An interview hosted by Bailey and Maggie with Jonathan Carey, Associate Places Editor and Community Headmaster at Atlas Obscura which garners travel tips, articles, strange facts and unique events shared by travel enthusiasts around the world. We talked with Jonathan about Atlas Obscura’s processes to capture and supercharge contributors on the platform.
“We really lean all the way in for our community so they can feel that they're working with somebody and not working for us.” - Jonathan Carey
Atlas Obscura is one of the few community-driven travel platforms.
The site focuses on the hard-to-find wonders and oddities of the world, from a church with Frederic Chopin’s heart in Poland to an abandoned Eurostar train covered in graffiti in France, to the Ottoman Bird Palaces (yes, ornate mansions for birds!) hiding in Istanbul. All of the 20,000+ discoveries are sourced by their community and published in partnership with “A.O.” staff editors.
Jonathan Carey is Associate Places Editor and Community Headmaster at Atlas Obscura, editing the places people submit and jumping into the forums to encourage conversation. He has developed an eye for spotting what suits the “A.O.” voice and can guide community submissions to the site so they fit the Atlas Obscura lens.
In this episode we talk with Jonathan about capturing and supercharging contributors enthusiasm by designing around natural instincts and treating contributors like staff members.
Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:
👋🏻Say hi to Jonathan and learn more about Atlas Obscura.
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Note:
This transcript is automatically generated, and there may be some errors.
Timestamps may vary based on episode announcement & commercial placement.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Get Together! It's our show about ordinary people, building extraordinary communities. I'm your host, Bailey Richardson. I'm a partner at people and company and co author of get together how to build a community with your people. And I magazine podcast correspondent. In each episode of this podcast, we interview everyday people who have built extraordinary communities about just how they did it. How did they,
Speaker 2 (00:34):
They get the first people to show up. How did they grow to hundreds, more members, maybe even thousands. In this case today, we're talking to Jonathan Carey, he's the associate places, editor, and I love this title, community headmaster, Atlas, Obscura, editing the submissions for places that people send in and jumping into forums to encourage conversation. Alice Obscura is if you don't know it, one of the only community driven travel platforms, all the discoveries on the site are sourced by their users, their community, their explorers, as they called them have submitted over 20,000 places and cool food to try out on their database. We're talking about places like a church with Frederic Chopin's heart on display in Warsaw and a spot where you can go see an abandoned Eurostar train covered in graffiti in France or my personal favorite. The Ottoman bird palaces. Yes. Ornate mansions for birds that are hiding in a stand bull.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Anyone anywhere in the world can add to the site. Maggie, what's one thing you learned from our conversation with Jonathan. I learned so much, but I thought it was cool. How, first of all, he kept calling the site AAO and saying things like that. So AOL, so he had a really strong sense of what this community stands for and the type of people who really care about Alice. And it's cool because Alice Obscura is designed around natural human instincts. So people want to talk about their travels. They want to share their discoveries and experiences, but oftentimes friends and family might get tired of hearing about your travels, but on Atlas Obscura, your experiences are appreciated. People want to share in your discovery. And Jonathan also mentioned that the reason they're so successful as a community driven travel platform is because they treat their contributors really well.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
They treat them almost like staff members, where they give them a lot of feedback, loop them in when they want to hear more about a place. So they have people who might be experts in Estonia or in Azerbaijan. And they actually will ask their contributors to go out and look for more. And sometimes they even ask them to host events and actual trips. So there's all these different levels where you can get involved. And I especially like how Alice obscure is really respectful about each person's individual process. So they don't have a defined template about how you submit a place, but they do share guidelines about what they have found worked over the years in terms of a good piece. And then they work with each individual writers to accommodate what's best for them. So it's a really personalized process.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Those are so many good insights, Maggie. Yeah. Hearing you talk about how they tap into a natural instinct that people want to talk about their travels, but maybe don't want to do that to annoy the heck out of their family. It reminds me of an interview. We did a while ago with instant pots, founder, Robert Wang talked about how one of the key insights he built his business on is that cooking is a social practice. And he felt like there might be a chance that there could be a community and this could grow organically because it was a social practice. And you see people building small communities on instant pot, around cooking beans, or like Quito in step cooking. Nice. But yeah, I love that way. He phrased it. I'm just like I had an insight that this business is going to be in a space that's social by nature. And I feel like Atlas Obscura. I did that with travel as well. Many people hadn't embarked on it before. All right. Let's dive into it. Jonathan.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I'm so excited to talk with you today cause I'm a huge fan of Atlas Obscura. So thank you so much for joining. I've spent a year traveling this past year before COVID-19 hit. And Alice Obscura was my go to resource for finding cool things, literally anything from a miniature book museum to mud volcanoes. And I feel like anybody I was with, they were always impressed by my discoveries, even though it was usually just from the website. So gave me a lot of good social credit. Yeah. I just wanted to start out by asking what made you a fan of Atlas Obscura and what was your personal motivation to join the team and help build out the community?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, I think like that whole curiosity and that wonder and finding cool things that really drew me to AOL. I actually started reading at least six or seven years ago. I was a big fan of history, unique places and just kind of curious McCobb world and the hunt told world my cob. Yes, absolutely. It brings to life for me, actual like main words we use at [inaudible] is one of our Kestrel words. So those kinds of weird curiosities and oddities just really drew me to Alison and just aspects of community and people really getting to explore and express themselves. That's one of the things that initially drew me to journalism anyway, was those things of being able to tell people's stories and people getting excited about telling stories. And that's pretty much the crux of what Atlas is. It's just chronicling the hidden places in the world. You call it the definitive guide to the world's hidden wonders. You can always go on Atlas and find something new.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, that's awesome. And I love what you're saying about the focus on people because Atlas Obscura is one of the only community driven travel platforms. It really feels very collaborative because all the discoveries are sourced by your users, by our community. And I think I saw your explorers have submitted over 20,000 and
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Cool foods to try out on the database. So why do you think this model has worked so well over the past year?
