Getting into the balloon-festival business

Balloons hover near Bald Eagle Lake in Steamboat Springs in 2018I've been in the local-media business a long time and have gotten my hands into a wide variety of initiatives. And while I've managed events, I've never taken on something of the scope of a hot-air balloon festival. Well, that time has come. 

The Steamboat Springs Chamber of Commerce has handed management of the long-running Steamboat balloon event over the Steamboat Pilot & Today. We're thrilled to be entrusted to take over an iconic event that has brought tens of thousands of visitors to Steamboat over the last 37 years. 

This year's event will be July 13-14, and will feature early morning launches Saturday and Sunday and a Saturday evening "Night Glow" in which the hot-air balloon launches don't lift off but instead deliver a light show as night falls. 

I shadowed chamber staff during the 2018 Hot Air Balloon Rodeo to learn the ropes of putting on the event, and also attended the Soaring above Bald Eagle Lake at the 2018 Steamboat balloon event.much larger Labor Day Liftoff in Colorado Springs to pick up some other ideas. 

There are many things that work well with the Steamboat event, so we plan to protect what's working. One thing we will change is to rename the event the Steamboat Springs Hot Air Balloon Festival.  We will still offer competitions for the balloon pilots -- that's where the Rodeo term comes from -- but want to accentuate the full complement of activities visitors can enjoy while at the three balloon events. 

There is much planning to be done in the coming months, so stay tuned as we move forward. But be sure to block out July 13-14 on your calendars. 

5 Minutes With ... me

Steamboat Pilot & Today publishes a number of magazines throughout the year, including Colorado Hunter, Homefinder, Explore, Best of The Boat, Bike Guide, Steamboat Springs Pro Rodeo Series Guide and Move to Steamboat. 

Move To Steamboat is an annual relocation guide produced in conjunction with the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association. 

The new 2019 edition of Move To Steamboat is filled with wonderful information about Steamboat/Routt County and its many gifts. The issue also includes a "5 Minutes With" feature on me, among Steamboat's newest residents. But rather than reading that, I encourage you to peruse the e-edition so you can learn a little bit about the terrific community that is small in size but big in just about everything else. 

Shiny Objects -- No. 2

Here are a few of the more interesting things that have distracted me this past week:

1. Buzz-Fueled Media Startups

Wired has an illuminating article on how digital news startups like Buzzfeed is reshaping how we deliver and consume news, moving from the concept of a traditional destination-centric news site to organic vehicles that use everyday people to deliver the content for them. Here’s a key graf:

"But the thing is, the media isn’t just competing with your little sister—it’s co-opting her, using her as a vector to spread its content. She is the new delivery mechanism. We don’t learn about the world from The New York Times, we learn about it from the Times stories that our family and friends share or that show up as push notifications four minutes before one from The Guardian does. Thirty percent of American adults get news from Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center, and more than half of Americans got news from a smartphone within the past week, according to the American Press Institute. And these metrics are just going up, up, up. The question for news publishers is no longer how to draw an audience to their sites, it’s how to implant themselves into their audience’s lives."

2. Pitch podcast: “The Clearmountain Pause”

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