Outdoor Retailer 2008: Industry Breakfast - getting kids outside
This morning we attended the Outdoor Industry Association industry breakfast. This is one vibrant community! Check out the attendance, at 7 a.m. no less.
This year's OR theme is about engaging young people with the outdoors. Both speeches related personal anecdotes about children and outdoors adventures, and I found it pretty inspiring. We listened to speeches from Frank Hugelmeyer, OIA president, and from Larry Selzer, director of the Conservation Fund. Both speeches focused, with alarm, on the youngest generations lack of engagement with the outdoors, citing childhood obesity, shocking focus group surveys about fear of the outside, lack of cell reception, etc. Hugelmeyer related hopeful anecdotes about his 12-year old son's recent experiences with backpacking and flyfishing. Selzer used storytelling to describe how the outdoor industry needs a compelling story, like 1962's Silent Spring, to inspire our culture to get outside.
This year's OR theme is about engaging young people with the outdoors. Both speeches related personal anecdotes about children and outdoors adventures, and I found it pretty inspiring. We listened to speeches from Frank Hugelmeyer, OIA president, and from Larry Selzer, director of the Conservation Fund. Both speeches focused, with alarm, on the youngest generations lack of engagement with the outdoors, citing childhood obesity, shocking focus group surveys about fear of the outside, lack of cell reception, etc. Hugelmeyer related hopeful anecdotes about his 12-year old son's recent experiences with backpacking and flyfishing. Selzer used storytelling to describe how the outdoor industry needs a compelling story, like 1962's Silent Spring, to inspire our culture to get outside. 
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