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Well, it's, it's always about the first thing I did community. And like we talked about just a few minutes ago, like it just want to tell people about it. So you take a trip and you're like, Oh my God. I remember when I went to st. Lucia and I got to ride horseback for the first time. I just wanted to tell everybody about it. And it's that whole aspect of like wanting to share your experiences with people and Atlas provides that outlet. And I think that's what kind of helps drive our communities. Being able to be around like minded people. We have so many people in our community that are experts in certain things, or very focused on certain areas. You may really be into single object museums. You may be into museums or vacuum cleaners or microwaves or tell us the others, but you've never been able to share that kind of world with other people.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Well, AOL provides that Avenue for you to share those things. And that's how we kind of like to see it as like an evolving thing. It's a tool is a community driven project for this. Also a living thing that evolves over time and changes. And the more people add to, and the more we build those aspects is what makes it great. It makes it special. So I think that's something that always draws people to this and that ability to be able to share and find like minded individuals that actually share similar experiences and share similar interests.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
I know that you studied journalism in college and then you wrote after graduating before finding your way to Alice Obscura. What's the difference between like traditional journalistic approach to travel writing and what happens on that most obscure, like so many people have that traditional approach of one journalist being tasked with finding all the good places and like a three day trip somewhere. Why haven't other people not inverted this model? And why has that list Obscura been successful in it?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
One of the things about atlases that is we always still try to strive for those journalistic principles. So with our place entries, we still stick to those principles that you really look for, like good writing and interesting places. One of our focal points is to make sure that like we uphold those standards as well as publishing and work. One of the things that constantly it makes this model so valuable. And so versus that, I think also like, all right, I believe that we engage the community. There's a lot of travel tools where we're going writer tasked with going on and find these places. It's kind of like a free flowing thing. So you don't have to feel beholden to submit. Sometimes we have community members that come back from years that haven't been active in the Atlas and they just went on a trip for the first time in a couple of years and they upload all the pictures and they get to writing and they share the experiences and then dive into.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
And they're like right back in the fold again, I think that that aspect of it being something that's there and that you can participate in. But when you do participate, you see feedback, you see your work published. We try to work kind of quickly to get turnarounds up so people can see their work and see things published and share their experiences. That's one of the aspects that kind of make Atlas work while we do stick to those journalistic principles and make sure that we are upholding those standards of a media company. We also want to make sure that we're engaging with our audience as much as possible that we're allowing them to be as open as possible. So not all of the writing is the same. Not all places are structured, the same kind of try to stick to a template. We have like certain parameters would like to meet, but it's, it could be that one place that you share that nobody knew about, or they may have been close to being forgotten about to time. It's a history. That's the nature that is now saved or that now is re noted as then reintroduced to the world. Just because of one person's curiosity.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
One of the things we like to say is that the difference about what you need to do when you build a community from traditional businesses or maybe traditional journalism in this case is you'll build a community with people, not for them. And you guys are saying, Hey world, tell us what you think is interesting. And then we'll give you some structure and support to package it up. Instead of just tell you what's interesting ourselves. I love that.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
One of the most important things is that we try to be open to like, you know, if it's a flag that's on the side of a church, that's in the mountains of the caucus mountain, somewhere that nobody's ever seen before, we want that place. We want you to talk about that place. We're not going to say, Oh, well, that's not popular enough. That's not know that the more obscure, the better, the more hidden, the better, the more wonders, the better. And I think it's that aspect, that hunt for the next thing, it's almost like you have a treasure map and you want to find like these little locations and get to these points. And there's people that hunt for things that are intolerant. It's just like that. It's like, okay, well wonder what's the next place I could find. That's a great Pandora's box to open up learning about things that you didn't know existed in the world. And being able to like, bring them back and talk about it. And like I said, building with people like you tell us, what's important in this world. You tell us what's special. You tell us what's unique and what's different. And we'll work with you to make sure that that's something that's able to be shared with everybody else in the world.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
