HOW TO BECOME A GEAR TESTER IN THREE EASY STEPS
STEP 2, LESSON 1
WRITING A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

This is really a 'one time only' step, since you will use the biography you create here for all your reports and applications with only minor updates from time to time.  It is an important step, however, because your biography is required in all reports and in all applications.  People will be interested in your biographical information for a number of reasons.  People looking for clothing, for example, will often look for reviewers and testers of clothing that are their size and weight.  That way, they have a reasonable expectation that the clothing will fit them the same way.  Your biography is important during the tester selection process.  The moderators will select applicants based on various criteria found in the tester biographies.  For example, if cold weather gear is being tested, the moderators may look for people in cold climates, or those who predominantly hike in cold climates.  The moderators also like to select a cross section of testers, and the biographies help them do this.

You should, of course, use good judgment about the information you include.  When testing clothing, for instance, it may be necessary to add additional measurement information such as torso, inseam, waist, and other measurements.  You should include information in both Imperial (English) and Metric units.  It is better to include too much information than not enough.  

Ok, let's begin.  You should open any text editor or word processor familiar to you, and begin filling in your biography.  Here's a starting point for basic information:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Height:
Weight:
Email address:
City, State, Country:
Date:
Backpacking Background:

This should be self explanatory.  The 'Backpacking Background' should be a paragraph that lets us know a little about how and where you hike.  While we're going to show you a few examples, these shouldn't be considered fill-in-the-blank templates.  You should let your own style and creativity come through while keeping it brief.  Let's create the example:

That's it!  That's all you need.  Here, we see that John lives in northern Alaska, and he briefly details his experience, time spent backpacking, his style, and the terrain and weather conditions he normally encounters.  Notice that John includes both English units (inches and feet) as well as Metric units (Kilograms) for his measurements.

A conversion utility is available from this site.  Just click on the 'Converter' link in the navigation menu. 

Here are a few more examples, allowing for style, that are all acceptable:

What if John had little or no experience?  Only his Backpacking Background would change:

In this case, John will be writing owner reviews of gear that he has bought or borrowed for his trip.  Since he doesn't have much experience with it, hopefully he will thoroughly test his gear before taking it on long trips in such harsh terrain where his life may depend on his gear.  

Let's look at John's bio ten years later...

Too Long!

From this we see that John has become a 'Superhiker' in the last ten years.  This boy has got the backpacking disease - and bad!  He's probably independently wealthy in order to be able to be gone so many months out of the year...

There is a problem with this background.  It has become more of a "gee look at me" instead of letting people know the person's background.  We like to keep the Backpacking Background paragraph to a hundred words.  Really.  A hundred words.

When making an application to test gear, you may also add other information that will be relevant to that test.  We'll cover that when the time comes.  By now you should have a good idea of what your bio should look like.  If you need other examples of acceptable biographies, just read any report on BackpackGearTest.org.  In fact, it's a good idea to read several reports so that you will get an idea about what reports should look like.

Go ahead and write your biography now, and be sure to save it in a safe place.  You will be using it a lot and updating it from time to time.

You now have two options: