A Meeting of Like Minds – The Central Florida TBEX First Meet-up

Sunday afternoon – a beautiful day in Orlando, I might add – I hopped in the car and headed over to the Orlando Science Center. It’s a really cool place, but I wasn’t there to see the exhibits. I was there to attend the very first meet-up of the Central Florida TBEX chapter.

TBEX stands for Travel Bloggers Exchange, and it is a web community where travel writers/bloggers can get together, share links, ask questions and basically serve as a support group for each other.

Well, Ben Reed of Adventures with Ben, decided to bring the online offline and form a local chapter of TBEX, to allow travel bloggers in Central Florida (actually any travel blogger passing through is welcome) to discuss the whole art (business?) of travel blogging.

Other than my fellow Uptake blogger Miss Britt, I’d never met any of the other bloggers in person – though I had been following Bess at Central FL Top 5.

I think towards the end, we got into a good discussion of how to get your blog more noticed, and how individually-produced travel blogs can compete with the huge corporate conglomerate blogs for readers.

After the meet-up, we gathered for a group photo (some members were MIA due to travels of their own) and then I checked out some exhibits on the way to pick up Rhonda from work.

This first meeting was a good one and I look forward to the next one in January. I’m hoping over time that we can grow into a cohesive enough of a unit that not only can we help each other out, but maybe even do some regional traveling together. Wouldn’t that be fun?

If you’re a travel blogger, you should join TBEX – it’s free and it’s nice to have a supportive group of people to bounce things off of. Make sure you sign up for the CFL TBEX group at that site, too.

I should note that Adventures with Ben and Central Florida Top 5 did posts on their views of the event. I also did a short post over at CitySurfing Orlando about this.

The other bloggers attending can be found online at the links below:

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About zengrrl

I'm Michelle Snow, the writer and creator of Zengrrl. I write about travel, entertainment, women's issues, health, body positivity, and more, both for this blog and freelance. I have also authored/co-authored four guidebooks on Orlando and Florida. If you aren't already following me, the links are below, as well as on the top right of this page. Thanks!

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Comments: 2

  1. zengrrl December 9, 2010 at 8:36 pm

    Thanks Tiffany! =) I think it would be fun to go as a group someplace and all write about it.

  2. Tiffany Karabaich December 9, 2010 at 3:22 pm

    Nice write-up! I was just thinking about group trips, too!