You have a sweet job. I bet you're learning about stuff all the time.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yes. One of the best things about Atlas is they, one of our Slack channel, we have like a running credit of things I learned today and we just constantly post things in there. We have like a great community and a very, very smart community that is constantly like helping us learn. We're constantly getting notes, whether it's in the forums was edits to places or it's it's notes here, or was it email here? Hey, did you guys know X, Y, and Z about this place? I think that's what makes working at Atlas and like makes working on the community side of things. So rewarding is that I learned so much from my community. And then I can like help put those things with fruition and like share the things that I learned from my community, with everybody else at Atlas, and then use those things that I take from them and their interests and their desires to help build the community even better. And how can we make it even smarter? How can we make things even more cool, unique wonder is how can we showcase things better? So, I mean like a constant learning process. And I think for anybody, that's like, you know, history, both white, more so, or you're a natural as you love nature and environmental. It's like, it's, it's all there for you to like constantly learn and understand. So yes, it's a wonderful place to work professionally. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
I'm sure you must be the best travel partner
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Very much. So I try to be in this.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I like what you said about, yeah. You want to keep things free-flowing because the goal ultimately is to just get people to share and you recognize that community members have a wide range of interests from plans to history. So you don't want to restrict them too much, but I'm wondering what sort of guardrails do you put in place to help people submit quote, unquote, good entries? Like how do you make it easier for your editing team or the people reviewing the submissions to get it into a good story that
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It can be shared? Yeah. So we're very much open to any of these places around the world. We do have a submission guidelines as far as like how to submit to the Atlas and what makes a really good place entry and what makes it better like a chance of it being submitted to the Atlas. So we look for a couple of key things like photos, of course, is always important, making sure that it's someplace that's, wonderous curious, hidden locations abandoned things that deal with nature outside of our cemeteries, the McCobb anything with hidden history, collections, museums curiosity shops is one of my favorite places. And all of these shops around the world ruins any of those things make a great place entry. So while we may not necessarily take the Eiffel tower, we may take a dire Rama of the Eiffel tower and of Europe that's in a museum somewhere in the Northeastern part of the United States.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And we're like, we'll love that place. So that helps it makes it a little bit easier for our editors. And then we kind of look for those like kind of particular things, because it makes sure that we kind of like detailing a little bit about that history and also providing information for our travelers. What is about this place that would make people want to know, what is it they need to know about this place? How do they get there to make sure that the coordinators are correct? And those types of aspects are like just the little layers of things that we kind of are little kind of buffer zones to make sure that we, you know, make things easier for editors and to make sure that we're actually getting really good places and our community does like a really good job. You look toward the Atlas and say, okay, I see, you know, these particular types of museums, I know the Atlas.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And we always tell people before they submit. So like, you know, frankly, the ads, it's just give it a look to make sure there's a certain place hasn't been submitted already. And that also that you can kind of get a feel for things that you kind of get a feel for how the Ellis operates had places that we're looking for and then build from there. It's not a labor intensive process. And even when we're sending feedback to people, we always try to tell them also in our feedback that, Hey, we would like this place, but you may want to focus on this particular mural inside this museum of things instead of, you know, this particular chain of museum. But sometimes we get a lot of people submitting whole areas of regions. So we try to help whittle it down. Okay. Let's focus on this particular area in this particular region. So I think that aspect too also helps the kind of the process and also helps people constantly come back because they get that feedback and they can understand, okay, this is the route I can take now. And then they kind of come back with things.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
It's nice what you're saying about giving them feedback, because it feels like you're treating each community member like a staff writer, like you're treating them with respect a looping them into the process. And that's yeah. Really special.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I think that's a great way to put it is that we try to treat them as staff writers. We want the process to be as smooth as possible. And we also wanted to be as involved as possible, even though we're getting a lot of submissions a day, we try to be as you know, courteous to our users and courteous to people as possible for their work and the time and the effort they're putting in. So we let them know that it may take awhile or that we're working with things and trying to keep them in the loop and keep them updated. If something needs work, we'll let them know what possibly needs work to it. We'll let them know we'll send them feedback on it. Or we try to be as engaged as much as with our community. And I think that's what makes it even more rewarding.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
I would hope for our community members is that it's not just submitted. And then it kind of just falls into a black hole or somewhere. And you're like, okay, was it good enough? Or was it not good enough? Or, you know, is it going to, when is it going to go up? I haven't heard anything back. I've emailed three times. Like no email us. We're going to get back to you. We're going to figure out what's going on. We're going to try to work with you to the best of our abilities. And as much as we want to try to accept every place in that is we're not going to be able to, but we really lean all the way into more towards our community and what they want and how can we make even an entry better. And just so they can feel that aspect, that they're working with somebody and not working for us.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
