Why GoLife is Different

Just a little while ago I was prepping a couple of GoLife contributor Brad Herzog's latest posts. After a year's worth of travel stories I asked Brad to put his wonderful writing skill to work on capturing his own feelings and family experiences. As a professional writer, with hundreds of thousands of words published, I think Brad was a bit taken aback by being asked to focus his writer's lens a little more personally. Pro that he is, this current series of GoLife articles captures, as few stories do, the joy and essence of the RV travel experience.

Then there's James Adinaro who's analytic mind is constantly weighing, measuring and evaluating every nook and cranny of he and wife Stefany's yellow Travato. James has an innate talent for delving deeper into products and telling a story in a way that keeps even the non-technical reading on, while Stef more than holds her own in healthy recipes and fitness advice.

Of course there's the one-of-a-kind Holcombe family who chase water experiences on rivers and seas throughout the year with their fearless eleven year old daughter Abby. I started the early part of my career as a commercial photographer and being on several photo shoots with a world-class pro like Peter is both humbling and always instructive.

A couple of our most recent GoLife contributors are Heath and Alyssa Padgett. Watching them drive though life is a smile inducing lesson in millennial entrepreneurism. Coverage on CBS News, CNN, People Magazine and, most recently, GoingRV on cable -- that doesn't happen without a lot of media savvy and some "wish I'd thought of that" ideas.

Woven alongside our current team of regular contributors we've had equally talented posters writing about fitness, health, finance, food and owner experience. And now, in a little over two years, we've filled GoLife with over 300 stories, 2,000 pictures, and 30 videos.

As our stories have grown, so has our readership. It continues to climb every month and our GoLife stories now run across Twitter, Facebook and Flipboard.

The editorial vision we had when GoLife was started continues to push us. We wanted our stories to be unique, well written, lively, and filled with visuals. Authenticity is our top goal and all our contributors are active RV users and owners.

This high level of quality takes both time and effort. It's not unusual for any of our contributors to spend four to eight hours working on one story. Videos can easily take ten to forty hours to produce. Throughout the week there are e-mails and phone conferences that discuss upcoming stories and future ideas. And thank heavens for that thing called the Internet. With a geographically dispersed team (many of whom are constantly mobile), words, pictures and video flow back and forth pretty seamlessly.

I have come to see GoLife as a virtual RV rally that changes almost everyday with new ideas on where to travel and how to get the most out of your own RV adventure. And whether it's from my own computer screen or from our talented contributors, I'm always excited about what's coming just around the bend. I hope you are too.

(Photo: Winnebago Marketing Manger Kelli Harms and her family get ready to kayak the mighty Winnebago River with GoLifers the Holcombes and Cohens.)