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A Labor of Love
By
Jimmy Dunn
Well, another month and late again on the magazine. I
love writing this section, because it has no actual topic
and I can write about anything I wish. So this month,
I will explain why the magazine is late, while also letting
our readers know a little more about Tour Egypt, or what we
are often calling these days the Tour Egypt Network.
People often ask us why there is more than one government
tourism web site for Egypt. Actually, Tour Egypt is
the only one that is directly connected to the Ministry and
ETA for general distribution to the world. There is
also a Tourism Net, but that is more run by the Egyptian
government's technical computer people and really less
connected to the tourism authorities on a day to day basis
then Tour Egypt.
Yet Tour Egypt is a private company, under direct
agreement to the Ministry of Tourism and the Egyptian Tourist
Authority to operate as their official web site. We maintain
an organization within Egypt, while the actual web operation
is performed in the US, and actually, elsewhere. In
fact, the people who write the magazine are from Europe,
North American and Egypt.
And in fact, while I work for the company on a full time
basis, and others contribute considerable time to the effort,
none of us are paid, with the exception of our Egypt
Manager, "Hoose" Stryjak, and some token fees we
pay occasionally for feature articles, and to our Senior
Editor, Mary Kay Radnich. In other words, Tour Egypt
is an enthusiast run publication. Most of us do what we do
because we have fallen in love with Egypt. In fact, a number
of our writers and editors are members of a small club
called the Egyptomaniacs, and also frequent the Tour Egypt's
BBS where they help out answering questions, or sometimes
just chitchat.
And so, while we can yell and scream as much as we wish,
the magazine often operates on Egyptian time. Well,
and also that said, we have been doing a lot of other
improvements to Tour Egypt all year long, including the
addition of the web search engine, EgyptBot, expanding the
Color Me Egypt section, expanding information on cities
throughout Egypt and updating hotel and other databases. We
also answer as much email as we can on questions about
Egypt, which come in all day every day.
So there you have it. To a real degree, Tour Egypt is a
community of people, most of whom I have never actually met
in person, who contribute to our Egyptian experiences.
Perhaps most of all, nearly all of our writers have visited
Egypt, and enjoyed it so much that they feel compelled to
share the experiences with others. |
