Dec
22
Happy Holidays to The Bike Industry!
Filed Under Industry News, Interbike, Photos | 3 Comments
This is the core group of people that put on Interbike and that you may interact with here as an exhibitor or attendee. It was a spur of the moment idea to do the photo for a holiday card/ad in the most recent BRAIN, so some important people were left out of the pic. We just ran down to the courtyard of our office building and Ray, our art director, took the photo. I think it came out nice. We went out for our usual lunch time ride afterward (there’s a great bike path literally across the street that heads straight to the beach in Dana Point along a canal).
f you didn’t see the bigger version in the magazine, the names here are hard to read. From left to right: Rich (yours truly) - marketing, Alicia (with Interbike since 1994!) - operations, Andria - sales manager, Lauren - registration, Lance - show director, Brian - account executive, Erin (MVP!) - operations, Sarah - registration, and “Fun Bobby” (aka Robert) - account exec. Great team to work with and great people.
Hope you all have a great holiday with friends and family and a happy, safe and prosperous new year!
By the way, for the bike blog geeks out there (you know who you are), I’m wearing Giordana 2005 Interbike socks…
Dec
20
Thanks, I Needed That
Filed Under Industry News, Interbike | 3 Comments
So, like most of you, I check my blog RSS feeds daily (or “Live Bookmarks” as FireFox calls them) for interesting headlines. We all have our favorites that we hope have been updated with fresh posts or content and look forward to reading. When they haven’t, you get that “awww, there’s nothing new” reaction similar to finding your postal mail box empty. I don’t harbor any dillusions that Interbike Times is anyone’s favorite blog, but, occasionally, I’m reminded that people are reading it and pay attention to it. And noticing that I haven’t posted in a while. Both were pointed out to me recently, so here’s a posting to, hopefully, get things going again.
My notice that people are reading came about a month ago when we got together with Tim Blumenthal of the Bikes Belong Coalition for lunch. In the initial chit-chat that invariably precedes any serious talk, Tim kindly mentioned that he enjoyed reading my postings here. It really caught me off guard that someone of Tim’s stature in the industry was following the blog. Belated thanks for the complement, Tim.
However, what really got me going again was a posting from what has recently become one of my most anticipated RSS feeds, the Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable podcast. Not a blog, technically, but I access it the same way as my blogs, so it’s close enough. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a lively bike industry panel discussion hosted by David Bernstein of Fredcast podcast fame. It’s an entertaining and informative talk on the various topics that are going on in and affecting the industry and is produced every couple of weeks or so. David does an excellent and impressively professional-sounding job as the host and the guests have been from a variety of backgrounds, positions and constituencies within the industry.
On Monday, I saw that there was a new episode available and that iTunes had downloaded it. I also noticed that one of the the topics of discussion was the Eurobike-USA situation that went on during the month of November. I usually put new episodes of the podcast on in the background as I work, but I knew that Lance (Interbike’s Show Director) and I were driving down to San Diego for a meeting with a potential partner for Interbike’s sister show, the Health+Fitness Business Expo, on Tuesday morning and it would make an interesting listen during the drive. I burned a copy of the episode onto a cd (don’t own an iPod) and we brought it along for the ride.
It was an interesting and entertaining listen, even though it’s still a little disconcerting to hear people you don’t know that well talk about you or your work in a public forum. All of the panelists have great insight and experience that they bring to the table. I highly recommend listening to them regularly and catching some of the archived episodes if you have the time and, especially, if you are an “industry goober”, as Tim Jackson referred to himself in Spokesmen #9. I have especially enjoyed listening to Tim Grahl’s opinions on various European pro road racing subjects. Tim and I had a laugh about that in Vegas this year - he’s such the Euro-Pro road snob…
We eagerly fast forwarded straight to topic #2: “The Eurobike Invasion”. Without spoiling the show for anybody, it seems like the group reached similar conclusions about EB-USA, host cities, labor and Bootleg canyon [thanks, Carleton] that we have. It was a nice, reasoned conversation about the issues (or lack thereof) that led EB to “launch” the competing show and the realities of trade shows and how they relate to the feelings that some in the industry may have about Interbike. [On a related, but tangential, side note, for another unique take on the Vegas-as-host-city topic, here's what Guitar Ted thinks about it: The Two Faces of Vegas. While not exactly a glowing review or resounding endorsement of LV, it's a compelling post that I've been meaning to comment on, or at least link to, for some time.]
So what got me to write again? Well, this Spokesmen episode is the year-end edition and each guest had the opportunity to bring up their “industry story of the year” for discussion by the panel. Carlton Reid, of BikeBizUK, brought up Floyd and the doping controversies, Tim Jackson, of Masi Bicycles, felt the EB-USA topic worthy and Donna Tocci, of Kryptonite, thought that the way the cycling community has embraced the “New Media” was the most important subject of the year. In her musings on the topic, she mentioned how some events, such as our little show, had gotten on the blogging bandwagon. It was obviously a complement to our efforts and decision to launch this, but then she added the swift kick in the butt: “but I wish they would post more frequently…” Thanks for the motivation to get back on track, Donna. As you can tell by the hour that I’m posting this, I forced myself to get this up today (tomorrow, now, actually). More meaningful posts to come… Thanks for reading.