2011 Fall NSAA Conference

This years Fall ski industry tradeshow was held at sunday river. We arrived Thursday morning and started walking around to many vendors who were salesmen, trying to sell their products to ski area managers. The Dopplemayr salesmen happened to be the old mountain op manager at my home mountain. It was nice seeing how people move in the industry and seeing many managers from my home mountain. I asked the piston bully salesman, Josh Nelson, what have changed in the grommers recently and what his favorite one was. He said the engines burn cleaner, more maintenance friendly, and some have GPS tracking to work with snowmaking and his favorite one was the 600 winch. Then I went over to the Leitner Poma salesmen, Patty Dykman, and asked what the difference was from Dopplemayr. There wasn't much of a difference, and that was the same answer when I compared HDK snowmaking and Johnson Controls. Everyone seems to be using the same type of technology. The first seminar I went to was "Growing the Sport" with Michael Berry, NSAA president, as the speaker. The main message he was saying was that things are going good in the industry and that this is a powerful, unique sport that always brings joy, and that snowboarding seems to have plateaued. He also said that Janurary is a very important month because it is the learn to ski and ride month. Then I went to a marketing seminar who was spoken by Samantha Rufo from nxtConcepts. She talked about the millennal generation and how they are open, diverse, and technology is their life. 91% of the millennal generation have cell phones. Today in the social economy people are skiing for bragging on facebook. The last interesting seminar that I attended was the Wind Mill seminar. Matt Vanderbrook from sustainable engergy developments was talking about the process and advantages to having a wind mill. He said it would be about an eight year payback return if you added a wind mill. Just the permitting stage of the process takes about 2 years so you can't expect a wind mill to be put in right away. After that seminar it was time to leave. I thought it was a great opportunity for us to attend this conference and I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the industry next.