Interview with a Traveling Mama: Kim Mance

Other posts by MudslideMama

When travel writers love what they do, it shows in their stories. Be it through articles, blog posts, or videos, Kim Mance, Traveling with Stylethat passion for experiencing different aspects of travel can’t be faked. The Traveling Mamas admire Kim Mance for this very reason. Not only did she co-create the website/video blog Go Galavanting/Galavanting, but she also started the Travel Blog Exchange, a forum/online meeting ground for professional travel writers everywhere. It’s quite an accomplishment, and Kim manages to take some pretty fantastic vacations at the same time. This, no doubt, is a mama we wanna get to know better.

Tell us a little about your family; how do you schedule your trips around your children’s needs? How have your kids adapted?

Travel Adventure in Costa RicaHave you heard of a little group called The Brady Bunch? That fairly well sums us up — down to the curly-haired youngest girl. We’ve actually got five kiddos between my newly gained husband and me. And this is where it gets awkward, because I have to point out the one big benefit of divorce (if it has to happen): visitation.  I have custody of my three, and my ex has visitations in week or two-week increments during school breaks. So basically, I just schedule the bulk of our travels around their visitations with the other parent. The kids never even know I’m missing, and I enjoy guilt-free travel.

The kids love watching the videos and all make me promise I’ll take them hiking in Italy’s Cinque Terre or to Rome’s famed monuments one day. And I will. In fact, whenever possible, I take the kids with me traveling now, because it not only expands their worldview, it helps them realize that packing a bag and going somewhere isn’t scary or intimidating (and that mommy always returns).

What was the inspiration for creating TBEX?

Debbie Dubrow and I wanted to get a bunch of travel folks together. Chicago is a great central location, and since the fabulous BlogHer annual conference is happening in late July, we cooked up a meeting and planned it. The whole thing has come together beautifully and the response overwhelming. Attendees are coming from far and wide and we want to make the big bash worth everyone’s time and effort.

My cohorts at Galavanting and I took it a step further and thought it would be great to involve the worldwide Kim in Taostravel folks who can’t make it to the TBEX’09 meetup in an online community as well. So we spent many very late nights brainstorming and creating until we came up with the TBEX Community website in January 2009. To date, the site already acts as a hub for nearly 1,000 travel bloggers and PR professionals interested in connecting with them.

What are your future plans for TBEX and/or Galavanting?

We want to keep TBEX active and useful and will be reaching out to members of the press, media, and PR reps, as well as advertisers, to highlight the burgeoning community of travel writers on the web. TBEX can raise their visibility and connect bloggers to each other in ways that simply surfing the net for kindred spirits cannot.

As far as Galavanting goes, we want it to become a household name. My co-founder Katy Quissell and I had the original idea of a television show that featured women with spunk, useful information, adventurous tendencies, and non-boringness. Women we could relate to. And not many of the travel shows, if any, were doing that. We started the online travel magazine GoGalavanting.com to help other women tell their stories of adventure, and then launched Galavanting.tv which was fairly quickly picked up by a distributor called KoldCast.tv who made us available on TiVo and across the web. We hope it will soon be on regular television too.

You co-operate Galavanting, and the four of you live in very different places. Do you coordinate travel plans to see each other – and if so, how often?

Great question. I’m in Chicago, Katy is in London, and Maren & Courtney are in Omaha. In fact, I don’t know what we’d do without the many Google tools available to us — we use a shared calendar, collaborative spreadsheets, and endlessly confusing color-coded documents before a trip. We make carefree, fun Galavanting episodes, but there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work and planning that goes into it. And keeping up with a brand new travel destination every month has proved to be no small feat. We end up seeing each other about once every three months or so at least, which goes faster than it seems. Surely you experience the same thing with the fabulous Traveling Mamas group! It is pretty much the best job in the world.

Thanks for the Q&A, Kim! Any traveling mom is a friend of ours.  Kim can be found on Twitter, for anyone who would like to hear more from her.

  • Share/Bookmark

July 6, 2009 | Filed Under Mama Interviews, Travel News 

Comments

9 Responses to “Interview with a Traveling Mama: Kim Mance”

  1. Andy Hayes says:
    July 6, 2009 at

    Why don’t you combine forces and do a Galavanting Mamas series? Would be entertaining, at least, lest not extremely informative. :-)

  2. MountainMama says:
    July 6, 2009 at

    Galavanting Mamas! Love it. :-)

  3. Authentic Seacoast Resorts says:
    July 6, 2009 at

    Galavanting Mamas is hilarious. What we like best about the Galavanting Gals and the Traveling Mamas is the excellent work you do in helping define how moms can be. Fun, real and connected. We enjoy following your travels and sharing them with friends and family. Thanks for the laughs, tears, stories and friendship!

  4. Kim@Galavanting says:
    July 6, 2009 at

    Hee, genius! Yeah, we should schedule one big mother of a trip episode that all of us host :) . We actually just shot a family episode in Chicago which should be out shortly (just ahead of TBEX ‘09!). You’ll get to see just how many kids me and Maren have in tow! And we show you the $0.85 Chicago roller coaster :) .

  5. pligg.com says:
    July 6, 2009 at

    Interview with a Traveling Mama: Kim Mance…

    AN interview with a mom and travel professional….

  6. Nancy D. Brown says:
    July 6, 2009 at

    Galavanting Mamas. I like it What a Trip!

  7. Lanora @WritingTravel says:
    July 6, 2009 at

    Can’t wait to meet all of you chicas fabulosas (and hombres fabulosos) at BlogHer and TBEX!

  8. Andy Hayes says:
    July 7, 2009 at

    Can I come? I’ll carry the bags… ;-) (On second thought…) I’ll take pictures!

  9. jessie voigts says:
    July 30, 2009 at

    WHAT fun! i love how you are always smiling. congrats on your wedding and huge brood – that is lovely!

Leave a Reply