That's awesome. And you mentioned that some users actually will cover entire regions or have some sort of specialty. So how do you highlight or celebrate them, for example, do they get little badges or do they get special titles or yeah. How are they uplifted?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
One of our main things that we'd like to do with like a lot of our users, we keep a monitor on or certain community members that are like contributed a lot to the Atlas. And I really work hard on the Atlas and that are very, very enthused by the admin. So we we've done in the past. We've done Q and A's with some of our committee members about what they like, what they're into why their answers into this particular region or this particular aspect of history. We've also done different things in the past, as far as some of our community members actually, and either subjects of stories or sources that we use for stories they're coming to be on working with the experience team. I'm an, our travel team. It's either be guys or leading experiences or hosting events that the Atlas travel team puts on.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
And we kind of follow those people and we keep an eye on us and saying, Hey, we noticed that you submitted, you know, XYZ amount of places. And this amount of time, they're super appreciative. We want to help you highlight these even better. We would love some more places from this area if you're willing to. So we try to like involve the legal Moines, kind of orchestrate different ways that we can better highlight our community members, whether that is showcasing more people that submit so many places and maybe giving more treatment to those, to those particular people, as far as like expos is more Q and A's. We also have lists on a site that we use a lot of, what are place entries, can we gather this particular users, their amount of places that they've done, and then highlight them in a list format and then share them with the world.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
You have a leader at the moment. So those leader boards constantly changed. So when you submit so many to this amount of this region, then you move up the leaderboard. So it's a constant ranking system on the website. So you can always see that you're number one in say, Northern Africa, or you're a number one in Southern Italy or your number one in places in Prague. It kind of helps community members to monitor their process. Their love that we've had. We've had some series of some inquiries about what does the leaderboard is going to be updated. So yes, we love it because it is people's enthusiasm. You should want us to update the leader boards immediately because you put in the work to update your entry to add more [inaudible] exactly. So we want to make sure that the ad is, like I said, it's a community project and without our community, it wouldn't exist in these cool places.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Wouldn't be, you know, documented archive of the world. So even we do keep close places in Atlas and we keep them in there for that particular purpose of preserving that history and preserving that person and that community members writing. We don't want to like erase their, their hard work off the side was closed and we deleted, no, it's still, this place existed at one point in time in history. And this is our Testament to that history. And this is that person's old to that history. So we like to keep that on the site, we're preserving history along the lines as we go along as well. So, but the leaderboard is just, the leaderboards can be a fun thing to watch change over time. So
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Ultimate bragging rights at parties.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yes, it does. It does. It does elicit a lot of bragging rights, I will say. So myself
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Mentioned earlier that some users who submit entries like you might reach out to them to host trips or experiences. Can you share a little bit more about that?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
So we have an entire travel and experience team. They host different events. So they're always kind of on the lookout for people that are kind of talking about interesting things to show interesting thoughts on certain places or certain topics. Sometimes we do come across somebody in the forums as kind of talking about something, we'll have a particular interest and I'm like, Hmm, you know, let's pass them off to the experience team and maybe they can host an experience. So maybe that's something they would be into, or maybe they can interview them and kind of work them into the process. So it's still a process, but it's something that we've always been kind of, we've been even more cognizant of now, especially with launch online experiences that, and in this time is that we, you know, would love to have so many different people that can share different things.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
And there are experts at different things. So we always want to look out for those people, if for subjects I'm going to stories as well, they could be great. A future is serendipitous. So to speak that we kind of just spot somebody, or we may just say, you know, Hey, you know, I may ping one of our team members over an experience and say, Hey, you know, this person has been talking a lot about this and they might make a good house one day, a good experience leader. And it's still a process after that, but it gets them into the door. And it's something that's a way for us to even push that aspect of community or further and take their knowledge and their experiences either further than Evans.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah. Like always looking for ways to ramp people up.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Exactly. Exactly. Yep. Absolutely. That's the best way to put it. Like if we're finding that like, okay, this person is so AAO and they're so Atlas, we probably should like, let the spurious team know that this may be, we may have found a gym here that somebody could be agreeable.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
I like that phrase. That's so cool.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
She didn't care about how, how you pinpoint if someone is like, that's a, Oh, that you're willing to share. I just, for context, I used to run the suggested user list on Instagram. So like the people that got feed and we had to like come up with things that we were looking for, like they replied to their comments, they were friendly. They posted publicly regularly, but is there any insights you can share about someone that's so AAO? Like what, what do you look for
