That’s another year of #5DadsGoWild in the books. Yes, in case you missed the social media buzz created around our annual writers/creators retreat, from Thursday October 14th to Sunday the 17th we were camping in Manning Park, living what can only be described as our best life.
While in the past we have had a strong focus on learning how to optimize social media and discussions around how-to grow an audience, this year the focus was on story-telling.
The focus was on how to create engaging stories through short form video. Do you know that the statistics show that people stop watching most Instagram or TikTok videos after NINE SECONDS.
That means you need to either share your message in 9 seconds or less, or have something so engaging that your audience sticks around longer than the average. It was very interesting to see some of the techniques used to accomplish these tasks.
Like all quality conferences, workshops, and retreats, we couldn’t pull off this type of adventure without support.
And what is the most important thing at any workshop? Why yes, it is the coffee. And we have the Blue Moose Coffee House in Hope to thank for supplying us with coffee.
We also have Stephen Fung for not only making coffee, but also doing entertaining coffee-making dances.
Of course Stephen wasn’t the only cooking for us. James made a full on English style fry up for breakfast one day. Pretty much an epic camping meal.
Of course there are other organizations that continue to support our annual retreat. House of Knives supplied us with folding pocket knives, rechargeable (and incredibly bright) flashlights, and water bottles with a sweet little handle that makes them easy to carry when out for a walk.
Shopper Plus Canada supplied us with inflatable air mattresses that deflate and roll into the cutest little package! I like it so much that I bought two more so when I go camping with my kids we have something to sleep on.
Admittedly these are not super thick mattresses but when your kids want to go camping once a year, do you really need to drop a hundred dollars or more on a sleeping pad? This dad says nope. Shopper Plus Canada to the rescue.
Of course when we were out for a 1.5 kilometre walk – that turned out to be a 9 kilometre hike, we were all grateful for the protein blast we go from Meatsmith meat bars.
Meatsmith Bars are superior in taste and are softer on the pallet than traditional jerky. They are packed with nutrients and are free from gluten, soy, nuts and dairy.
For fun we sliced one of the Maple Sriracha bars into very thin strips and fried it up in the cast iron pan – that made the sriracha really pop!
And of course once we used the Shopper Plus Canada fire starter to get our campfire burning, it was relaxation time with the beer from Mountainview Brewing.
The cool weather makes me crave darker beers. The Mountainview Brewing Co makes a beauty of a dark beer – their Dark Side of Town Schwarzbier. It is named after the side of Hope that gets NO SUN for the entire winter. They should not only get a beer named after them, they should get free beer all winter long for having to live on the dark side of town.
One of the longer conversations we had was around how Facebook is now considered passé – a place where grandmothers share grandkid pics and play word games, Instagram is still trying to be everything to everyone with limited success, SnapChat is the Wild West, TikTok is the “hot” property for now, and yet people are looking forward to what’s next so that they can be on the “first wave” of the new “it” property.
Which left me to wonder if I’m actually willing to continue to commit to learning about the ever changing landscape of social media. Is it time for me to get off the social media expressway and refocus on blogging?
Anyways, that’s it for today. I’ll get and share more photos of the equipment and tools we used on our trip.