Featured Member

 

Our winter Featured Member is John Loo. John joined OWAC in 2006 and spends his days worrying about the Internet, social networking, and what it means to outdoor journalism.

He conquers writer's block by

  1. Typing out spontaneous thoughts on the topic
  2. Doing something else for a while (could be writing about something else, but usually involves something visual)
  3. Coming back, reviewing/reorganizing (1), then trying again
  4. Repeating 1-3 as needed.

John's favorite words? arcane, visceral

"I often fish offshore by myself in my 18’ skiff, usually launching at night. When people tell me I’m foolish, I tell them this story:

When I was 8, my Dad took a year’s leave of absence from corporate America to work with the UN. We were stationed in Iraq, in a little agricultural town call Abu Ghraib. There was no prison back in 1963, but we did manage to witness the coup d’etat that put the Baath party in power. Who knew they had so many guns at a US Embassy?

At the end of the year, Dad decided it would be fun to drive from Baghdad to Paris before we came home. Dad packed Mom, my sister (11), me (8), and my brother (6) into our ’62 Corvair (see Ralph Nader’s book “Unsafe at Any Speed”), and we took off for the City of Lights.

We passed through Jordan (where Dad was nearly shot for taking pictures of the Israeli side of the Jerusalem Wall), Lebanon, Turkey (where border guards took Mom and Dad away at gunpoint for questioning), and Greece (where the car broke down in the backcountry). We took a ferry from Athens to Rome (where we nearly had a head-on collision near the Forum); then made our way up the Italian peninsula through Switzerland and into France.

Foolish? Maybe, but it’s not my fault - I get it from my Dad."


You can find his work at: 

Beyond The Breakwater

Ocean Skiff Journal

Featured Supporting Member

 
Lake Resources Group, Inc. (IronClad Technologies)

Lake Resources Group is a new company manufacturing soft and hybrid lures utilizing a newly released, patent-pending polymer technology co-developed with the University of Wisconsin Polymer Engineering Center. Brands include IronClad, LockOn and ChamberLock. The new polymer technology renders soft baits nearly permanent, or "IronClad," but still highly flexible and lifelike. These lures "LockOn" to hooks and don't budge. ''Designed for Fishermen; Designed for the Environment.''

 location: Waunakee, WI (Central time)
contact: Ben Hobbins, President and CEO
tel: (608) 513-3535
email:lakeresourcesgroup@yahoo.com
web:www.lakeresourcesgroup.com

Benefits of Supporting Membership

OWAC Supporting Memberships are available to individuals, non-profits and companies with an interest in supporting California's outdoor media and OWAC's programs. Our goals are to expand public information on outdoor recreation and conservation, provide professional craft improvement, and increase recognition of outdoor writing as a specialized field among media and educational institutions.

OWAC's Supporting Members include manufacturers, distributors and retailers of outdoor gear like Coleman and Hobie Cat; regional and national lobbying organizations like the American Sportfishing Association and the California Waterfowl Association; media outlets like ESPNOutdoors and The Sportsman Channel; tour operators like The California Parks Companies and Seven Crown Resorts; PR/communications firms and destination marketing organizations. For a directory of OWAC's approximately 65 current Supporting Members, click here.

Benefits of Supporting Membership include:

  • A spiral-bound copy of our Member Directory, including job titles, publication credits, specialties, and complete contact information for approximately 170 professional outdoor writers, photographers, editors, speakers and broadcasters, who reach a combined audience in the tens of millions.
  • Subscription to our  monthly electronic newsletter, OWAC News (sample issue).
  • Free publication of press releases, event schedules, calls for submissions, job opportunities, and story ideas in OWAC News.
  • Attendance for a nominal fee ($80 for your first representative and $160 for each additional) at three-day conferences in spring and fall, including a display at the Marketplace mini-trade show, lodging and meals, and numerous opportunities to network with members during receptions, meals, and a wide range of scheduled outdoor activities.
  • Assistance in planning small-scale press trips for targeted members to showcase your destination, product, message or service.
  • For manufacturers, opportunity to put your products in the hands of members through "press" or "pro-staff" deals.

Annual dues for Supporting Membership are just $100. New supporting members joining any time between Jan. 1 and the spring conference pay $100. Those joining between the spring and fall conferences pay $65 for the remainder of the calendar year, and those joining after the fall conference pay $40. For more information, contact Executive Director Zack Thomas at owac.director@gmail.com or (775) 562-4585.

Apply Now!