Vermont Powder
The State of Vermont is the the destination of choice in New England for skiers looking for challenging trails, snowboarders with a sense of adventure and snow mobile enthusiasts that have an appreciation for rugged terrain and beautiful landscapes. Top resorts include Burke Mountain, Bolton Valley, Stowe, Smuggler's Notch, Killington, Mad River Glen, Sugarbush, Stratton, Jay Peak, Okemo, Suicide Six, Mount Snow and Bromley. Nordic and backcountry skiers can also travel the length of the state on the Catamount Trail.
Vermont Powder was conceived by a group of ski enthusiasts that wanted to have the social connection tools available in the Facebook environment, but use them in a hub dedicated to a single theme - winter sports in Vermont. Connecting with friends, providing a market for the local business community that surrounds a resort to promote themselves, creating a library for people to document and share photos, videos and stories of their trips and using mobile to alert friends on the slopes to local conditions were the key drivers of Vermont Powder.
Needs and Problems to Be Solved
Vermont Powder's needs were based on providing a web based experience around a shared passion. They fell into a number of broad categories as described below:
Mobile: Perhaps the most important feature of the system – how to harness the need to share the joy of participation while 3000 feet up on the top of a mountain. Vermont Powder gives enthusiasts the tools to document their experiences while they are happening and share them with friends.
Familiarity of Features: Social communicators have learned to use a variety of social tools over the last few years. It was important to the Vermont Powder folks that the tools be intuitive and easy to master, both on the web site and the mobile devices.
Revenue: ConcourseConnect can be configured in a variety of ways out of the box. Having the ability to create an ecosystem of businesses that surround a resort, and giving those businesses an easy way to interact with prospects and customers in a social way and in a focused environment, was important to maintaining the viability of the community.
Passionate Community: While there are a number of outlets that provide ski/snowboard/snowmobile conditions, it was important that Vermont Powder be used as the one place that provides everything that a visitor would need for their trip - conditions, events, business promotions, resort information and news. Sharing experiences with others, meeting new people and having a tool to document the trip allows this community to feed on the shared joy of experiencing the beauty of Vermont and the joy of the slopes.
The solution delivered by Concursive, built entirely on its standard, upgradeable components, achieves these needs for Vermont Powder.
Process Employed
Vermont Powder was deployed in stages, which is the way most organizations approach building a social community. The phases are as follows:
Prototype: A stock system brought up. This stage covered roughly one month; 1 week for configuration and roughly 3 weeks for socializing it to stakeholders, gaining feedback, and then reaching consensus to go to the next phase.
Beta: Began immediately as the prototype "turned into" the beta. Additional customizations were made, users brought up live, and initial programs begun.
Soft Launch: As the beta continued and visbility grew, Vermont Powder morphed into the final system it is today.
Production: It's now in full production with the full suite of capabilities employed: Web, mobile, and a number of cloud services plugged in.
Technology Components
