Backpacker Magazine – Online Exclusive

2012 Be a Gear Tester Contest

Here's your chance to test gear for us in 2012!

by: Backpacker Editors

Tags:
• Gear
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We're looking for some exceptional people who share our fascination with new products, cool gear, and upcoming trends.

If you are selected, you will will win two prizes. First, you will test gear for our upcoming Readers' Choice issue (January 2013). Second, you will become an elite member of the Backpacker Reader Reader (BRR) team and will be sent on assignment to Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, 2012, in Salt Lake City to write, blog, photograph, and maybe even star in a video or two at the world’s largest outdoor industry trade show...yes a veritable Mecca of all things gear and gadgets for the coming retail year.  Your job will be to give our readers a “man or woman in the aisles and behind the scenes perspective on upcoming new gear and new trends." We know...a dream job for sure. 

We want you to apply if you:

• Are able to commit to being in Salt Lake City from August 1 through August 5, 2012, at our expense.
• Love being in the outdoors and being active.
• Enjoy writing and telling friends, family and complete strangers about what you have experienced, seen, done.
• Think a garage full of outdoor products and the car parked outside because there is no room in the garage is normal.
• Have an insatiable fascination with products and what makes them work and work well.
• Can meet deadlines and communicate in an articulate manner.
• Are gregarious, outgoing, fun.
• Think being a reporter where you get to roam the aisles and walk into booths to ask complete strangers about new products so you can write about them sounds exciting.

To apply, put your compelling pitch to us into video form (no longer than 3 minutes please - a YouTube link, or similar, is fine) and send it to Kristin Hostetter by May 15, 2012. Also, please send us a writing sample: Write a 100 word, first person, blog-type entry that describes one of your favorite pieces of gear and why you think it’s so cool. Grammar, punctuation, and style count! Plus, please give us a sense of how tapped into social media you are...how many Facebook friends and Twitter followers? Do you currently have a blog? If so, what is the traffic like?

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