I) Fair Hill 2009: After 6 months of design and development, I launched Eventing Nation in mid-October of last year. Five days after launching Eventing Nation, I packed all of my rain gear, my computer, my wireless card, and three days worth of granola bars and caffeine, and drove to Fair Hill for the cross-country and show jumping. I used a program to live blog both the XC and SJ, giving our readers a real time description of all the action. Throughout the weekend, the two hardest challenges were keeping my computer dry and its battery alive. We experienced a small miracle when my computer reported that it ran out of battery life (0%) with Karen and Phillip both on course but stayed turned on for about 10 minutes. A link from the COTH Forums send hundreds of readers our way that weekend and really kicked off the site.
II) November 2009: During November, I handled the site entirely myself, basically covering the end of the eventing season, Cooper's injury, and the FEI Bute mess. The highlights of this period were our live blogs with Boyd, Jennie, and Hannah/Kelly.
III) USEA Convention: By the end of November, I was itching to take Eventing Nation on the road again and we spent 4 days covering the USEA convention with me sitting in on meetings and writing about them as fast as I possibly could. The most exciting event at the convention that I could write about publicly was the leaking of news that the FEI would delay the progressive list until 2011. It was an incredible feeling to have news that the entire equestrian community wanted to hear about. Convention week was exhausting but a lot of fun.
IV) Winter Growth: A few days after the convention, Visionaire contacted me about writing for the site. I have known Visionaire for a long time and knew Visionaire would be a perfect fit and make the site instantly much more entertaining. Visionaire and I spent a few weeks developing our plan for the site, then Leslie joined us as a consistent writer around the new year. I am extremely thankful to work with such a great team, and could not do any of this without their support.
V) D-Day: A few days ago, I found myself in Ocala while the incredible story was breaking. We were the first non-forum horse site with the arrest news, and after a bit of research I learned that Marion County police reports were public record. A few phone calls and a quick trip to the Marion County Sheriff's Office headquarters and I held the full story in my hands. For better or worse, I decided to publish the entire report word for word, and the rest is, as they say, EN history.
VI) Format: We average between 3-4 posts a day, and we try to space them out with one in the morning, one at mid-day and one in the evening. Our goal is for you to get completely informed about all the current eventing/horse news and to have a laugh, all in the first 5 minutes of visiting EN. I spend a lot of time finding and linking to all the eventing news on the internet in our 'News and Notes' posts, and breaking news gets its own posts and our personal attention. No story is too big or too small for our blog format, and our mentality is based on serving the eventing community by increasing the quality of information flow between 'insiders' and 'fans.' We stress positive, informative, and entertaining content, and we want to have a lot of fun along the way.
VII) Looking Forward: Ideally, we want to make Eventing Nation an irresistible destination for eventing enthusiasts. For example, this spring, we will bring you closer than ever before to competitors preparing for the spring three-days, and ultimately the WEGs. As always, we owe everything to our readers and the many people who have helped us along the way. Thank you for reading and please stop by again to see us soon. Go eventing.
-thumb-350x318-986.jpg)
