Community Roundup (10 Oct 2014) - News, Discussions and #FollowFriday

News in the community

It's been a very busy few weeks (hence the delay in this roundup!). Here's a brief summary in case you missed any of the action:

A conversation between Sallie Grayson and Shannon O'Donnell on how to fixvoluntourism quickly burgeoned into a mammoth discussion (23k words and counting!) pulling in a huge number of perspectives and opinions. In response to all that interest we set up a live Hangout to explore the issues in more detail. We understand that wading through 23,000 words might not be everyone's cup of tea so we've now set up a newgroup (more on groups below) to house all the discussion and activity in this ongoing conversation.

Another discussion on the pitfalls of sponsored content & audience trust lead into a separate question on whether or not sponsored content should appear on Outbounding. We'd love to get your opinion on that, please chime in.

Sustainable travel is never far from many Outbounders' minds and we've had more fascinating discussion on the impact and future of aviation. For the highlights see this discussion and the Environment hub.

We're also being joined by filmmaker Ross Harrison, creator of the excellent Sunset over Selungo. If you haven't yet see the film, please do catch it and feel free to ask Ross anything in the comments.

Upcoming events

Some of the many things in the pipeline include a roundtable discussion on techniques and approaches to storytelling with some of the most exciting pioneers in the field; a discussion on the sharing economy and what it means for "local travel" and a series of travel photography workshops.  Keep checking in for updates!

Features updates

I'm very excited that the new Groups features are now live and ready for you to explore. You can now create a new sub-group on any topic you wish, and use it to house all the content, discussion and everything else related to your subject. Keep an eye out for new groups to follow! 

You've probably seen the new submission interface, which makes it easier to start discussions, including by sharing your posts to your Twitter followers.  In order to send these messages the twitter authentication requires some additional permissions.  A number of members have questioned the privacy/data protection aspects of this change.  Although the site cannot read anything from your twitter account or send anything without your permission, we understand these concerns and we're working on fixing them right now. Watch this space.

#FollowFriday

Last but not least, a few shout outs for our most active recent members: @ehasbrouck, @PCTotaro, Clare from @immersiontravel and Anuj from @planitwide. Thanks for all your valuable input, please keep it coming!