I enjoy listening to music while I’m skiing on my own. I make sure my Ipod is tuned to a level where I can still take part in a conversation on a chairlift, select a play list that fits my mood, and off I go. I don’t always plug in when I’m riding alone, but I do find that myself skiing with tunes more often than not as I find it can help pass the time on the lift and also add some much needed rhythm to my skiing.
Because I do like to ride with my music, I do often think about the potential downside: is it going to distract someone from hearing another person overtaking them or is it going to make so someone doesn’t hear a snowmobile coming along a trail? I imagine it probably will someday (if it hasn’t already) and that makes me wonder if having music on while skiing and riding is something that resorts will try to limit or is this just something that we all need to be aware of and ski and ride appropriately? Anyone have any positive or negative personal experiences to add to this?
Photo Credit: maxf
(I love this photo because the gondola icons look like little Ipods to me!)
I attended the 1st ever Social Media Club of Salt Lake City meeting last Thursday and was happy to see the larger than expected turnout of very excited group of people that filled the room to overflowing. And, the best part is that there’s more to come, and there are also more great events happening this week!
On Inaugural Day, there’s a Salt Lake City Sundance Tweetup at the Beehive Tearoom starting at 7:00pm and features a “guest speaker” with lots of other Sundance connections as well.
Then, on Thursday, the 22nd, there’s another Sundance Tweetup, this one being the Charity Tweetup at Sundance, which is happening at the Legacy Lodge at Park City Mountain Resort (where I work, hint, hint). The cool twist on this event is that it has a suggested $5 (min.) donation, but all of the door will go to a charity that will be determined based upon a vote of all attendees. There’s will also be a quick panel and plenty of Tweetup goodness. PLUS, and I still haven’t had any takers on this – I’m looking for some ski or snowboard Tweeples to join me on the slopes for a #SkiTweetup! Don’t worry about ability, I can ski really slowly if need be, I just figure it’s time to Tweetup on the slopes – @freeskier41 – you listening, my man (I know you don’t need to go slow)?!
BTW, just noticed that the PodCampSLC twitter account just tweeted back into action – it’s not until March 27th, but it’s sure to be another great Utah social media event to attend!
While I might think that I have the best job in the world, the marketing people at Tourism Queensland have come up with what a very unique and timely campaign promoting what they say is “The Best Job in the World.” What they’re offering is actually a six month position that requires regular photo and video updates to a blog and pays a nifty AUD$150,000 (just over $100k US) it even includes a lovely sounding 3 bedroom home with private pool and airfare. Here’s their video promoting the job:
It’s a great concept and well executed, but what I really like is how they have such great timing what with the global economy stagnating and people flocking to job and other employment sites both online and offline where Tourism Queensland has posted ads promoting this ‘job’. Check out these samples I found online:
This brings up an idea, why don’t other businesses look to employment ads as a way to target business in unorthodox places – perhaps as a ski resort we could advertise openings for skiers and snowboarders in help wanted placements? Whether or not something like that could work, this approach by Tourism Queensland has certainly created a huge word of mouth campaign – over a thousand news articles within a week – and even crashed the web server that they were using to host the application site. I look forward to seeing how this campaign evolves over the coming months and I think that I’ll have to subscribe to the blogs’ RSS feed to see what the winner really thinks of their job come December!
It was an early morning for me today, 5:30am to be exact. I was up and out the door so early because I was heading down the Salt Lake City Airport to meet Steve, our Mountain Host Manager, and fly back up to Park City to take some photos and video of the mountain from up above. I’ve been involved with aerial photography at the resort before, but I’ve never been the primary photographer. Thankfully I only wanted to capture a few particular images and I also had our videographer (another Eric) on-board to ensure that even if I completely flailed that we would get something of value out of this endeavor.
In the end, the weather was pristine, the flight flawless and here’s a sample of what I was able to capture:
So, if the Fox13 news team doesn’t take up Stephen on his challenge, I hope he’s got enough gumption to come up to Park City and do some leg wrestling up on top of a mountain. So, here’s my call out Stephen, let’s throw down, or leg down or whatever it’s called up here in the beautiful mountains of Park City, Utah – bring it on!
It took me a day but I’m ready to chime in on the…uhhh,… precarious position that an unfortunate skier wound up in, dangling while showing a full moon, the day after New Years at Vail. If you haven’t seen the photos they’re all over the web, with probably the best selection to be found at The Smoking Gun, although I’m impressed to say that the maggots over at Teton Gravity Research were on this back on the day it happened.
It’s almost mind-blowing to contemplate the unlikely sequence of events that occurred for this to happen, but it did and I only hope that the fellow to whom this happened has as good a sense a humor as did his photographer – did you know the he’s been suspended from his job and may be fired?!
Here are a couple of quick takeaways:
ALWAYS look before you sit, this applies in general and not just with chairlifts!
No matter where you go someone will have a way to document what’s going on because everyone has one or more of: a cell phone, a camera or a video camera.
The web is as viral as ever, once the photos started to spread across the internet, they were everywhere in a matter of hours. I just did a Google search for “vail naked lift” and turned up over 90,000 search results of which 432 were news articles!
Some bartender in Vail is going to be coming up with a cocktail named the “Hanging Moon,” I could write about a coffee drink here in Park City called the McMonkey’s Latte, but I digress.
After working in the ski industry for many years, I can honestly say that this is probably oddest thing that I’ve seen and I’m awfully glad that it didn’t happen anywhere around here – sorry Vail!
Here it is, a list of ski resorts that are ‘hanging out’ on Twitter! I’ll try to update it as more resorts create accounts and, if I’m missing any, please leave me a comment and I’ll add them. I also have a few destination marketing organizations included here, but I’m primarily interested in ski resorts for this list.
We spent yesterday evening at a wonderful dinner party at the home of Tina and Nathan Rundel who served up an absolutely scrumptious and probably five hour long dinner. I can’t do it justice any other way than through some photos:
Click the photo to see a full slideshow.
I hope everyone had a great New Year’s Eve 2008, and here’s looking to a fantastic 2009. I’m resolving to spend more time with Little K, exercise more and help out more around the house.
I enjoy listening to music while I’m skiing on my own. I make sure my Ipod is tuned to a level where I can still take part in a conversation on a chairlift, select a play list that fits my mood, and off I go. I don’t always plug in when I’m riding alone, but I do find that myself skiing with tunes more often than not as I find it can help pass the time on the lift and also add some much needed rhythm to my skiing.
It took me a day but I’m ready to chime in on the…uhhh,… precarious position that an unfortunate skier wound up in, dangling while showing a full moon, the day after New Years at Vail. If you haven’t seen the photos they’re all over the web, with probably the best selection to be found at 
