Production Notes

How we put together the second season of BlogAbroad.com:

June, 2005:
Our advertising materials go out asking study abroad advisors to ask their students to audition for the new season.

Early July, 2005
We start receiving auditions. A few of us find it hard to accomplish any work because we're spending so much time reading the amazing stories these future study abroad students are telling us.

Late July, 2005
We receive over 115 auditions. We can only choose three Americans and one international student.

We spend the next few days sorting through the auditions, trying to decide who are the best writers, which ones are going to the most interesting countries, which will make for the best blogs, and so much more. After much deliberation, we finally make our choices.

We notify Jonathan Jackson, Vanessa Ruiz, Amy White, and Keri James that they have been chosen as our next BlogAbroad.com bloggers. After much celebrating, we get to work.

Early August, 2005
We ask our new bloggers what sort of themes they would like for their header pictures on their blogs. After receiving their answers, Stacy Pagnano, Educational Directories Unlimited's graphic designer, and Matt Ulmer, begin brainstorming ideas. In keeping with the movie theme of this season, we decide to incorporate movie text into the headers. As an example, since Jon is going to New Zealand, and that country has recently gained popularity since The Lord of the Rings was shot there, we created a font similar to that of The Lord of the Rings movies to use in the header. Similarly, since Amy was going to Egypt, we decided to use a font reminiscent of an ancient Egypt book used in the film, The Mummy.

We also wanted to incorporate the blogger's ideas, so, per Amy's wishes, we added in scenes of modern day Egypt to her header. We gave Nessie a sea theme to coincide with her semester at sea. Jon wanted a shot of the beautiful countryside and mountain ranges of New Zealand. And Keri wanted to keep the culture and customs of her home country of New Zealand while incorporating the American landscape she was traveling into. Stacy took these ideas and created the beautiful headers you see now on the blogger's pages. Once they were completed, the only thing left to do was start receiving our blogger's magical stories.

August 25, 2005
BlogAbroad.com premieres to a worldwide audience. The initial blogs are posted. The adventure begins.