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Somebody that's? So AOL, if I get a chance to talk about you know, Japan or Japanese houses, Oh, the medieval times or 14, 15, 16 century, I would just ramble on about it and just go on and go on and go on and just talk about how cool and interesting is that. So, because you're like you find something that's like, that's your thing. And it's so interesting that you, that you have to almost shout it out, to tell people about it. And it's like so cool to you. And it doesn't matter whether or not other people find it interesting, or you're going to find somebody that finds it interesting. This is a willing and want to share that just, Oh my God, I found out this about this place. And it's just so cool. And it's like, just that, that feeling that you get inside and you can kind of, you spot those out, even in the forums.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And even on some of our police entries, sometimes we'll have entries that are only, you know, maybe one or two paragraphs long, and then we'll have some place entries that are five paragraphs long. You spot it. Okay. That's so AOL, that's, that's exactly what that person is super interested in this. You can tell, by the way they're writing, you can tell by how deep they double, if you can tell by the research and the time they put in, but this is really something that they're interested in. So I think that that feeling you get when you're talking about something that she is super into, that maybe the whole world is into, maybe there's not a large group of people that are really into it, but you're so into it. I think that like perfectly outlines that excitement you get from discovery, that excitement you get from learning something new, that excitement you get from telling somebody, the things that you learn and actually like almost can't contain yourself that you're telling somebody something.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I remember I had a teacher in back in undergrad and we had an actual class on the history of piracy and like the golden age of piracy. And like the way she talk about the age of piracy was just like, it always just stood out to me. And just why like, wow, like, she's like, this is so exciting. This is not gets our juices going in order to like talk about this age of piracy and like the misnomers about it. And the, the women pirates that nobody ever mentioned is in the Barbary coast, pirates like nobody ever talks about. And it's just that feeling of excitement. That's just so AOL, as far as like, I guess I've said, that's exactly what I think would embody is like somebody that they'd benches to our site that that adds to the Atlas that reads the stories that engages with all of our content is that they really get that thrill about telling people what they learned is also the throw they get by learning and just learning new and cool things and learning about new aspects of the world that they didn't even know existed.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I didn't go out and just like blurting it out to the masses on one issue. That's like quintessential, what AOL is and where the AOL of what our community members are and all of us. I know we're pretty much all
Speaker 2 (24:46):
See that on a tee shirt. That's so AAO. Okay.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
And I actually have to tell somebody about it. Now I may have to like ping my founder and say, Hey, I have a great idea. Now
Speaker 2 (24:59):
It's interesting because I, I keep thinking about how people like to say, like, nobody wants to hear your travel stories. When you come back from a trip, your friends and family are always just so exhausted here. What about like a cool museum? We're a cool curiosity shop you went to, but at least on a, Oh, you find people who actually just would love you to keep talking and keep elaborating. So it kind of solves that like loneliness in your immediate circles of not being able to share the things you're really excited about. So, yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
I think that's like, kind of is the epitome of it in a nutshell is that, you know, it's that, that aspect of when you returned from a trip and you want to tell everybody about, you know, the coolest thing that you saw, the coolest thing that you did, like AOL is the place to go. It's chronically in their journeys is chronicling the things that they saw, although it may not be necessarily a first person account it's, it's their journalists, it's their images, their photos, their words. So that's how I always looked at it as like a, like a travel log of the travel journal, travel diary for people to be able to come back from their wonderful experiences in an East curious place in the world and screamed from their own top. So look how cool this place I found is, and listen to what I have to tell about it without anybody saying, Oh, be quiet. Like, no, we want you to talk louder here. We want to hear you. So no.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Nice, nice. Yeah. And because you mentioned the site is like an archive, their aunties will never be deleted, so it's just always there always for them. Yeah, absolutely. Just from this conversation, it sounds like your community is very curious, adventurous, loves discovering things off the beaten path. I imagine that also means that people are pretty restless and probably out in the world constantly exploring. So it's just interesting, like at the same time, you probably want people to be offline, exploring places, finding all the hidden treasures, but then they come back online afterward to submit and write about them. So do you see some sort of, I guess, cyclical nature of your community? Does it feel like even their most popular users are the most engaged, tend to go quiet for periods of time and then they come back really engaged? Like what does that look like?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, we expressed that quite often. But not to, to office. So we do, we do, it is a very cyclical nature to the website into the Atmos where we do have certain users that the community members that will venture out for awhile. And we won't hear from them. We're like, Oh my God. So and so, so it's gone dark, but we kind of know at this point now, like over time, you kind of learn, you learn your community, you're always gonna know your community members, so you're gonna know. Okay. So and so, and so hasn't, we haven't, they usually submit twice a week where they're at what's happening, where they might be on a trip. And then usually we, so we do see sometimes a, a book, it took a community member will go dark for a little while and then they'll give us, they'll come back maybe two or three weeks later.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
