It’s been a long time since we’ve published anything for our online magazine (March 2014 to be exact), almost exactly one and a half years has passed with many adventures and changes on this end – other than some forum discussion and social media posts, I’ve never actually published a clear article about the magazine’s inactivity so you have both my deepest apologies, and the following update(s).
A quiet magazine…
Why did we stop publishing?
The primary reason goes back to me personally since I’d just taken on too much through 2012-2014 between KiteLife® Magazine, managing web sites and hosting for dozens of companies, travel with team iQuad, my attempt to serve as President of the AKA, and trying to balance the lives of a young(er) married couple amidst all that… To be quite honest, I just allowed myself to be spread too thin all at once and my attention to KiteLife’s content suffered along with everything else.
We did have a couple of ambitious folks that tried to assist in the role of KiteLife® Editor but they discovered the other aspect that I’d been struggling with, simply coming up with content.
Being a largely recreational pastime it became increasingly difficult for us to recruit and engage kiting correspondents with enough interest to assemble an article (500-4000 words, 6-12 photos) for us, especially as we’ve lost some of our best wordsmiths over the years (i.e. Mike Gillard, Al Hargus, etc) – it’s also very much a generational thing with so much excitement, photos and video shared via Facebook, etc so it often fails to reach the kind of “boiling point” that is required to produce an article – the game has changed for us, and we’ve not yet found a suitable way to adapt.
While KiteLife® is currently inactive as a magazine the majority of our regular visitors are frequenting our video tutorials and discussion forum as well as browsing the vast collection of articles already in our magazine and out-of-print archives (Kite Lines and Stunt Kite Quarterly).
If anyone out there in kite land has a vision and wants to give it a try, I will most certainly entertain any serious inquiries about taking over editorship of the magazine – just send me an email.
Long strange road…
In the early months of 2014, I totally reorganized my lifestyle and pared most of my business focus down to the things that I’m actually moved by – namely, my wife TK and kite flying… With that, I also felt the strong need for a “phoenix cleansing” of sorts, a huge adventure to help burn off the stress and reset all my circuits.
In May of 2014 we closed up shop entirely in Portland OR, packed most of our belongings into a storage unit, put the rest into a ’96 Outback and set out on a 5 month, 18,000 mile tour around the United States… Along the way we visited a lot of old friends, flew in amazing places, met a lot of new friends, did quite a few private kite lessons and clinics / workshops along the way, with almost everything decided no sooner than 1-2 weeks in advance and sometimes quite literally on a whim – a grand adventure indeed.
The entire trip occurred May through November of 2014, and looked something roughly like this:
See some of our travel photos and adventures on the KiteLife® forum.
Video playlist of some kite flying on our travels:
(click the top left corner of the video frame for a full list)
Looking ahead…
So what is in the future of KiteLife®?
Well, we’re happily back living in the Portland OR area and lately I’ve mostly been focused on developing more instructional knowledge, content and tools through the Rev and dual line private lessons, clinics and workshops we’ve held this year (Pacific NW, North Carolina, Detroit and Montreal) – there has been a ton of demand with awesome feedback and multiple sold out dates, so much so that I’m looking at increasing the schedule for 2016 – this info can always be found on the KL forum, Facebook or my own home page and it’s easy enough to set up some kind of notifications using one of those.
Otherwise, we will continue to host the wonderful community our members have created in the KiteLife forum with both new and experienced fliers posting regularly, it’s a very friendly environment (zero trolls) and it doesn’t cost anything for people to post and interact… Also, the ongoing effort to expand our selection of video tutorials with topics covering both dual and quad line flying, individual and team, indoors and out, along with all the other weird topics you always wanted to know about (dogstake, urban, etc).
Beyond that, you know me… I’ll find some serious trouble to get into before too long. 🙂
What’s in a name…
FYI – you may have noticed the gratuitous use of a symbol next to our company name, my subtle way of saying KiteLife® is indeed now a registered trademark in the interest of further protecting this resource – thanks very much to those who assisted, you know who you are.
That’s really all I’ve got for now, but the engine keeps on steaming on this end and I hope you’ll keep one finger on the pulse as new and exciting projects arise – this may be my full time vocation, but it’s also my greatest passion in life – lots more on the horizon!
Regards and good winds,
JB
