We have some good marketing material and I'm not sure what the next step is but I want to share the PDF's with a few publishers when the time is right.  Is the time right now?

Please advise.

JB

First I want to thank every photographers of the agri-project group. Morten has sent a pdf page with pictures of every stories and it is useful.

Is it possible to have the subject treated in the stories presented by the agri-project group. To figure out an approach to potential buyers, I think we need to have more information in hands.

Best

Now comes the work with creating proposals and presentations and pitching it. Stay tuned for more and feel free to create your own proposals and pitch.

João Pedro Marnoto

Dear Colleagues at Gaia:

First of all, would like to congratulate the enthusiasm felt in the forum and the participation over the agriculture Project. Unfortunately I couldn´t participate and devote my attention as much as I would like since I have been way too busy over many things but specially a Project developed and presented over the last months. Actually, the Project is related to Agriculture as well and is titled “Fé nos Burros” in Portuguese, which in English is something like “Faith on the Donkeys”... In brief lines is a project where I along with a veterinary and founding member of AEPGA (an association that I work with devoted to the preservation of Portuguese traditional Donkey breed of Miranda) explored a region in Northeast Portugal (Alfandega da Fé) to find out about the population of those animals, if they are still being used in agriculture or already have been exchanged by machines, recording the all process in video and photographing in an open studio style the animals along with their owners, for a final open air exhibition... Anyway, you can have a look at... http://www.fenosburros.com ... sorry only Portuguese version!

Still lacking the time and attention needed, I didn´t wanted to stop participating since the theme is something very related to me that I have been working for the last few years here in Portugal. Therefore I edit some 33 images. My intention, along with the major project that I am developing on the region titled “Nine Months of Winter and Three of Hell”, is to document old and ancient ways of living and the human relation with the land, which are disappearing greatly on Western Europe but still visible and felt in some areas in Portugal. Being Portugal, along with the rest of the developing world, facing the transition over an industrialised agriculture that can only survive the economic and market demands, at the same time financial crises reinforce the idea of more sustainable way of living.

The present work pretends to document local communities in Northeast Portugal (Trás-os-Montes e Alto-Douro) that still depend on agriculture on a small and traditional scale, for personal consumption or even if trading with the bigger companies. Mostly elders that still find a reason to wake up early, with the increasingly land decertification, it´s a work intended to document and celebrate values that tend to disappear but still resist to the avalanche of modernity.

I do not know how far you want to take the present project, but I could join two more specific stories related with time... On one side I have developed work on the Douro Wine Culture, other on Donkey World, about a group of young people that choose to live on the country side on a sustainable way around a common project AEPGA (as mentioned before... an association that I work with devoted to the preservation of Portuguese traditional Donkey breed of Miranda). Let me know what you think. You can look at both works on my website http://www.jpmarnoto.com in the Projects section.

That´s all for now folks! Hope I haven´t been to long!

Best regards and keep the good work!

João Pedro Marnoto

Sorry for the late reply on this. I'm traveling at the moment and with limited access to the internet.

Thanks for the feedback and input on this. I will be making some adjustments to the newsletter and post here the link to the template as soon its completed. Unfortunately at the moment i do not have access to the application i've been using to develop the newsletter. I'll be back home in Dublin by the 20th of August and will immediately proceed with the some suggested alterations.

Morten, hope this delay does not compromise the promotional strategy of Gaia. Let's maybe wait for the completion of the Agri project to issue the first newsletter....

Meanwhile if anyone has any suggestions for the newsletter, please let me know.

Best,

Paulo

I would suggest to justify text in the sidebar, and as Jenn has suggested, to make it a bit smaller.

For the rest, it's great.

Best

In March I did a story on a small agriculture project in rural Southern Sudan that is training and benefiting local women. Most of the land in Southern Sudan is ripe for large and small-scale agriculture projects but unfortunately farming is not practiced in many states here and most of the land goes unused. The few (larger) agriculture projects that are here are run by private companies from other countries, and other than that it is only small gardens on a family plot. This community women's project is the first of its kind in Southern Sudan, and hopes to become a template for farming among Sudan's very rural and poor communities..

I will send you a contact sheet to the agripics@gaia-photos.com email address to hear your thoughts.

Thanks!

I like the idea of having the Features be listed as half-width images (the half-width pics under the two main images should correspond with the side bar Features)

Also, the sidebar font could be a little smaller (the white text at least)

Maybe the Gaia top logo could go across the whole header.. remove the "Newsletter #01/2010" text and just write 01.2010 inside the gray line under the Gaia logo

What do you think?

I see that incomes from Ads have doubled from last quarter. Have you change your mind about letting go Google Ads?

Best

i will do my best to be there this year.

probably for the business week

lets say from august 30 until september 2nd or maximum third

of course i have a sleeping bag

but having a bed would be better!

best

gianni

Income
Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . USD 26,40
Affiliate programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . USD 0.26
Sponsors and donations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  0.00

Expenses

none