And he was like five inches from the we're like, okay, they want a trip. Okay. So now we understand. So yes, we do kind of see that one of the ways that we kind of handle that is that we try to make sure that even with our publishing cycle, we try to make sure that we kind of space things out so that so many things don't appear in one location at the same time. So we try to space them out and we try to also let our community members know like, Hey, we're probably going to space somebody out a bit. So we just don't have a cluster of places. And they're always super open over time. We learn from our community members like their habits in their ways and their kind of methods of publishing and their methods of writing. Like you really learn a lot about it.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Just like we said before, about like having a group of staff, right. As a team of staff writers, you learn their voice, you learn how they work, how they write. So we kinda, we learn how community members submit what places they're going to submit what locations they are, the where they're at in the world at the time. So, and that's also pretty cool too, because we kind of see like where they're going in the world and see like what they're doing. And then we also have we also have community members that, you know, that don't travel as much, but are just very curious explorers. And they dive into places on the internet and they dive into different locations and they read, they study and they read books and they, and they educate themselves on these places and these locations around the world and they share them with us and we were taking it back then I'm like, Oh my God, we didn't know about this place.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
And then we can kind of share them too. So we see a lot of different habits from our community members. But over time we learn those habits and we learned how to work with them as well to help them. Cause we don't, like I said before, we were more accepting than we want to be. Okay, well, we can't take this. No, we can't do this now. No, we, you gave us a bunch of places at one time. We're just going to let you know, it's probably going to take some time, but we really appreciate the work that you put in. And we really appreciate that while you were on this vacation and that you were exploring could have been doing a million other things you were actually thinking about, Hey, I thinking about place, you're going to submit and be cherish. That aspect of our travelers and our community is that when they're out in the world, that they're thinking about Atlas and you're thinking about improving that and it's, and I think that's really special about EDIS.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Do you have any favorite community stories? I remember when we were talking, before we started recording the podcast, you mentioned one member, he submitted so many entries on Atlas, Obscura that he ended up writing a book about obscure discoveries in Mexico. Do you have any favorite stories like that or do you want to share more about that story?
Speaker 3 (30:11):
That was one of them. And that was just kind of like we found serendipitous. He's one of like our, like one of our main community members, like he's been around for a while and submitted a number of places. And one of my former colleagues just like looked him up one day and said, Oh my God, he has a book out. And I'm like, really? And then we kinda like looked at it and was like, Oh my goodness. So this is kind of like when his journeys, but he's like kind of Chronicle in these things and submit them to the Alice while also chronicling his book. And that's just like super cool. And then also I think one of the coolest things that happened recently, we just got an email, like a random email from a seventh grader who said, you know, Hey, Oh, I love your site.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I'm stuck at home. I like to draw and illustrator. I would like to draw some more for your website. And we look at the pictures and they were incredible. She's at the seventh grade and she's drawing like detail artwork and it was incredible. And it was like, I want to do something else to this. And it just spawned and whole kind of Avenue for us that we did for a couple of months, right around the time that the pandemic kid. And we're kind of trying to figure out what are some good ways that we kind of address a community that kind of stuck in the house. They can't get out and explore as much as they want to. How can we create some fun? And we created this whole wonderful home kind of initiative that we were doing. And one of our things that we did on our side of it was that we kind of started these writing prompts and these art prompts.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
So we would we would write a certain details of places in the Atlas without showing any pictures of them and then just submit them out to the world and say, until I can remember, can you draw this place and replicate it for us? And then we took the best ones and then we published them. We've done some writing prompts as well. That actually like got our community members involved. So I think like that one email just kind of like spine. We used like her drawings, it's like their lead image for what we publish that particular project as the art prompts. So it was really cool, but it's just like that aspect of like, you know, engaging with people and then like taking somebody, just sending you an email and just saying, Hmm, I wonder if there's more to this that we can do because this person it's a good time I can do this. And I think we might kind of explore, let's see what our community like is really into. I think we actually still get an email, but it was so cool that that idea actually came from somebody in our community because it was something that wasn't on our radar at all. I actually turned to for like a really big initiative for us here at Atlas.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
