Ever since we started this website 8 years ago, this seems like a regular call to arms – please help to share your cycling experiences! As other focuses and priorities get in my life, churning out yet another blogpost for CiC is not always top of mind for me (e.g. I’ve just spent the past month trying to sell my house…). So this post, originally from July 2013, is here to remind you that contributions don’t have to be perfect world-beating prose (Lord knows, mine aren’t…), they just have to be your thoughts…
It’s a fun job putting together blog posts for Cycling in Christchurch and seeing the conversations that ensue. But it’s also a task that takes a reasonable amount of time to put them together. Unfortunately at the moment that time for me is getting more precious by the minute as I have a very busy workload on that’s not going to go away in a hurry.
Cycling in Christchurch was always meant to represent a variety of views from the cycling (or nearly-cycling) world – I might have a few things to say, but I can’t speak for everyone else’s experiences out there on their treadlie. Clearly however, some of my fellow CiC bloggers are also feeling the pinch on their available time too. So it seems like an ideal time to extend another invitation out to you, to see if you’d like to join our blogging team!
Have you been reading CiC for a while and thinking “but my experience is so different than that”? Or maybe we’re missing a whole side of cycling in our coverage to date (for example, being an engineer I’m obviously going to focus a fair bit on the infrastructure stuff)? Perhaps you’re a much better photographer than me (easily done) and like to snap people in action riding around the city? If you think you have something worthwhile to contribute we’d like to hear from you!
There’s two options for how you could contribute:
- Maybe you’re not sure about being a regular blog poster, but you do have an interesting story to pass on: Perhaps you’re fairly new to the cycling game (or at least cycling around Christchurch) and you’d like to share your experiences so far? Or maybe you’ve been involved in a really interesting cycling-related project that you’d like to tell everyone about? In that case, you might like to contribute a guest post to CiC; just a one-off item when you’re feeling inspired. We’ve done this before; look at Robert F’s excellent contribution.
- Alternatively, you might feel that you’ve got a few stories in you on the cycling front (or that you can find them). Perhaps you’re even trying to work on your media/journalism skills and need a willing audience to try them out on? If this sounds like you then you might want to become a regular blogger on the CiC team. What does “regular” mean? Well I’d like to think that perhaps once a fortnight on average might be a good target, but that will probably vary by both person and season.
If you’re interested in contributing to CiC, then contact us. Guest posters can simply send us their words (and pictures if you have them!) and we’ll do the rest. Those who’d like to be regular bloggers should send us a few details about themselves, and perhaps some thoughts about what you’d like to blog about. We can then set you up with an account on the site and give you some basics about the editing system to get you started (the WordPress site is pretty easy to use actually).
Remember, it doesn’t have to be Pulitzer Prize winning stuff; just your honest opinions and experiences will be plenty (or failing that, just point to someone else’s cycling article on the Interweb and say “that’s neat, can we do that too?”). The biggest requirement we are looking for is simply your time…
Want to be a part of Cycling in Christchurch? We look forward to hearing from you!