Northern Forest Tourism Network
Collaborating to Create a World Class Destination – Join Us!Network on the Move
Greetings to all. We hope you are enjoying this summery summer. This e-newsletter is intended to provide an update on the recent work of the Northern Forest Tourism Network, and to invite those of you who are interested to join in the work moving forward.
Background: The primary work of the last few months has centered on convening this network at the Summit for the Northern Forest on May 3-4 in New Hampshire. Summit participants included both old and new network members and we wrestled a bit to clarify our shared understanding of the purpose of this network. Clarity of purpose is critical, and the Summit was a reminder that we need to do a better job of keeping that purpose front and center. We are including a summary purpose statement here, and encourage you to scroll through the Pages on our Blog that include background on the network, tourism topics that network members have written about, and more.
Purpose: The purpose of the Northern Forest Tourism Network is to create collaborative capacity across the Northern Forest Region in which multiple stakeholders join together around shared tourism goals to create models that attract, serve, and sustain visitor interest in rural locales. The Network’s intended outcomes include increased tourism capacity through shared marketing, training, research, and product development; best practices at the community, county, state, and regional levels; and rural capacity gains for the long-term through increasingly successful collaborations and partnerships.
The Work: In the end, Summit participants crafted preliminary action plans for three priority areas of work: Research, Training, and Product Development. Those of you who have been involved in this network will recognize these as the same priority areas that have consistently risen to the top of our list, so the Summit has affirmed and brought new energy to our existing trajectory.
We now have parallel work plans for each of our three priority areas. We encourage you to review the NFTN Work Plan v3, focusing on the area(s) that are of greatest interest to you. Also, you may want to review the Summit Archive Notes for some context. And we invite you to consider how you might join in the work to move our shared agenda forward. Please contact Kate Williams or Mike Wilson if you are interested in participating more directly in any way.
Network Mapping Survey: Finally, as part of our ongoing work to better understand and deliver on the potential of this network, we are creating a network analysis map. The survey many of you completed in the winter / early spring has provided valuable initial information for this mapping project. View a compilation of the Winter 2011 NFTN Survey here. We will be sharing a brief follow up survey with you in early September to gather an additional level of data to help us all better understand the dynamics and opportunities for our regional network. Stay tuned, and thank you in advance for your participation.
As always, your input and contributions are welcome. And please feel free to share this e-mail with other tourism practitioners. As our work together takes greater definition, we are grateful to those of you who have stayed involved, and we welcome those who are interested in joining us. Please don’t hesitate to contact Kate Williams or Mike Wilson with any questions.
Warmly
Kate Williams, Chair (Executive Director, Northern Forest Canoe Trail) and
Mike Wilson (Northern Forest Center and Maine Woods Consortium, ME)
For the Northern Forest Tourism Network
An Invite and a Survey
I hope all are well and warm as this wintry winter continues its seasonal arc through the North Country. While the snows have fallen (and fallen), the work of this network has gained both focus and momentum. In this newsletter, we include an invitation and a survey, both representing opportunities for you to participate actively in taking our shared work to the next level in terms of network organization and outcomes.
The Invitation: You are invited to attend the second Summit for the Northern Forest on May 4-5 at the Mountainview Grand in Whitefield, NH. Specifically, you are invited to attend as a member of the Summit’s Tourism Working Group.
- Click here to view the invitation.
- Click here to register immediately.
- Please RSVP as soon as you are able. If you have questions, email Kate Williams.
The Survey: Our network has evolved in both intentional and organic ways for the past couple of years. Part of the work we want to undertake leading up to and through the Summit is to better understand who we are, where we want to head, and how best to set our network up to effectively deliver results. Please take 5-7 minutes to respond to the survey questions linked here. We promise that it’s a pretty quick and painless experience, and – more importantly – your responses will help make us a more effective as a network. As an added incentive, all respondents will be entered in a drawing for a free registration to the Summit (can be applied as a refund if the winner has already registered). Thanks in advance for your response.
Tourism continues to be an integral part of the diverse economic mix shaping the future of the Northern Forest Region. And collaboration within and across this diverse economy continues to be a key approach that yields capacity that is greater than the sum of the parts. Thank you for your thoughtful involvement!
Kate Williams, Northern Forest Canoe Trail
This just in! Christina Diaz of Redpoint Marketing is offering two “Marketing Boot Camps”: March 14 in Woodstock, VT and March 15 in Wells, ME. View details here. These promise to be very productive and engaging sessions – a great jump start for spring!
Priority Action!
Priority Action! Nov 17, 2010
Welcome to the November 2010 issue of the Northern Forest Tourism Network E-Newsletter! Stick season is upon us, and the simple quiet of this time of year provides us with a chance to refocus ourselves after the busy summer and fall.
In this issue, we invite you to join us in revisiting the priority action plans that we created together last March, both to note our progress to date and to plan for our next steps. A clear target on the horizon for us is the second Summit for the Northern Forest, scheduled for May 4-5 at the Mountain View Grand in Whitefield, NH. This will provide us with an opportunity for the next in-person gathering of this network and we look forward to making considerable progress over the next six months so that we can enter the Summit with solid accomplishments in place to inform our conversations and our planning.
A key question for all of us as we move this network effort forward is what will success look like? There is no quick answer, but I encourage all of you to consider that question as you read through this issue of the newsletter. In my view, our success will involve both creating effective collaborations that provide us with new regional capacity and delivering specific outcomes linked to our priority action areas. In short, our success will include encompass both how we work and what we do. I look forward to hearing your visions of success and to joining with you to get us there.