And it goes back to what you're saying about making people feel special like that seventh grader, it must feel like such a star.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Exactly what she was. One of my big goals is always with our community. Is that how can we constantly make them feel like they're part of the team? Normally, I feel like this is a site that they just visited and they explore the crews, want to make them feel like this is their thing, but this is my thing. And that's why we can submit edits to certain places. So if they see something wrong, if there's some updates that need to be made, if there is a grammatical error, because we want them to feel like this is their project. If they want to rewrite everything and change it around, we may have to relook at it and redo some things to it. But it's all perfectly fine. It's all perfectly welcome because this is just as much as it's our thing. It's everybody's thing. It's our community thing.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
The time that they put it and they work on it is what we want to reflect back on our end as well. And we want to make sure that we show them, give them the tools and abilities to know that, Hey, this is yours as well. It's not just ours. It's not just, you know, add some security. This thing's cool thing. You know, this is your thing too. This is your cool thing. This is real cool place. We want you to make sure that everybody knows that the clubhouse has always opened anymore. You can be part of building the clubhouse.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Okay. Because we're talking about feel good stories. I just want to bring up another feel. Good story. So I, I read on the Alice obscure website, a really cool success story from the community is about the root bridges of chair. I read that they were natural bridges grown from tree roots, but people wanted to start replacing them with more modern built bridges because the Atlas Obscura community brought them into the spotlight. Now there's actually scientists caring for and studying the bridges. Can you tell me more about that story?
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, that was, I think that place entry, that actually was from a while ago, I want to say the early two thousands, I think when that kind of a story kind of took off, I believe I couldn't. But I want to say probably around like 2009, 2008, it was a place entry that got highlighted. And we kind of followed up a little more about it and it actually that the injury itself was very, very detailed injury. So it kind of included like a lot of information about the bridge and just the history of it and just the naturalization of an internist, literally, I wonder. And that kinda just got us to kind of exploring it more on the website. And I think we had a story. I think there's rain in slate a while ago of around that time that also deal with it as well.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
And that kind of explain a little more about the science that got involved, who we have a lot of those instances in the Atlas where we have a particular place that is not necessarily always say, but that is brought back to life or that is a, but we have also, like, I think one of the greatest places that, well, some of the places I love the most are the little oddity shops and obscure places because they don't receive as much attention in the world and it just adds, it just helps these little places, these little enclaves in society in the world that, you know, may not be around for, with, to get some publicity and allow people to explore and bring some attention to these particular locations, especially those that involve the natural world. It's super important because I think anything that involves the natural world and we put into Atlas has a great potential to continue to draw attention to itself, continue to get people to thinking about it. You never know when you have another oddity shop it's about the clothes. It's those things like that, that we try to like always keep in mind,
Speaker 2 (36:05):
We've talked about like the Atlas entries where people submit cool places and foods. We talked a bit about experiences that sometimes you ask your community to help hosts. And I want to talk about the forums too. I know they're relatively new, right? Like started a few years ago. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like forums is a very obvious evolution of bringing the community together. So how do you help encourage conversation on the forums? What are your favorite topics? And I also wonder, do you also use some of the ideas from the community for articles too, because it's such a good crowdsourcing reason.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Yeah. So the forms, they're still relatively young compared to most places that, you know, have like a community forums and they're like a thousand threads. But one of the things that that we do to kind of like engage conversations is that police centuries are uploaded into the forms and the open for discussion. And then we also post stories as well into the forums where like kind of an open comment discussion page and kind of open discussion. We also would do we call it show and tells that was one of our biggest things that we added to the forums. And one of our biggest kind of community drivers around the forums. And basically we show it to Intel was with it. We just kind of pick any kind of random advocacy topic and that we have kind of a robust amount of objects in the Atlas or places in the Atlas to kind of convey.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
So for example, we did show us, show us your most peculiar elevator, show us the world's most strange strangest elevators in the world. Show us the bathrooms that you have to pee in before you die. I would love to read that I'm so excited about that. It was actually like so great, like the ones that we did. So we have those shorts and most incredible rulings, and we just allow people to kind of just free flow and engage rather than a book club. Before that we also use the forums is basically like a direct feed, a direct source to us on the, on the places team. So that people can, if you have an issue with the places or there's something that you don't quite understand that's going on, or you want feedback on something in your website that may not work right, or some tool it's not acting right. And when your device is a direct line to us to get to us and to reach us. So it's also a great way to like let for our community to be able to like, you know, address any grievances or customer service issues or anything of that nature.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Nice. Yeah. Like giving people a direct line to each other, but also a direct line to your team too, in, and
