A Question of Snow, ‘Townies’, and the Future of Technology

By Mark Phillips, 2-20-06

Colorado Ski Country (full disclosure: sponsor of New West's Snow Blog), hosted the Blogger Business Summit's Bloggy Mountain High. The group of well-known (there's now an A-list!) bloggers gathered in Summit County last week to discuss the value of blogging as compared to traditional marketing and PR business initiatives. I had intended to spend a rare mid-week day on the slopes with the group, but after two runs down hard, icy slopes, I packed it in and worked from the Keystone Village Starbucks (which has free wi-fi, btw!).

As I worked, I thought about how to write about a bad snow day in a column that celebrates snow days. Of course, it wasn't a bad snow day for everyone. Steve Broback said it was the best day of skiing he'd had in ten years. And Robert Scoble wished he had skied instead of snowmobiling.

And then I remembered something. I grew up in Florida, and every time there was a cold snap, some poor tv reporter would interview an intrepid tourist or two on a cold, gray stretch of New Smyrna or Daytona. They had paid good money to be there, and 40 degrees or not, they were going to enjoy the beach.

So it is with snow. If I had dropped a grand on plane tickets, rentals, accomodations, and lift tickets, and used up even a few scarce vacation days, I'd be on the slopes, too. One of the luxuries of living in Florida is that you can wait for the sun. One of the luxuries of living in Colorado is that you can wait for the snow.

At dinner, the discussion ranged from cellular phone technology to the urban ammenities offered in a faux-rural resort setting like Keystone's Village to the need to filter in an information-laden age. (Most of the bloggers suscribe to more than 100 RSS feeds from blogs that they follow.) As it turns out, technology is developing such that aggressive news gatherers can now do what we lucky folks who live in tourist destinations have done for a long time: filter. Filtering news and leaving after two runs are really one in the same. Like bloggers with their news, I'm holding out for the "good story" which I know is only one good weather system away. [End of article]