UBB.Developers Forums Announcements Announcements U-Zine Interviews September 2002: Content Rulez: EpicSki

Interview by: tackaberry
Interviewee: August

UBBDev each month honors one of our outstanding member communities that has developed a strong and vibrant community. This month we are proud to introduce our winner, EpicSki .

We took a gondola ride with the head of the Ski Patrol, August to find out how he gives his community a lift.

EpicSki can be found at: http://www.epicski.com .

The Barking Bear Forums can be found at http://www.epicski.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi .



UBBDev:
First off congratulations on winning the contest this month, and for having a great community!

August:
Wow, thanks! I really appreciate this and am quite flattered to receive any recognition at all from UBBdev. I also want to thank you guys for the time you put not only into this contest, but the entire UBBdev website and community. It has had a huge impact on my ability to build an active ski site by enabling me to introduce all kinds of community-enhancing functionality.

UBBDev:
Tell me about the history of your site and when you got started.

August:
In 1998 was living in L.A. and literally commuting every week to NYC doing consulting projects and logging insane (90 hour) work weeks. My passion through high school and college had always been skiing, but that was no longer a part of my life. So I’m sitting in my cubicle on client sites, and increasingly I grew board with the work and my mind kept drifting to more personally rewarding things such as skiing and being in the mountains. I didn’t know a single line of html, but decided a skiing website would be something I could do for fun on “personal breaks” in my cubicle. I threw up some photos and stories, but that was not interesting to me for very long. I wanted to talk with people with similar passions, and I wanted to do it from my cubicle throughout the day. I had built the website with MS Frontpage (I was brand new to web development!), so used Frontpage’s built-in forum to create EpicSki version 1.0. Now, I don’t know how many of you know what Frontage’s forum software looked like a few years ago, but it is incomprehensibly awful! My first site was to serious internet forums what a three year old’s coloring book is to a Monet.

Anyway, working non-stop and commuting 3,000 miles got old after about eight months, so I quite my job and moved to Lake Tahoe, California, one of the country’s foremost locations for skiing. Since the EpicSki website seemed a good complement to my new life, I rededicated myself to it. Step 1 was to create a real forum which led me to UBB. Now a funny thing had happened over the previous ski season regarding the online mess I had created, people actually started using the forum! Maybe standards were lower back then for websites, and perhaps there was some appeal to a grass-roots site when the only competition was from the newsgroups and a corporate site that was owned by a company which also owned three of the four largest skiing magazines in North America.

I installed my new UBB board, and made sure every single question in the forum received a very thorough and informed response. In the beginning, it was more like my own little “Dear Abby” than a community. That changed quickly, though, and I am not entirely sure why or from where they were coming. People began showing up. EpicSki was slowly earning a reputation for serious ski discussion, as opposed to the chit-chat or ego-driven threads elsewhere that never seemed to offer any real information. Steady growth led to a group of knowledgeable members and a true community that was no longer centered on me. Then, an increasingly large group of industry professionals began visiting EpicSki on a regular basis – professional ski book and magazine writers, manufacturer representatives, and others far more knowledgeable than I ever was had become regulars. Once this crowd showed up, and word got out to two of the other active ski forums, floods of dedicated amateurs migrated from those boards to ours. This has placed us in the situation we are now in, with a contingent of pros sharing incredible wisdom, and lively debate by a large group of extremely dedicated amateur skiers. This year people will travel from all over the country (and from Europe in a few cases) for the third annual EpicSki gathering at a ski resort in Utah, and our first annual New England gathering will take place this year. Mini real life gatherings organized on the website take place on a weekly basis throughout the winter. A true community has evolved.

UBBDev:
Where did the name "EpicSki originate from?

August:
I wanted a fun name that would not only be easy to remember and easy to spell, but also capture what an all-encompassing, overwhelming experience skiing in the mountains can be. “Epic” is a term used often in outdoor sports to describe the peak experience of that sport. Hence, EpicSki.


Photo by Brian Bloom

UBBDev:
How many members are on your forum/site, both total and regulars?

August:
3,080 registered members, grows 10 to 20 a day in season (late fall through spring)

In-season we have around 1,000 who visit at least once a month. We have approximately 400 who are in the forum several time a week. And many who are in there several times a day.

This season we’ll be exceeding one million page views per month

UBBDev:
Thats great! Which are the most popular forums on your board?

August:
General Ski discussion: A wide variety of skiing-related topics

Technique and Instruction: Nationally prominent ski pros debate technique with each other and answer practical questions from amateurs – many of whom are extremely knowledgeable and accomplished skiers themselves, others are intermediates with a strong desire to learn.

Gear Discussion Forum: This is a gear-intensive sport, ski equipment is expensive, and people want honest unbiased information before spending their money. The primary alternative for gear info is from advertisement-backed magazines and shops, both of whom have commercial influences to push one brand over another and, therefore, are not as honest and reliable of info sources as EpicSki


Photo by Brian Bloom

UBBDev:
What kind of threads are typical on your forum?

August:
Debates about technique often bring about the most passionate exchanges. Skiing is part mechanics and part art, which leads to a variety of opinions on what gets less advanced skiers to a point of higher proficiency the fastest. Plus different people learn differently, so how to teach is a frequent topic. Everyone has their favorite ski mountain or region, and members are not shy about sharing their views. Gear advocates go head-to-head about the advantages of fat skis versus more carving-oriented skis. Skiing equipment technology and the lifestyle surrounding the sport has changed radically in recent years, so you have the new-school / old-school debate. But in the end, we are all at EpicSki because we love sliding down mountains covered with frozen water and that shared commitment to the sport fosters a strong camaraderie.