post something else and repost the original story later with a different headline or copy tweak. If the story gets good results they leave it up longer before posting something else. According to their figures they have about 1/4 the population of Toronto watching their web and reading stories on a regular basis.
They didn't manage to record how many of those were competitors, watching what TO Life was doing and repurposing their business models!
Kidding aside, the conference has been awesome. I signed up for nine sessions over the three days and had access to all the industry experts for advice on copyright, advertising, surveys, web analytics, etc. I actually attended ten sessions but should I count the one where I was on the panel? Yes, I suppose, as I learned from my "co-panelees". (Is that correct, editor people?)
Joyce Byrne, moderator, (Albert Venture), Jeff Shearer (On the Bay) and Vera Asinin (Your Work Place) and I faced a room full of about 60 people to discuss Strategies for Longevity. We each publish quite different magazines, between controlled, consumer and business to business, with wildly different price structures ($0 to $98/year). We faced up to our challenges and gave a pretty good account of ourselves but I think we all felt we had a lot more to say. From the questions we received it seemed people were interested in our experiences.
Congratulations to Deb Morrison from Canada's History Society, newly elected Chair of Magazines Canada and also Manitoba Magazines Volunteer of the Year.
As well as work, there has been a lot of networking and fun with industry people - what a great time. I'm ready to book for next year but first need to plough through my book of ideas collected during the three days and apply COMMITMENT to put those ideas into action (yes, Martin, I will commit to that - I want to win the three-hour $450 consultation!)
So much for magazine fools - my horse is apparently no fool at all. Despite living in three different barns in the last six weeks, she has settled down nicely at her new place (East Gates Stable, Sapton Road) and has been complimented as being a well mannered horse who puts her head down to have her fly mask put on every morning, and keeps her stall neat and tidy at night. Jane, the owner commented, "If she hadn't pooped, I wouldn't have known she was in there at all!"

Let the words pour through

2011-05-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me yesterday, "Do you blog?" I said, "Umm, yes, kind of." Having given that answer for the last few months I thought it was about time I could answer, "Yes, here is my location!"
So today my finger is unplugged from my blogging hole and the words are free to pour through.
What to say?
The title of the blog might be a good start.
"Only Fools and Horses", as well as being the name of a brilliant UK TV series in the 90s, follows on a song by by Sir Noel Coward written during an extended holiday in Hawaii to cure a nervous breakdown and incorporated into his musical revue, Words and Music.
In the Phillipines, there are lovely screens
to protect you from the glare
in the Malay states they have hats like plates
which the Britishers won't wear
At twelve noon the natives swoon
and no further work is done.
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

I have then seen a following line, "Only fools and horses work".

Being heavily involved with horses through Horse Country magazine, I know how often horse riders are out there in the midday sun, showing their horses, trail riding, volunteering at events, working on their acreages, cleaning stalls or picking poop. Been there, done that, with most of that stuff.

So this blog will be musings on the keeping of horses, riding thereof, meeting and greeting other horses and their owners, showing in all disciplines (vicariously of course), jumbled up with the challenges, deadlines and exhilaration of publishing an equine magazine eight times each year.