Hosting World Snowboard Day Hainan

---

In November, at the surfing festival, I was asked by Beijing-based company to act as the local organiser of a World Snowboard Day event in Hainan the next month. World Snowboard Day is an event held in hundreds of resorts all around the world and is sponsored by Burton as well as many other companies. The idea of holding one such snowboard event on a tropical island got everyone understandably confused!

For about 6 weeks, the organisation of this event became a bit like a part time job, taking up most of my time communicating with the party venue, the Beijing company, a ski resort sponsor and others to sort out advertising, flyers, online descriptions, prizes, decorations, and everything that was to go on at the party. The concept was that surfers and tourists in this part of Hainan would also be the kinds of people interested in potentially going snowboarding in China, and I like to think it got everyone there thinking about Chinese snowboarding a lot more in some way or another! In total there were 200 free lift passes given away for people potentially thinking about going to find the snow.

Sponsors Burton and Skull Candy provided tons of brilliant prizes to raffle out, special new snowboard DVDs were showing on the screen and I had showed the bar how to make an Austrian mountain food dish and apres-ski style Jaegerbombs, which went down verrry well :-)

All in all the party was a big success, with a good atmosphere and everyone having a good time! I was quite relieved when it was all over, having just been in hospital, with so much that could potentially have gone wrong with a snowboard party on a tropical island!

---