There are a few things that made Snowcial 2011 great, and we’d like to take a moment to give them a shout out.
Blue Sky Events
First and foremost, Kerry and Jason Hawk of Blue Sky Events worked with us all year to create and execute a perfect event. Their friendly smiling faces greeted attendees and solved problems. We’d rather go snollerblading than run Snowcial without Blue Sky Events. Thank you!
PSAV Presentation Services
Peter Sereno was the man in the back of the room with a pile of laptops, a fleet of thumb drives and the organization to keep it all straight. Most of our presenters either turned in their decks in the last week, or last minute before going on stage. PSAV managed to keep them all straight, got the title and sponsor slides up and get all the Lightning Round decks running perfectly.
Harrah’s and Harveys
They are a sponsor of the event, as you know, but they went above and beyond to make things work for Snowcial. The conference and hotel staff @ Harveys Lake Tahoe Casino are great to work with from the boss down to the guys serving chocolate mousse in an edible mug. Early in the planning for Snowcial 2011 we gave Harrah’s Entertainment a top 3 list of bands to play Saturday night. OK Go was on top. And they got them!
Reno Gazette-Journal
and from Gannett and from the Reno Gazette-Journal contacted us mere weeks from Snowcial interested in partnering with us to add a blogger focused track to Snowcial 2011. With time EXTREMELTY limited, they pulled together speakers, attendees and advertising for Reno Gazette-Journal’s Blog University, which tool place just before the Snowcial Conference @ Harveys while some of you were out skiing. The event focused on providing tools and information for bloggers to enhance their content and grow their audience. For us, it extended the reach of snowcial to a whole new audience. Next year we’ll continue to work with RGJ and Gannett to bring more content to a bigger audience and bring the community as a whole closer together.
Sapporo
Sapporo was the official beverage sponsor for Snowcial this year and they hooked us up with a tall can of Sapporo and pint glass in every room as well as a ton of Sapporo bottles for all our gatherings. Eugene Lee was LATE to Snowcial, and the first thing he did was crack his Sapporo tallcan and run up to dinner. Thanks to Sapporo, our shoes runneth over…
EyeFi
I was given an Eye Fi WiFi enabled SD memory card by Eye Fi several months ago and have been using it to upload home photos to my flickr account. Since we had conference wide WiFi @ Snowcial I set it to upload to the . So as I was snapping photos at the checkin desk, welcome reception and conference, it automatically tagged and uploaded the photos to Flickr and posted a note to Twitter. While you have to be careful with that (imagine if Digi had gotten hold of that camera…) we definitely recommend an Eye Fi card for conferences, and any other event where having real-time high-quality photos of speakers getting iced on stage is important.
EpicMix
In years past the scavenger hunt was tons of fun, but a logistical nightmare for the guy who had to tabulate and calculate winners (me). This year it was all, mostly, automated through Vail Resort’s EpicMix. What manual work needed to be done was done by Mike Slone while I ate chocolate mousse from an edible mug. We definitely recommend using EpicMix with groups and events as it provides a fun way to engage visitors with the mountain and the experience of skiing and riding.
Helly Hansen
The Snowcial jacket this year is a nice mid-weight fleece from Helly Hansen. Everyone loved it. It’s comfy, warm and a perfect layer under a shell on the slopes, or on it’s own while drinking beer from a shoe. We had a bunch of extras, but they mysteriously disappeared, so don’t bother asking…
Cube Pass
who supplies most of the back stage passes for major us concert tours from Miley Cyrus to OK Go. They cut us a great deal on our conference badges, turned them around in no time and were great to work with. General Manager David Evans is a cycling buddy of ours in Reno and a great guy to know. Check him out .