The overall purpose for this network and these newsletters is to share information among tourism practitioners across the region in order to improve outcomes for all. As always, your input and contributions are welcome. Have ideas now? Share them on our blog. Please feel free to share this e-mail with other tourism practitioners, and don’t hesitate to contact Kate Williams with any questions.
Cheers,
Kate Williams, Northern Forest Canoe Trail
Outcomes and Opportunities
September 14, 2010
Welcome to the September 2010 issue of the Northern Forest Tourism Network E-Newsletter! We skipped an issue over the summer, as all involved were busy with the work of welcoming visitors to our region. The spectacular weather of the summer yielded some pretty outstanding busy-ness. We hope it was a productive and enjoyable season for all.
In this edition, we bid farewell to a member of our Steering Committee, Shaunacy Cobb. Thank you, Shaunacy, for your great work in getting this initiative off the ground, and for your timeliness and great questions. We will miss working with you on a regular basis, but will look forward to your continued involvement in the broader network. And we welcome Mike Wilson, who will move into the Maine slot on the Steering Committee. Mike comes to us representing both the Northern Forest Center and the Maine Woods Consortium Tourism Committee, so he is a perfect fit for this regional network effort.
Read on for stories from each of the Northern Forest Region’s four states. The purpose for this network and these newsletters is to share information among tourism practitioners across the region in order to improve outcomes for all. As always, your input and contributions are welcome. Have ideas now? Share them on our blog. Please feel free to share this e-mail with other tourism practitioners, and don’t hesitate to contact Kate Williams with any questions.
Warmly,
Kate
Action!
40 people from New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine gathered for our March 11 meeting, bringing great energy and enthusiasm to move this work forward. Outcomes from the day included numerous new connections amongst participants, greater shared awareness of the purpose and value of this regional network, and a clear set of priority action areas, each supported with an action plan and a point person to help carry the work forward. For those of you who were not able to attend, please know that it is by no means too late to get involved! There are three key things you can do to increase your involvement and contribute to our shared progress toward better tourism outcomes in the Northern Forest Region:
1) Review the priority areas action plans that came out of the March 11 meeting, and pick one that you would like to help with. You can let Kate Williams or the point person for your priority area know that you are interested. The priority areas and their respective leaders are:
Training / Workforce Development: Gloria Bruce
Northern Forest Tourism Research: Lisa Chase
Tourism Product Development: Roger Merchant or Mary Jean Packer
Network Coordination: Chris Thayer or Samantha Kenney Maltais
2) Make note that we will be meeting again in November 2010, dates and location TBD. We identified a planning group for this meeting – if you are interested in helping out, please contact Kate Williams. The existing planning group includes: Marc Edwards, Katie Curnyn, Mike Wilson, and Chris Thayer. I’m sure they would welcome additional planners.
3) Submit a short piece for inclusion in our newsletter. Doesn’t need to be anything fancy – the goal is to share information with each other that helps all of us to better understand our region and to learn effective strategies from each other. If you have an idea, feel free to share it with Kate Williams!
Thank you for your participation.
- Kate
Gaining Momentum
Welcome to the February 2010 issue of the Northern Forest Tourism Network! In this newsletter, we introduce some new voices and new perspectives on organizing tourism in our rural region. And we invite you not only to respond to these voices with your own ideas, but also to help us create a better map of who / what / where shapes the geography of rural tourism in the Northern Forest Region. We will be building on this map at our Northern Forest Tourism Network Gathering on Thursday, March 11 in St. Johnsbury, VT. Please join us both in building the map and at the event itself. It is our belief that by working collaboratively, we can create greater capacity and outcomes for our region. As always, your input and contributions on these and other topics are ALWAYS welcome. Have ideas now? Share them on our blog.
Please feel free to share this e-mail with other tourism practitioners, and don’t hesitate to contact Kate Williams with any questions.
Save the Date!
We very much hope you will be part of a gathering we are planning for Thursday, March 11, 2010 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. We will meet from 10 am – 3 pm at the Comfort Inn & Suites, just off I-91.
The focus of this gathering will be to expand and re-energize this network, and to make tangible progress toward our existing and emerging priorities.
More details to come. Please RSVP or direct questions to Kate Williams. Thank you! We look forward to seeing you!
Kate Williams, Executive Director, Northern Forest Canoe Trail
Learn with the Network
Welcome to the second e-newsletter of the Northern Forest Tourism Network! In our last e-newsletter, we introduced you to this overall regional project. Today, we hope to engage you in the work of shared learning, which is what this is really all about. How? By telling stories. Today’s issue features some brass tacks perspectives from voices in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. These aren’t marketing stories. These are stories about how tourism partners in these particular areas are organizing themselves, framing their work, engaging diverse stakeholders, and more. We hope you will find useful information, and we hope that you will consider what stories you might share from your particular place in the region.
We encourage you to weigh in with your thoughts and further questions on this issue’s question: What do you consider the best strategies for increasing livable-wage jobs in the tourism sector?
Please feel free to share this e-mail with other tourism practitioners, and don’t hesitate to contact Kate Williams with any questions.
-Kate Williams, Executive Director, Northern Forest Canoe Trail
Welcome!
Welcome to the blog site for the Northern Forest Tourism Network! This site is a companion to our bi-monthly e-newsletter, intended to give you a space to learn more, add your own ideas, push back with questions, and generally join in the work of creating a regional network focused on building the Northern Forest into a world class tourism destination.
Please take some time to explore the site, fire off a comment or question, and join in the good work!
Warmly,
Kate Williams, Executive Director: Northern Forest Canoe Trail