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Also one of the cool things about the phones, especially with the system uploads, different places uses that we have would actually, you know, Chronicle their journeys to these places in the form. So we have one community member that has, has been using it as like us travel law. It kind of like his Chronicle through these different places. And you put and use it as a diary. He had put a date and time that he visited and then it kind of described the place and what he saw and is it easily accessible going to kind of like a little bit of information about it, it's a personal collection, but whereas a public collection where people can read it as well, it kind of, you can literally follow his journeys probably from 2010, 2018 to now. And it's really cool. Because he's, you know, he's open to sharing and he's sharing his experiences with the world community, keeping with the overall theme of the Atlas as a travel utility and a travel tool that people can use the forms to come through to receive answers, to ask questions to, Hey, how do you, you know, I, I made this particular dessert that I saw on Atlas.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Did I miss this? Or did I miss this? Or has anybody ever tried this? So it's also a place where people that come in are obscuring and people that share the vision of AOL and, and love AOL to common and also ask questions and see if they can potentially come across one of those experts or somebody that really knows something about this particular place, or that may know about this particular ingredient or where to find this particular set of Roland's or how to navigate. You've had different threads about traveling with children. One of our most popular threads was in the earlier days was tell us about the perfect stranger that you met while traveling. And it actually kind of, it went like really deeper than we thought it was that people sharing these wonderful stories of people they run into or on traveling. So times they may have been stranded in, on a travel situation or on a group travel.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
And they just were just one of the person and how they grew a bond. It's just, I think people being able to like tell their stories is still like an essence of human nature that will never go away. And that's like something that we try to keep fostering in the forms and on Alison, the more open enterprise it is for them to share those stories and they feel comfortable. The more you're gonna get of those for sharing those stories, we want these people starts to be heard and we want people spellings to be out there in the world. And, you know, the things that really interest them.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I love that. I just want to wrap up by asking what's on your mind these days, the travel industry, it has changed.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
18. So wondering are there any challenges on your mind that our listeners can help with?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah. One of our biggest challenges going forward is definitely how do we navigate the world of traveling during these different times and what the world may look like after we get through these difficult times. And it also being responsible with our community as far as places that they're going and ensure they're being safe and making sure that conveying these messages of being safe and, and diligent and being aware of your surroundings and aware of the times we've done show entails. We did one where we were asking people, you know, show us what's outside your window. So it was something that in your house that you've just discovered since you've been doing the painting, then show us the curious object that you've discovered in your house. And we also did we did a study guide for children that were like at home, like when school was still gone and schools got canceled, we were doing like a list of like these wonderful AOL places. We did like, you know, AOS guide to the golden age of piracy. So those were some things that we're trying to do. So just navigating these various aspects of travel exploration during the pandemic and how can we best serve our community and how can we continue these aspects of exploration even in different circumstances and difficult times.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah. Love it. Keeping people's sense of wonder going even as they're stuck at home.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
Yeah. So it's, it's, it's a challenge, but we're doing unique things, different things that you can, I guess it's like kind of opened a door for us to look at our online platforms and look at different things that we do with our online community and how can we use zoom? How can we use different tools like this to better engage our community and do different things with our community. And it's actually made us more diligent and more aware of our community and being more thoughtful of our community as well. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Well, thank you so much for your time. This was an awesome interview. Glad we got to geek out about travel and all the awesome things AOL has been doing. So, yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Great. Thank you so much for having me. It's been awesome guys. I loved it. Thank you, Donna.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Then if you learn more about Alison Obscura, head to their website, Atlas obscura.com, you can check out their Atlas of places and foods to help you plan your travels or just get inspired. You can look at their forums where they have so many cool topics and questions about favorite books. You read most random street signs. You've seen the most beautiful roads you've driven on. So check it out. And there's so many ways to get involved with their community. Yeah. Or you can just be a lurker like me and use it every week to find out more about the work that Kevin Kai, my business partners. And I do as people in company, helping organizations get clearer on who their most important community members are and how to build something meaningful with those people. And on over to our website, people and.company. Also, if you want to start your own community or supercharge one, you're already a part of, maybe you're a part of AAO. Our handbook is here for you. Visit get together book.com to grab a copy. It's full of stories and learnings from conversations with community leaders like this one with Johnson and final thing. If you don't mind, click, subscribe, or view us, it helps get stories like Jonathan's house, more people. Awesome. Talk to you next time.