Eventing Nation has grown rapidly over the past few weeks, and I thought a brief post about where Eventing Nation comes from and where we are going might be of service to our newest readers and entertaining to our loyal veterans.
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.
