Written January 2001.

OutdoorNetwork.Com Honored

Boulder, Colo., Jan. 15, 2001--OutdoorNetwork.Com, the first and only Web site to publish and update outdoor and adventure industry news and job/resume listings on a daily basis, has been named one of the 50 top employment sites on the World Wide Web.

CareerXroads, an annual directory of the best job, resume and career-management sites on the Web, lists OutdoorNetwork.Com among the 50 "Best of the Best" in its 2001 edition, scheduled for February release. Nationally syndicated career columnist Joyce Lain Kennedy called the directory "the recruiters' and job seekers' bible to what is online" and named CareerXroads 2000 the best career book of the year. More than 100,000 copies are in the hands of libraries, recruiters, job seekers and employers around the country, and its monthly e-mail update reaches more than 10,000 subscribers.

Authors Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler reviewed more than 3,000 independent Web sites for their directory's sixth edition. "Marketing prowess, business acumen, commitment to customers and the ability to connect to a target audience were among the major factors in our choices this year," said Mehler, a human resource professional who has spent his entire 25+-year career in the employment industry.

OutdoorNetwork.Com, the only outdoor site among the CareerXroads top 50, finds itself in a highly recognized group. The 11-year-old Boulder, Colo., company is honored beside such well-advertised names as monster.com, hotjobs.com, guru.com and washingtonpost.com.

"This award is proof of our achievements as well as our commitment to remaining the premiere outdoor industry career site," said OutdoorNetwork.Com CEO Mikal Belicove. "While the number of outdoor-oriented consumer Web sites and magazines has increased dramatically since OutdoorNetwork.Com went online five years ago, Outdoor Network remains the only Web site dedicated exclusively to the outdoor and adventure programming professional."

Outdoor Network.com is an unbiased Web portal for the advancement and long-term stability of the outdoor recreation and education industries. Its online job service, Outdoor JobNet, also launched in 1996, has to date listed more than 25,000 outdoor industry employment opportunities, with more than 10,000 individuals gaining employment through the site. OutdoorNetwork.Com also features articles, news and reviews related to all aspects of the outdoor recreation industry. It covers businesses, associations, trade shows, conferences, legislative activities, insurance and risk management issues, marketing, staff management, trend identification and analysis, wilderness law and wilderness medicine, with reviews of equipment, books and other media.

Founded in 1989, the company also publishes the Outdoor Network Newsletter, a quarterly trade publication for the outdoor education and recreation industries, and the Outdoor Education & Recreation Law Quarterly, a newsletter focusing on legal issues of specific importance to outdoor education and recreation programs.

Despite its success, the Outdoor Network hasn't entirely left behind its scuffling days as a small-town Internet startup. As reported last year in an article distributed nationally distributed by the Scripps-Howard news service, CEO Belicove still serves as the janitor in the Outdoor Network's office building.