Though there are two parts to the name of this blog, I tend to focus pretty heavily on the Gamer over the Traveler half. Though I see The Gamer Traveler as travel writing for the gaming community (hmm, new tag line?) the blog has followed the same formula that I established when I started the podcast, which means the travel gets filtered through the gaming lens. I’m fine with that, but I would also like to expand the travel-writing part of TGT in the future.

Earlier this year I joined the Travel Bloggers Exchange (TBEX), a social network meant to bring together travel bloggers of all levels and scope. Back on July 26, they held the first TBEX event in Chicago the same weekend as BlogHer 09 Conference. The one-day con (and really, that’s what it was, they just didn’t have any gaming – yet) was a success with over 100 bloggers dropping in from all over the US and from international locations as well. The #TBEX hashtag was flying like mad that Sunday (imagine a conference room full of bloggers most of which are on Twitter as well) with comments, tweet-by-tweet transcripts, pics and general chatter that, much like when #GenCon was around, made me wish I was there. Good news have come my way.

TBEX 2010 has been announced for the weekend of July 26-27, 2010 in New York City!

The venue is still TBA, but NYC is a great location for this conference, not only for the fantastic tourist attractions for all the visitors, not only for the great meeting spaces the city boasts all over the place, but also because my sister-in-law lives up there so I can bring my wife along and she can spend time with her while I geek out on travel blogging goodness all weekend.

Though June 2010 is still a while away and I’ve no idea what the future will bring, I believe I will be pre-registering for the conference at the early-bird rate. Worst case scenario, I can’t go and my fee helps fund this con, from which I still derive benefit through the video recordings of the seminaries and such. But I’d love to go. I haven’t been to New York in about 4 years and that’s just too long. Besides, NYC has really improved their bicycling infrastructure in the city and I’d love to go check that out for myself.

You can find TBEX on the web, on Facebook and on Twitter.