Monday 26 October 2009

SubZero: Messages to the North

Over the three year stretch, the three main adventurers – Aaron Doering, Paul Pregont and Mille Porsild, are, rather surprisingly, not the main recipients of most the messages. A few counts shared here:
  • Aaron Doering & Paul Pregont average about 15 messages per adventure
  • Porsild recieves 74 messages overall
  • Most messages can be divided into three types
  1. Good Luck messages - 61 direct messages
  2. Footprint messages including comments and one off messages
  3. Questions - of the 105 questions asked, the overwhelming majority are about the dogs (there are over 250 references to dogs/huskies)
Expedition 3: The Ice-Men Speaketh
Mar 2009 - May 2009

Overall, in the 2009 expedition, there are about 145 messages. Over the three year period, Doering and Pregont are the recipients of 45 messages each (this is not even over the years incidentally). In year 3 most the messages are for the collective Team GoNorth!. Of the individual messages, Chris Ripken (the ‘civilian’ teacher-adventurer from Minnesota selected to join the team) receives 45 messages both from high school students and colleagues. Some of the messages describe his appearance in the Star Tribune, a newspaper that circulates in the Minneapolis/St Paul region.

Messages for Mille Porsild, seem consistent with previous years – she averages 25 messages this expedition. Of the 15 messages for Mikkel Ketil, many are not written in English.

The key difference between the posters in 2009 and in previous expeditions is that bigger contribution of high school students, in particular that of Lourdes Hill College, Brisbane, Queensland. The Australian school perhaps is the widest contrast in terms of geography and climate. The posters are mostly from an elective ICT class - again, most the messages are "footprint" messages with information about the posters rather than specific comments about the expedition.


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